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Building a Heat Pump from an old AC
House heating cost have recently increased sharply, and the transition to non-fossil energy sources is simultaneously promoted. New houses are often equipped through city heating or heat pumps. Existing houses, however, are originally heated using fossil fuels such as natural gas or oil. As electricity is anticipated to be of increasing importance in the future…
How to: installing the new PCB into Sanyo MCU-1 hub.
Since I have received the question whether I could supply the designed PCB (described here), I have decided to write more elaborately what I have modified to build the PCB into the hub. You should cut the tabs that are originally used for the mounting of the PCB: there will be a diode and extra…
Fixing an early model Panasonic mid-drive motor
I have recently bought an old e-bike built by Batavus, the e-go (see here for a review in Dutch). The bike is equipped with a Panasonic mid-drive motor. The motor did not run, even with a power supply connected instead of the defect battery. I therefore decided to open up the casing and see if…
Final build CMU-1
After trying out different configurations, I have designed a final PCB to finish it into a hopefully reliable build. I decided to use two larger-than-original parallel transistors for the PWM switching, and two diodes to dampen voltage peaks by leaking to either ground or battery. I also employ a large capacitor to dampen voltage ripple.…
E-bike tinkering: Sanyo CMU overview
After a first try with 24 V (Li-ion) batteries, I decided I wanted a bit more support from the motor. Also, with the experience from earlier attempts, I wanted to make a more reliable version of my motor controller. I decided to build a 48V battery (13S), and to split the transistor load by channeling…
E-bike tinkering: Sanyo CMU-1
Recently, I learned about a hub developed by Sanyo and Sachs in the 90’s; the CMU-1 and CMU-3. It was built on several bikes from Sachs, including the joint project with Mercedes-Benz to build an electric bike. This hub is a complex collection of cogs, belts, bearings, sensors and a controller. It is really quite…
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