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Parent Category: Popular
Category: Solarbike

A lightweight solarbike that drives entirely by solar energy

Imagine that you can cycle entirely by the sun's power. Until now this was a pie in the sky. But with my invention of the Maxun One solar bike, the impossible has become possible. The solar panels alone deliver the energy for a speed of 25 to 30km/h without pedalling. 

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Parent Category: Tech tips
Category: PCB
DIY simple manual SMD solder paste micro-dot syringe dispenser

With this tool you can precisely dispense very small dots of solder paste. Although this solder paste dispenser is cheap and uncomplicated, it works better for small SMD parts than many automatic dispensers. It is used in aerospace and medical electronics companies.

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Parent Category: Arduino
Category: Interfacing with hardware

I made this switch library years ago when decent switch libraries didn't exist, and over the years it has become more and more extended. It is now the best out there according to people who have compared them.

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Parent Category: Popular
Category: Maxun e-kit

Introduction

This device has two uses: 

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Parent Category: Ebike
Category: Mechanical issues

To control the motor power of my solar bike as easy as possible, I have developed an ergonomic e-bike thumb throttle switch. It needs just a small thumb movement.

Normally, such a throttle is mounted between grip and the brake lever which increases the distance between them, see for instance the Bionx throttle or the Shimano switch unit SW EM800 L. That's not handy. That's why I made a throttle that is mounted on top of the brake lever clamp so that no extra space is needed on the handlebar.

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Parent Category: Arduino
Category: Arduino miscellaneous

For programming and testing, I don’t use physical connectors on the PCB but connectorless self-clamping zigzag connectors. The pin header of the programming tool is inserted directly into the holes. By the zigzag positions of the PCB holes, it provides lateral pressure, sufficient to grip the pins and allow good connection. For use as for programming and testing, it works fine, I have never experienced any contact problems.

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Parent Category: Ebike
Category: Ebike electronics

Abstract

To reduce the cabling on an ebike, I have developed a simple, but very robust, 2-wire control bus. The signal and the power supply go together with in total two wires: GND and 5V. 
This article describes the application of the 2-wire bus on an ebike, for which the bus was originally designed, named: cable killer.

The principle of an analog, resistance driven, 2-wire bus is not new, it is a well known solution to save on cabling. For example, in a VCR, this principle was used to reduce the wiring to a button panel by connecting the many buttons through different resistors to a single control wire. From the resistance of the control wire it can then be deduced which switch has been pressed.

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Category: Miscellaneous

I am a seasoned inventor with over 40-years of experience in electronic engineering and software development. I have delivered unique engineering solutions to the commercial industry on a wide range of projects. My passion in electronic engineering has also led me to become a collector and a student of fine engineering design. I passionately believe that the core of any design should be based on elegance and simplicity.

In 2010, I started building a solar-powered bicycle, the Maxun One. Herefore, I need special equipment, parts and software that I make myself and that's how I roll from one project to another. On my website, I share my ideas and designs. 

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Parent Category: Popular
Category: Spotwelder

I have developed the D.I.Y spot welder because I needed a special spot welder for the building of my Maxun One solar bike. It turned out that the spot welder is being built by many people worldwide, so I have published here the entire building project.

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Parent Category: Popular
Category: Spotwelder

This advanced controller was used by many people and has a unique reduced inrush current circuit that prevents main fuse blow up.

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Parent Category: Popular
Category: Universal Power Control board

This Arduino board can be used for any project where something needs to be controlled and that is menu-driven. 
See the open source PCB Eagle files on GitHub. It includes Gerber files for let making the PCB.

This product is no longer for sale since 7-2020

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Parent Category: Tech tips
Category: Tech tips electronics

Vacuum tubes are awkward, need always 6.3V filament and high supply voltage? No, they can also work on 3.3V. I have built a vacuum tube pre-amplifier that runs entirely on 3.3V, inclusive the filament voltage. Apparently, the electron emission of the filament still works at 3.3V. Despite the very low supply voltage, the tube amplifier still works well.

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Parent Category: Arduino
Category: SAMD21

The SAM 15x15 is a very small Arduino development board, with the same powerful controller as the Arduino Zero: the SAMD21G18.
All I/O pins are used: despite the small size, it has more I/O pins than the Arduino Zero or SAMD21 Mini/Dev Breakout: 34 instead of 21. Due to the very small dimensions it will fit easily into all embedded electronic projects, even in microdrones.

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Parent Category: Ebike
Category: Ebike electronics

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Parent Category: Motor
Category: Bosch
Bosch Active Line 3 printed circuit board explained

For my solar powered bicycle, the Maxun One, I designed a very powerful and lightweight mid-drive motor. I also wanted to investigate whether I could use a Bosch Active Line 3 motor. The Bosch motor weight is 2975g, this is relatively lightweight for a mid-drive motor, but it is still too heavy for my solar bike.

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Parent Category: Tech tips
Category: Tech tips electronics

I have developed a cheap multimeter calibration reference by which you can calibrate a digital multimeter yourself. Here we calibrate my favorite multimeter, the PeakTech 2010, it has a lot of features and it cost just €35.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

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