🗓️
2016
E-bike
My first major project. In middle school, I mostly just wanted my bike to go faster. Around the same time Tesla was popularizing the use of 18650 cells, I got fixated on the idea of building my own battery pack and seeing if I could turn my bike electric.
I ended up soldering together a bundle of 18650 cells I’d collected online and from old electronics, testing them one by one and wiring them into a pack big enough to run a small brushless hub motor. It pushed the bike to about 25 mph, which felt pretty wild at the time, and gave roughly 15–20 miles of range if I wasn’t constantly flooring it.
The setup was pretty rough, a basic throttle, microcontroller, and a pack I threw together to hold the battery. Most of the “design” was just me trying things until they worked. Still, it was a fun introduction to electronics and power systems, and the first time I felt like I could make something real out of a random idea.