Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Weekend Projects – EL Cycle”.
Hi, I’m Tyler with make. We live in amazing technological times, but none of it really looks like anybody’s vision of the future. This week’s project to the L cycle adds that retro future flare to your favorite ride. What’S best you’ll be generating all the electricity you need, as you pedal so you’ll, never run out of batteries. Welcome to the world of tomorrow to get started with this project gather of the parts by either purchasing them online or simply head on over to your local radioshack, where you can pick up most of the electronic components needed for the build. You’Ll also need these basic tools. First, let’s talk about stepper motors and how they work. They typically come with 4, 5, 6 or even 8 wires for this project, we’ll be using a four wire motor, but any the other varieties can be made to work to make sure you have the correct kind of stepper motor spin, the motor shaft and your fingers. If there is no resistance and the motor turns freely, then you probably have a reluctant stepper, which has an iron core.
So it won’t work as a generator head on over to the project page for tips on how to correctly identify a suitable stepper motor. For this build once you’ve verified that you have the correct motor you’ll need to determine which wires are the coil ends, with a multimeter check the resistance of the wires until you find the two pairs that have the highest resistance between them. These are the coil ends and will give us the most power output once you’ve identified. These two pairs switch the multimeter to AC voltage and spin the motor again. A really good way to do this is to connect the spindle to a drill and fire it up. You’Re looking for a motor that can now put in a range of 10 to 20 volts when spun quickly, once you’ve found a suitable motor, the next step is to find a wheel to attach to it. Inline skate wheels are perfect for this job.
Remove the bearings from the wheel and attach it to the shaft of the motor. There are a number of ways you can do this here, we’re using: u mold a moldable sculptable plastic available at RadioShack check out the project page for other ways to mount the wheel. Now is also a great time to think about how you’ll be mounting the motor to the bicycle frame so that the rear wheel can drive the motor if the skate wheel, attachment to your motor is permanent. You’Ll likely need to attach any mounting hardware to the motor. First, having hooked up your generator wheel now you need to prepare the Transformers you’re going to use two Transformers one for each L wire and each phase of the stepper motors output.
A good source for transformers are the AC power adapters from RadioShack. You can buy a suitable value unit and extract the transformer make sure you get an AC adapter as DC versions, use switching technology and have no useful transformer inside. Since l-wire requires over a hundred volts to drive it you’re going to wire up the Transformers in Reverse, that is, you’ll connect the output of our stepper motor to the low-voltage side and the El wire to the high voltage side. This will allow the transformer to step the voltage to over a hundred volts as needed to drive the El wire next solder and heat shrink the Zener diodes together.
This will limit the AC waveform at the top and bottom of the cycle, attach them to the transformer. As described on the project page, the last step in building the circuit is to clip the leads from the two power inverters and connect them to the high voltage side of the terminal blocks. This makes it really easy to connect the El wire after mounting the box to your bike, mount the Transformers, so they fit inside the lid of the enclosure and attach the wire connectors to the stepper motor. Also add a couple of insulated electrical conduit mounting clips to the enclosure. These will be used to attach it to the bicycle frame. Now you can mount the enclosure to the bike frame and then mount the stepper motor so that it’s wheel is resting against the rear rim of the bicycle.
It’S time to wrap your bike with some el wire. When you add the wire make sure you keep it clear of any moving parts, especially the handlebars and brakes once it’s all wired up, simply plug in the ends to the connectors on the electronic enclosure. Now it’s time to get on and ride be sure to head on over to the project page for more information about the El cycle.
It’S also a great place to talk about the build and share your own tricked-out el cycle. .