Building the wireless bike

[anotherkiwi]

So we had a few month back the promise of a bluetooth controller which to date is still not to be found in Europe. @mechaniker an update?

We already have this http://www.topeak.com/products/PanoBikeAndRideCase/speed_cadence_sensor , a bluetooth speed and cadence sensor which is just asking to be married to a bluetooth controller.

Missing in action:

Button set for changing assitacnce levels with led display to show what assistance level you are in.
Bluetooth brake cut off switch

One wire for power between the battery and the motor and another between PAS and controller (which is in the battery box by preference), that is all that is left.

All of the above could be done on a limited budget and in a really short time frame.

 

[anotherkiwi]

Oruxmaps has ant+ support and I was intrigued about what it did. Well basically everything we need:

https://www.thisisant.com/developer/ant-plus/device-profiles/#527_tab

If a very intelligent e-bike company was to implement ant+ support on components it would have a killer product on its hands. Yes I know home builders are a tiny market but this might encourage some smaller companies to develop some very innovative bikes that would compete on level footing with the big companies.

Missing from my kit is an ant+ enabled Wattmeter, speedict unfortunately uses another protocol... And a controller capable of reading from an ant+ speed sensor...

Work around: set cutoff speed to 25 km, do all other setup and hide or place the LCD in the battery box so that a quick look down enables one to see assistance level. Lengthen cable from control buttons to hidden LCD.

Result:
- one cable from handlebars to battery box
- Screen on handlebars with GPS or not depending on use of bike (not going to need GPS to go to the shops)
- Wattmeter built into battery box showing Wh used and volts remaining etc.
- very clean bars which don't scream "steal/vandalise this LCD" or "I am an electric bike".

We don't always need all that information on the handlebars when a quick look down is enough.

 

[anotherkiwi]

Yummy!

http://www.bike-eu.com/sales-trends/nieuws/2016/8/tq-group-presents-new-display-and-keypad-solutions-10127173

 

[Zack @ Byocycles]

A little bit unrelated..but I'm currently developing a learning controller/display combo for my own bike, that learns the way you ride your bike, and can be set in "just ride" mode, when you get to a hill it will automatically set the assist into the level you normally chose for going up a hill of that gradient and so on...It already integrates all kinds of 'add ons' too. It's currently built using an Arduino, looks crude as hell, and is huge.

Has so many possibilities beyond what I'm doing....

*in no way affiliated with Byocycles, this is a personal project**

 

[Deleted member 4366]

What's wrong with Speedict? Doesn't it already give you just about everything you want. As well as providing the information live, it logs it all so that you can analyse it later.

 

[anotherkiwi]

Nothing wrong with Speedict (Mercury, Mars) if you can live with 1 km resolution, I prefer 100 meter resolution, especially for an odometer. Pedal cadence @ 100 rpm is a bit low for some also I guess.

My quest is for sensors that use the computing power of a smartphone/tablet and which have standardized data transmission protocols so the data can all be fed to just one app and be shown on just one screen.

I don't want to be limited to using the Speedict apps. A Topeak sensor with screen is only 40€ and is wireless so once it is paired will feed the data to my preferred cycling app.

 

[Deleted member 4366]

The Speedict gives the option to use either the wheel sensor and GPS for speed and distance, so you can have resolution down to 10 meters or less. Do you really sustain a cadence of over 100?

The Speedict is a wonderful piece of kit. It gives all the information about your battery usage, like watts, amps, voltage, amp-hours at the same time as speed, distance, location, etc in real time and logged, it can also do many other clever things like regulate your top speed for legal compliance. It can smooth out the throttle and make it more responsive.

All the info comes to one app and it can all be seen on the screen at the same time. You have a choice of how many parameters to show on the screen, i.e. the screen is customisable.

The logged data can be exported so that you can analyse it in other apps or in Excel or whatever you want.

The Speedict device works autonamously, so it always logs the data even if you don't switch you phone on.

 

[anotherkiwi]

I'm not arguing that it isn't good just that it doesn't get rid of the speed sensor wire - GPS doesn't work well under wet plane trees I have discovered.

And I prefer my bike app with very good cycle maps for where I ride. If speedict sent battery data over ant+ the cheaper one might get the nod.

There is cobox too, what I would really like is a wattmeter with Bluetooth and data in a standard format so I can choose the app I use it with.