August Wilsons Fences Essays - Fences, The Pittsburgh Cycle, Tragedy

August Wilsons Fences It is easy to make the case that August Wilson's play Fences is a tragedy and that Troy Maxson is its tragic protagonist. Few comedies end with a funeral, and there is no denying that Troy's character and life are the stuff of tragedy. But Wilson's vision is much larger than Troy's heroic side, his deeds and omissions. Troy, for all his strengths, is flawed humanity in need of grace and forgiveness. Such grace and forgiveness are the spirit of true comedy, and a case can be made for viewing Fences as a comedy or, perhaps, a metacomedy. The term is taken from Christopher Isherwood, who took it from Gerald Heard: I think the full horror of life must be depicted, but in the end there should be a comedy which is beyond both comedy and tragedy. The thing Gerald Heard calls 'metacomedy' [...] (421). Metacomedy, then, is a vision that transcends the immediately comic or tragic. It is not evasive and it has room for pain, for heartache, for alienation, even for death, because it affirms the values of mercy, forgiveness, and sacrifice, which adversity calls forth. For a religious person, metacomedy is what Christopher Fry called a narrow escape into faith and a belief in a universal cause for delight (17). Fry's metaphor for life is a book of alternating pages of tragedy and comedy. As we read (that is, live) the book, we are anxious about what the last page will be. The comic vision holds that on the last page all will be resolved in laughter (17). The essence, therefore, of metacomedy is hope, and Fences is a lesson in hope. First there is hope for a better future for African Americans and by extension, for all humankind. If we view Troy's earthly life as an autonomous whole, we are looking at an ultimately tragic book of life. But if we view Troy's life as a page in an ongoing saga, perhaps we can see it not only as a prelude to a happier time but as a success story of itself. George Meredith advises us that to love comedy we must know human beings well enough not to expect too much of them though you may still hope for good (325). What should a realist expect of Troy Maxson, who was abandoned by his mother at age eight, fled a brutal, lustful father at age fourteen, began to steal for a living, and served fifteen years on a murder charge? One can only hope for some measure of good, and Troy exceeds a realist's expectations. He holds a steady but disagreeable job as a garbage collector, supports a wife and son, stays sober six days a week, wins his own private civil-rights battle to become a driver, and remains faithful to Rose for eighteen years before he falls. Moreover, August Wilson presents us with a multigenerational vision in which our sense of waste is more than balanced by an infusion of hope. Fences is about the always imperfect quest for true manhood. Troy's father was less of a true man than Troy, but he was a worker and a provider. Troy, even as a runaway, carried with him his father's virtues along with a considerable lessening of the father's harshness and promiscuity. To Troy's credit he can appreciate his father's legacy and forgive his evil side: But I'll say this for him [...] he felt a responsibility toward us. [...] he could have walked off and left us [...] made his own way (716). It is Troy's capacity for gratitude and forgiveness that his son Cory must internalize on the morning of Troy's funeral. After a seven-year absence, the young man has returned in his marine uniform, proudly wearing his corporal's stripes. There is an aura of maturity about him but also a lingering bitterness--he refuses to attend his father's funeral. Troy's mother, Rose, articulates the deep truth that Cory does not want to face. Rose. You just like him. You got him in you good. Cory. Don't tell me that, Mama. Rose. You Troy Maxson all over again. Cory. I don't want to be Troy Maxson. I want to be me. Rose. You can't be nobody

How Do I Find Money to Write a Book

How Do I  Find Money to Write a Book People love to ask this question, a frequented question in my email, but I understand that every day new people decide to become authors. Folks who love reading, or have this burning story inside them, and want to see their work in print. Oh, only if that was all there was to it, right? Many of these sweethearts ask me where to find money to pay for that book. First, I tell them to seriously research whether to self-publish, hybrid publish, or traditionally publish, and if they dont understand the differences, then they are not ready to publish. Writing is only half the job, but then youve heard that before. That and it really costs nothing to actually write the book. Then we talk where money can be found. While this tiny editorial cannot begin to go into detail on each financial availability, it can list the possibilities to at least let you realize your options. One day Ill write a book on all of this. Places to gather money to write a book: 1) Save from your other income. Tithe to your book fund. 2) Take out a loan. If you really believe in yourself and your writing, why not risk taking out that loan? 3) Write freelance. While it might seem all that romantic a task to you, if you need money sooner rather than later, and want to write doing it, then consider freelance writing whether as a copywriter or magazine/blog writer. I strongly suggest trade magazines to get started. 4) Ordinary crowdfunding like Kickstarter.com or Indiegogo.com. PLEASE look at the successful campaigns to see what is involved. If this seems too ominous to you, then you might not be up to the marketing required of a serious writer. 5) Crowdfunding to publish. Go to a site like Publishizer.com and not only earn money and followers, but also a publishing contract. 6) Patreon. Gain monthly followers who are willing to subscribe to your new material, as long as youre willing to write regularly and ingeniously for them. 7) Fiscal agents. This works especially for nonfiction and sometimes memoir. You find a nonprofit that has a like mission and like mind to what youre writing. Ask them to apply for a grant for you, with them being your fiscal agent. They get administrative money and you get grant money. This is a good light-weight article about it https://www.womenarts.org/skills/fiscal_sponsors/ 8) Writing contests. Not steady, but you are furthering your career. 9) Grants. Start with your state or countrys arts council. 10) Speaking. Yes, there is money to be made in speaking, and tons of connections to be made that will indeed open doors. You just have to decide what you are an expert about and be willing to pitch yourself to events. 11) Self-publish ebooks or courses online. You build a platform this way, too. Sorry, but theres no easy way to ask for and be granted funds to write.  You are going to have to think entrepreneurial to achieve funding for your bookunless you are willing to foot the bill yourself and hope that the book sells without that extra oomph of financial support. But trust me, if you make any of the above work well for you, youll be a big step ahead of the game. And youll also show that you know how to manage that entrepreneurial side of yourself.

Negotiation styles Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Negotiation styles - Essay Example Inter-net has acted wonders. The ever rising impacts of the globalisations have changed the terms of trade from that of the traditional ways of doing business. The same has been experienced by the â€Å"Yabbies R Us†. The organisation set up by the Adams family to supply the processed yabbies to a Perth based restaurant, is now exporting the same to certain foreign customers of Singapore. The organisation claims that it can export to any part of the world with in thirty-six hours. To set up deals with more foreign parties, the importance of negotiating skill is immense. The Adams group has to ensure best deal for them as they try to become a global player. Adams group plans to enter the western market (particularly that of Canada) with their product of processed yabbies. The group should know the various negotiation strategies prevailing in the country in order to be successful in their venture. The negotiation strategies generally commences with informal meets among the concerned parties in Canada. The authorities of ‘Yabbies R Us’ can invite some of the Canada based potential customers of the processed fish in an informal meet. The potential customers of yabbies would generally be hotels and restaurants. So, there are possibilities that the first meet takes place at the prospective customer’s place. But to have more negotiating power, the ‘Yabbies R Us’ authorities should try and select a different venue from that of the client’s place. The visiting party should not wait for the right moment to pitch their product. In most cases, it is the Canadian party that talks about the business purpose f irst. 1 In this initial step, the ‘Yabbies R us’ management should present their product in an informal way and should narrate their prospective counterpart, the long term business plans and the expected share of profit from the business. Once the negotiation starts with on an informal note, the

Interview and Team Analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Interview and Team Analysis - Essay Example I once worked as part of a team in a school project. It was a group project and the teacher had formed the teams herself. There were four members in our team and I was the leader. Adopting a team approach helps develop a diversity of knowledge (Levi, 2014, p. 10). Therefore, one criterion that the teacher had kept in mind while forming these teams was that each member of a team should have expertise in a unique area of knowledge. In my team, I was expert in software, one of the team members was expert in presentation, another had a detailed knowledge of the subject, and the fourth member had access to all the external and internal sources of information and resources that we would need to develop the project. Together, we nailed it! We distributed our roles considering each other’s skills and were able to develop and present our project within the assigned time and with quality. As a team, since we had to achieve our goal in a very limited span of time, we would resort to virtual interaction to carry on the work even after school hours. â€Å"A virtual team is any team whose member interactions are mediated by time, distance, and technology† (Levi, 2014, p. 283). We used Skype and video conferencing to keep in contact with each other to develop the project. Levi (2014) calls virtuality a matter of degree, which implies that virtual teamwork does not necessarily completely eradicate face-to-face interactions. So when we were at school, we would interact with each other face-to-face, whereas at other times, we used to interact virtually. We learned a lot about virtual teamwork on this project and it was a wonderful experience. The interviewee was a 40-years old manager working at a local restaurant. When asked the definition of success in team management, the interviewee replied that success means attainment of all individualistic and collective goals and feeling good about it. This definition is very much in line with how Levi (2014) defines

Language Death Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Language Death - Essay Example The endangered languages badly need to be protected from being eroded and should be treated as a living heritage. In the globalized world of today, the endangerment of languages has presented them as anthropomorphic organisms, with lives independent of their speakers. Throughout the world; the emergence of regional and international economic networks have, blurred the national boundaries. The highly industrialized countries have exercised their economic monopoly and have thus, led certain world languages to compete as imperial or hegemonic while jeopardizing many others. Languages are capable of negotiating their coexistence on their own terms and it seems quite surprising at times that languages; which are reliably passed down through generations; still become extinct. Languages are parasitic species whose vitality depends on the communicative behaviors of their speakers, who in turn respond adaptively to changes in their socio-economic ecologies (Mufwene, 2002). These adaptations have resulted in language shifts, endangerment and destruction and it's not at all surprising when we come across or read about killer languages. The death of a language occurs when it's speakers decrease in number and gradually diminish, an is taken over by a killer or a leading language. A language killer is a dominant language which is learned at the cost of the mother tongue rather than in addition to it. Though the essential characteristic of a killer language in not to eradicate a language, but most major languages can be identified as killers and this process is sometimes called linguistic cannibalism, glottophagy or language cannibalism (Tove, 2000). English today is considered to be the primary killer language of the world as compared to other popular languages like Chinese, Russian and French, etc. and sign; or other less powerful smaller cultural languages. When the speakers of a language shift to another language, their native language is neglected and the new language takes over. When a language dies, it does not just disappear naturally, but the speakers leave them voluntarily either for their own good reasons o r for instrumental purposes. Globalization and Language Extinction The death of languages has usually been summoned by power as an important factor, which favored the language of the powerful over the less powerful nations and populations. During the past four centuries, this has been made more obvious by the European Colonization of the world, at least until the independence of the Asian countries and Africa, in the mid twentieth century. The economic relations of countries less industrialized, with their former colonial rulers, have been subject to the terms and language of their former rulers for economic exchange. The European languages have not only endangered the other languages but have been depicted as killer languages, about to replace all other languages (Crystal, 2000). In addition to this, a language is also endangered because it plays a vital role in the cost and benefit consideration; where the speakers need a particular language for socio-economic ecology. The survival of a language in the globalized economy can result in the giving up of a language for survival. A language can thus be doomed and eventually become extinct for the socio-economic benefits. For example, many African languages have recently lost not to political

Fault Diagnosis And Troubleshooting Information Technology Essay

Fault Diagnosis And Troubleshooting Information Technology Essay Network management is nothing but the activity which is associated with the network, which is implemented along with the technology to support the activities. Different types of merged communications and the videos are handled by network. A network is an interlinking structure which requires very much attention. It should be planned cautiously. The network devices must be configured without affecting the remaining part of the network. There may be the failures in the network, so they need to be detected and repaired. Reliability and availability are linked with the network. The role of the network manager not only observes the performance and the security of the network, they also predict the problems in the network and exceed the technologies to make that everything will work well. There exist two frameworks i.e. FCAPS and ITIL that can be useful for interpret and demonstrating the network management. In this paper we can see that how they are helpful to think about the management t ools. Now a days many of the UK public sector organizations are using ITIL. Some companies use FCAPS which is layered with TMN, but ITIL is more beneficiary when compared to FCAPS. The main objective of this paper is to provide detailed information about FCAPS and ITIL and to provide their advantages. They are helpful in managing the networks of medium and large organizations. And also compare FCAPS and ITIL, which would be helpful for NMRU for migrating to ITIL. INTRODUCTION: 1 FCAPS International telecommunications union has developed the Fcaps. They have stated it as a model and not as a product. Along with the TMN layering, ITU-T divided the functionalities provided by the management into five areas. The functionality of the FCAPS is performed at various levels of TMN. 1.1 Fault management Fault management is group of operations that performs finding the errors and correcting the defecting the errors. To be a good fault management it needs to acquire the problem, leave the information to the concerned person and observe the problems through trouble ticketing. The aim of this is to find the errors and indicate the errors that have come in the various places of network. In the short latent time the errors must be identified and rectified. It contains the functions given below, Network monitoring The main function of network monitoring is that to check whether the performance of the network is good, to have a look on the actual state of the network and also to modify the state. The fundamental step of this is to know the errors in the network and respond accordingly which occur in the network. The main aim of network monitoring is to refer the functionality of the alarms. Alarms are nothing but the messages which are sent from the network that something has occurred unexpectedly. The unexpected things can be of any kind i.e. it can be from a router that the line card is not working, a sudden change in the quality of the signal in a wireless network and some unauthorized user have entered into the network. An alarm for network is nothing but a fire alarm which occurs unexpectedly. Sometimes the alarm management synonymously acts with the fault management. Alarm management has classified into two different functions. The basic function of the alarm management is that collecting the alarms, maintaining the exact and ongoing list of the alarms and modifies the alarms. The main task is to collect the alarms from network and also create in such a way that nothing is missing which is important. This considers the alarms that are received and store it to the memory so that a human or an applicant can process it further. It also includes the persisting of the alarms, written to a disk or store in a database so that the alarms which have occurred can be built as a record. In most cases, collection of alarms includes addition of alarms, the mechanisms to check that the zero alarms have lost and we can also request for the replay of alarms. In general we will lose the alarms in different ways. For example, the transportation which is from the underground may not be tested so we may lose the information of the alarms when it is going to the application of the management. There may be the other reason for the information to be lost i.e. the network is blocked so that alarms may fail to reach the destination. In the third case, it will reach the destination but it was not collected in order because the functioning of the application or the database was not in the right way. After the collection of the alarms, it is needed to maintain the list of the alarms. The list also communicates with the operator about the current state of the entities and for instance any device is having any problems. It is essential to realise the way the alarms are being submitted to the users. The result of each alarm is entered into the list that contains the information of the alarm. The list can be examined, classified and it can be separated accordingly, such as the alarm type, the type of the network element modified, the time of the occurrence of the alarm etc. The information of the alarms can be visualized in different ways, but the topology maps are the most popular one. In the advanced alarm management, the additional functions are required to manage the alarms. For processing of the alarms the network managers are provided with the great flexibility. For example, with the functioning of the alarm-forwarding the alarms might be sent to the operator to permit for the dispatch, such as the local police will be called automatically for the home intrusion detection. Another function is that the acknowledgment of the alarm can be done by the network operator; it means they confirm that the alarm has occurred and they are under processing. And the third is clearing the alarms; to describe the condition of the alarm an alarm message has been sent. And after some time the second message is sent indicating that the condition of the alarm doesnt exist for the longer period. Two techniques are dealt with the overloading of the information. One is filtering, is it used to remove the information of the event that is unimportant, the receiver will be allowed to concentrate on the applicable event information. The other one is the correlation, it is used to pre-process and collect the data from the events and the alarms. We will discuss about these two techniques in detail. In general filtering is done not only on alarms but also on events. It is essential to hide as many as events that are not important. Filtering can be enabled in two ways; one is allowing the operators to subscribe only the limited events and also the alarms that are applicable to them, as chosen according to the criteria. By doing this the operators will receive the events that matches there criteria. And the other one which is used to filter the alarms is deduplication of alarms. The condition of the alarm might cause in such a way that it may send the same alarm repeatedly. Because the alarm which comes repeatedly doesnt contain any new information so the new instance of the alarm which is received might be removed. The process of removing the extra alarms is named as deduplication. Alarm correlation refers to alarms that must be filtered and the functions that must be pre-processed. All the received alarm messages are stopped, studied and compared with all the alarms which are probably related with each other. For example, the alarm messages might be linked up because they may have the similar problem. The general idea behind the event and alarm correlation is that rather than forwarding and reporting different messages, it is better to send a few that combine and resume the same information from different raw events. By doing in this way, the alarm messages that are reported can be automatically decreased. Fault Diagnosis and troubleshooting Network diagnosis doesnt variant a lot from medical diagnosis. The variation is nothing but the patient. When the network contains a fault then the ability to solve the problem is, immediately finding out the reason for the problem. The process of solving the problem is meant as root cause analysis. Alarm will only alert us about the symptom but not the reason for that problem. Troubleshooting will support diagnosis. Troubleshooting can simply retrieve the data about the device. Essential support is provided for diagnosis for testing a device or a network. Test can be used not only after occurring a problem but it can be used proactively i.e. we can know the problem in before it knows to the user. Avoiding the faults altogether is best for fault management. Proactive Fault Management In fault management most of the functionalities work in such way that they become active after occurring the errors. It is nothing but taking precautions in the network so that any failures cannot occur. It also includes the analysis of the alarms that recognizes the alarms that have caused due to the minor error. Trouble Ticketing There might be ten thousand users who are using a very large network. In this case, there is chance to occur hundreds of problems in one day. In those only few or none of the problem can be solved. There might be many individual users who are experiencing problems which might be serious to them. Trouble ticket doesnt result for every alarm, issuing that many is not possible. 1.2 Configuration Management In this the first step is to configure the network. In this the hardware and also the programming changes, considering the new programs and the equipments and adding them to the previous one, existing systems should be modified and removal of the unused systems and the programs. A list should be kept so that the equipment and the programs are kept and they are regularly updated. Configuring Managed Resources In the beginning of the configuration management, the activities and the operations which are being managed are configured first. It means that it is involved in sending the commands to the network equipment for changing the settings of the configuration. Sometimes it involves in isolating only a single device, such as only one interface of the port will be configured. Synchronization It can be viewed in two ways one is considering the network as the master and the other one is considering the management system as the master. In reconciliation the network is considered to be the master, the information which is in the management system will reflect in the network. Synchronization of the information is performed from network to the management system. In reprovisioning the Management system is considered to be the master of the management information. It flows from management system to the network, resulting the changes in the configuration of the network. Until the management system will receive a report from the network device that the changes has been made it will maintain a flag indicating that it is out of synchronization. In discrepancy reporting the user is being detected and flagged by the discrepancies. It doesnt maintain the direction of the synchronization which is to be taken place. This is to be performed by the user on case by case basis. If he decides that the information should be reflected by the management system it will ask the reconciliation. Backup and Restore The virus can destroy the data that is present in the hard disk. If we have a backup of data then in such cases we can recover the data. In the same it also applies for the network i.e. the backup and restores functionalities. The data of our users will not be in word or excel sheet but it will be the configuration of the network. The data is very important and it needs to be protected, just as we protect the database in a company. If unfortunately the configurations in the network are wiped off then many people will be affected. Then we dont have time to reconfigure the network. The easiest way to bring the things backup is restoring the network till the end of the configurations. Image Management Many network vendors issue the new versions of the software. In such cases you must be able to upgrade the network. The problem is that we are dealing with thousands of pcs which are connected across the same network. We must be have an idea of which devices are being installed with the different softwares, so that we can send the images which are to be updated and installed without disturbing the services of the network. This is nothing but the image management. 1.3 Accounting Management It is nothing but the functions that will provide the organizations to acquire the revenue and for getting the credit for the services they have provided. It needs to be extremely strong, large availability and the reliable standards are applied. 1.4 Performance Management The performance metrics Throughput, the number of communication units performed per unit time. The communication units depend on the type of the layer, network and the services which are provided to the network. Examples, In the network layer, the total number of packets that are sent per second. In the application layer the voice calls or calls which are attempted per hour. Delay, it is measured per unit time. Different kinds of delays can be measured depending on the layer or the network services. In the network layer, the time taken for an ip packet to reach its destination. In the application layer, the time taken to receive a dial tone after we lift the receiver. Quality, it can be measured in different ways depending on the services of the network. In the network layer, the percentage of the number of packets lost. In the application layer, the percentage of the number of calls terminated or the calls that were dropped. 1.5 Security Management The security aspects that are linked with securing the network from the treats, hackers attack, worms and viruses and the intrusion of the malicious attempts. It is distinguished in two ways. Security of Management means that the management is secure. The management applications must be accessed securely. It is generally authorized based on the application management but not on the user basics. Without securing the management application there is no use of securing the interfaces and the network of the management. Management of security means that the network is secured. It involves only in managing network security. Now days we can come across many online treats. The security treats doesnt target on the network it will just target on the devices which are connected to the network i.e. end users. The use of FCAPS in managing the network: It will manage all the kinds of networks i.e. private, public, mobile, narrow and broadband and including all area networks (WAN, MAN, LAN). Cost of implementation is reduced. Transmitting the digital and analog systems. Signalling the systems and the terminals including the transfer points of the signals. Performance problems are located easily. User is made satisfied. Schedules are implemented shortly. The feedback on the design is very effective. Simplified procedure of network operation center. Telecommunication services are provided with the software. 2 ITIL Now days many organizations are more depending on IT because of that ITIL has been developed by the CCTA in UK. It has provided the same framework for different kind of activities which are performed by the IT department. ITIL is managed in different sets, they are defined as the related functions service support, service delivery, and the other operational guidance are managerial, software support, computer operations, security management and environmental. ITIL has been designed to supply a good framework to present a high quality. Actually it is owned by CCTA, but it is observed and evolved by the Office of Government Commerce. 2.1 Service Support The service support focuses on the users. The customers and the users are the starting point to the model. They are involved in Asking for the changes For communication and also the updates Having any difficulties and queries The delivery of the process In most of the organizations it a Network Operations Center (NOC). It is mainly focused on one discipline i.e. whether the users are able to access to the applications what they are required. It focuses on finding the troubles, helping the users and giving the new applications which are completed on the internet. It includes the following Incident Management The main aim of this is to restore the service operation as early as possible, minimizes the effects on the business operations, and verifying that all the levels of quality of the service and the availability are maintained. It can be defined as an event which is not the part of the service operation which may or may not reduce the quality of the service. The reality of this is the normal operations must be restored as soon as possible without effect on the business or on the end user. Configuration Management It helps in representing the logical and the physical functioning of the ICT services which are provided or delivered to the end user. It is nothing but the asset register, because it contains the information about the maintenance and problems which occur during the configuration of the items. Problem management The main aim of this is find out the reasons for the cause of the incidents and to minimise the cause for the incidents and the problems which are caused because of the errors. A problem is nothing but the unknown cause for one or more incidents and the known error is nothing but the problem which is diagnosed successfully. The problem and known errors are defined by the CCTA as given below, Problem is a condition which is often determined as the come out of the multiple incidents that contains the general symptoms. It can also be determined from an individual incident that indicates the single error, the reason is unknown. Known error is an improvement which is identified by the self made diagnosis of the main cause of the problem and the work which is developed around. Change Management The aim of this is to check the way the changes are handled using with the help of methods and procedures. Change is an event that the status of one or more configuring items which are approved by the management. The aim of this includes: Back- out activities are reduced. Change in the utilization of resources. Disruption of the services. The terminology for the change management: Change: the addition, alteration or deletion of CLs. Change Request: the form which is used to store the details which are to be changed and it is sent into the Change Management by using Change Requestor. Forward Schedule of Changes (FSC): it contains a list of all the changes which are going to come. Service Desk The main aim of this includes initiating the incidents and the request, and an interface is initiated for the ITSM processes. Features include: Individual point of contact. Individual point of entry. Individual point of exit. Data integrity. The Service Desk functions include: Incident Control: service request for the life cycle management. Communication: the progress and the advising of the workarounds must be keep on informing to the customers. The Service Desk contains different names: Call Center: it involves managaging of huge amount of telephone based transactions. Help Desk: at primary support level it will conclude the incidents as soon as possible. Service Desk: it not only helps in handling the incidents and solving the problems but also it will provide an interface for various activities such as changing the requests, maintaining the contracts etc. It contains three different types of structures: Central Service Desk: it will handle the organizations which contains in multiple locations. Local Service Desk: it will meet the local business needs. Virtual Service Desk: it will handle the organizations which contains the locations in multiple countries. Release management The software migration team uses it for the purpose of platform-independent and the distribution of the software and hardware. The availability of the licence and the certified version of the software and the hardware ensure the proper control of the software and the hardware. The responsibility of this is to control the quality of the hardware and software during the implementation and development. The goals of this include: Planning the role of the software. Creation and implementation of the process for distributing and to install the changes that occur in the IT. The expectations of the customers are effectively communicated and managed during the planning of the new versions. The changes in the IT systems must be controlled while the distribution and the installation take place. It focus on the protection of the existing environment. It consists of the recent or modified software or the hardware which is required to use the authorized changes. It includes: Leading software which are released and the leading hardware which are updated, this contains the large amount of recent functionalities. Limited software which are released and the limited hardware which are updated, which contains the lesser enhancements and fixes, in which some of them have already issued as the emergency fixes. Emergency software and hardware fixes, which contains the corrections of some known problems. Based on the released unit it is separated into: Delta Release: the changes which have occurred in the software are only released. Full Release: the complete software program is distributed. Packaged Release: it releases the combination of various changes. 2.2 Service Delivery It mainly concentrates on the services which the ICT must be delivered to supply the sufficient support to the business users. It consists of the following processes. Service Level Management It provides for supervising, identification and examining the stages of IT services which are specified in the Service Level Agreements. It involves in assessing the change of the quality of services. To control the activities of the service level management it will join with the operational processes. It is the direct interface to the customer. It is responsible for the following: It will check whether the It services are delivered are not. It will maintain and produce the Service Catalog. It will check that the IT Service Continuity plans subsist to support the business and its requirements. Capacity Management It supports the best and actual cost supply of IT services by providing the organizations match with their business demands. It includes: Size of the application. Workload Management. Demand Management. Modeling. Planning the Capacity. Resource Management. Performance Management. IT Service Continuity Management It Processes succeed an organisations capability to supply the essential aim of service followed by an interruption of service. It is not only reactive measures but also proactive measures. It involves the following steps: By conducting the Business Impact Analysis the activities can be prioritised. The options are evaluated for the purpose of recovery. Contingency plan has been produced. The plan has been tested, reviewed and revised on regular basis. Availability Management The ICT infrastructure capabilities and services are optimized, service outages are minimized by having a support and give continued level of services to business requirements. The ability of IT component has been addressed to perform at a level all over the time. Reliability: the performance of the IT component at a concerned level at an identified condition. Maintainability: the IT component has an ability to remain or regenerate to a functional state. Serviceability: the external supplier has an ability to conserve the availability of the function below the third party. Resilience: the freedom has been measured from the operational failure and the way the services are kept reliable. Redundancy is one of the popular methods for resilience. Security: a service may contain a related data. Security is nothing but the availability of the data. Financial Management It is the process to deal the cost linked to provide the organisation with the services or resources to see the business requirements. It may refer to Managerial Finance: The financial technique has been concerned itself with managerial significance within the branch finance. Corporate Finance: the financial decisions are dealt with the area of the finance. 2.3 Security Management Since several years it has become a prevalent network management. The external treats are justified with the firewalls and the access prevention. The rights and permissions of the configuration management have been included in the security management, so that the end users are not granted with the unauthorized access. 2.4 Infrastructure Management In large organizations, the systems have been designed and the troubleshoot by the teams are different from the team that installs the equipment. Because of this Configuration management is necessary for the success of IT organizations. For installing and configuring of network devices in an organization the infrastructure management is responsible. 2.5 Application Management It is designed to ensure that an application has the correct configuration design to implement in the environment. This can cover different aspects of network management. It is designed to ensure that it is completely enabled to supply the service and delivery to end users. 2.6 Software Asset Management It is considered for managing an organization. The software products and licenses are very expensive. It is designed similar to the configuration management, because it provides the information on each device about the software installation. In large organizations maintaining the software and accounting for the licence is the complex task. Uses of ITIL in an organization The utilization of the resources is improved. Rework is reduced. The submission of project to the client and the time management is improved. The cost of the quality of the service is justified. The central process is integrated. Excess work is decreased. The services are provided in such a way that they meet the customers demand. Know more from the earlier experience. Be more aggressive. Comparision of ITIL and FCAPS: FCAPS mainly focus on the technology management. ITIL focus on the way to run an IT organization efficiently, i.e. on the process and the workflow. One of the limitation of FCAPS, it cannot target operational process which is required to operate a Service Desk. In ITIL framework we have the service desk in service support which provides the operational services to customers or end users. FCAPS on informs about the problem but doesnt gives us the solution to the problem. But ITIL standards provides services to resolve the problem using service delivery and service management. The main task of the FCAPS is that it will help out in managing the objectives of the network. The ITIL is planned to supply the improved framework. The difference between FCAPS and ITIL is that, FCAPS contains only five layers but ITIL contains eleven layers. The incident management and the availability management in the ITIL are similar to the fault management in the FCAPS. The purpose of fault management in FCAPS is finding out the faults in the network and correcting them, but in ITIL if any problem occurs in the management there is no need to rework entire process. The purpose of the incident management is restoring the normal operations and the availability management is associated with the availability of the service to the business at an executable cost. CONCLUSION: Finally the above discussion concludes the use of FCAPS and ITIL in network management. The organizations which implements ITIL will get the good results in the name of the way the services are designed and delivered. The use of any technology is not specified by ITIL, but the implementation on the use of the tools is effective. Main focus of FCAPS begins with technological view. FCAPS has been proved as low risk and logical. For any organization to enhance its performance or to get proper outcome both FCAPS and ITIL has to be associated together.

Free Narrative Essays - Speeding Is A Dead End :: Example Personal Narratives

Speeding Is A Dead End Part of being a human being is learning from our mistakes. It is a natural process that we all experience at various periods of our lives. For instance, throughout the process of learning how to solve mathematics problems, the only method is to practice solving the problems. During this process of solving the problems, it is only natural to make mistakes. By comparison, in life in general, the only way to learn to become a better person is by correcting the mistakes that were previously experienced. During the past eighteen years, I have learned many lessons as a result of primarily making mistakes. My mother always told me to obey the speed limit because one day I will unexpectedly have to pay the price. Not only could I kill myself by speeding, I could kill other innocent people that could have been involved. Moreover, not only did I not comply with the speed limit, I did not obey my mother. Unfortunately, I learned my lesson one gloomy day when I got caught for speeding on a city street by a police officer. It was the typical setting to be accused for a driving offense. The clouds were gray, the roads were slick due to a recent rainfall and there was not many cars on the road encouraging me to drive faster. I had just gone through a yellow light at a major intersection and when I looked straight ahead, there was not a car in sight. Due to the fact that the road was "all mine", I was encouraged to travel twenty-five kilometers over the speed limit. Admittedly, I almost heard my mother telling me to slow down. After my increase in velocity, I noticed I was approaching a downhill. Since I was driving downhill, I was forced to pick up speed and I reached approximately 100 km/h. When I reached the level road again, I was able to see the road ahead. To my surprise, I noticed an old, rotten car parked on the shoulder of the road and a person wearing a hat getting out of it. As I drew nearer, I noticed that it was a police officer directing me to stop the car and park on the shoulder of the

Electric Bike

Our Electric Bicycle Project I have added an electric power assist onto a GT mountain bike. With a 3 HP peak motor, it is much more powerful than typical electric bicycles. The basic motivation to build an electric bike was to have a fun and efficient and environmentally friendly way to stay out my car for short trips around town, and also as a silent trail bike for exploring the hills. I wanted to get some exercise – this bike  can still be pedaled. When I first put this together it was even more of a blast to ride than I had envisioned.I have seen 70 year old people get on this bike and laugh like little kids – it's like a magic hand is silently boosting you along. This website will describe the background of this little electric vehicle, offer some reflections on the electric and hybrid vehicle scene, and detail  most of the design and motor and batteries should you be interested in making one yourself. Though it's a bit of a project, a number of people have actu ally made very similar bikes based on my basic design. The Beauty of the Electric BikeNo noise – no vibration – no smog – no smog checks – no registration – no insurance – no driver's license No gasoline – no oil – no tune-ups – no parking hassles – no car payments – no more exercise (use the pedals)  Ã¢â‚¬â€œÃ‚  no brainer Background: Why build an electric bike? Why use such a big motor? I love the idea of electric vehicles in general and would love to have a pure electric car. I have a Prius, currently just about the closest thing available. However, battery technology hasn't advanced enough to make a pure electric car affordable yet.I do think, however, that light-weight, low-speed, short-range vehicles are wellt within the limits of current battery-electric technology, so I set out to see what could be done to make a more powerful and longer-range motorized bike. Since I live about 3 miles from my fav ourite grocery store and my house is at the top of a fairly long and steep hill, biking and walking is just strenuous enough to be discouraging to me on a spur-of-the-moment basis. However I love biking. I have mountain bikes and folding bikes.In looking for a motor to add to one of my bikes, I rode some ready-made bikes and noticed that they are really fun to ride. The silence and effortless cruising along is just  magical. But the electric bikes and motor kits for sale at the time, such as the Curry USProDrive, the eBike, etc. were fairly low power and really aren't that much faster up a steep hill than an unassisted bicycle. The Wave crest was the first decently powerful ready-made bike, though the company didn't last long. (Electric vehicle companies seem to have a curious habit of making a big splash – and then vanishing beneath the waves.   Now you can buy decent electric motor kits from Wilderness Energy and Crystallite, among others, but I was curious about the nu ts and bolts of things, and wanted to learn more about exactly what it takes to drive a vehicle with pure electric power. I am a great fan of all electric vehicles and watch the new technologies closely. Hybrid cars are a tremendous technology that in my opinion is the first step on the road to all-electric vehicles. Hybrids will necessarily drive the development of better and cheaper batteries, which is the only missing link to the puzzle.Hybrids of today that are only charged by their gasoline engines will lead to ‘plug-in' hybrids that can be partially recharged at home or at charging stations. This will lead to astonishingly frugal use of fuel, but these cars will need much  larger battery packs, which means  better and cheaper batteries will have to be produced. This  will  happen and is probably happening right now. Eventually batteries will become so much better that the auto companies will start to produce cars that simply leave out the combustion engine altoge ther – the pure battery electric vehicle.Don't get me started on fuel cells and the much hyped future ‘hydrogen economy. ‘ This is interesting technology, but suffice it to say that there are so many technical breakthroughs and logistic problems yet to be solved, that I simply don't see it happening within the next ten or fifteen years. In other parts of this website and in the Electric Bicycle FAQ, I elaborate a little more on the near and far term technology, where I see it going, and what the most promising developments are. This is not really a build manual, however. . Experienced tinkerers may glean a lot of ideas and solutions from my pages if they want to use them and adapt them. There are parts lists and plenty of photos. This driveline is now extremely robust and probably suitable for larger electric vehicles, not just bikes, up to three to five horsepower. Over the course of this project I've made many interesting discoveries, encountered issues and prob lems which all electric vehicle builders must face, and finally figured out some fairly simple solutions.I've fitted a number of different driveline systems which range from simple single vee-belts to the present double reduction using a  heavy-duty  toothed belt and chain. Earlier versions are shown on following pages. This bike performs well, is stone-reliable and nearly silent, and all the major components are available online or at power transmission supply houses. Note that I had to weld and machine key components like the jackshaft mount using ball bearings, and the chain sprocket that clamps on to the spokes at the wheel hub.The right components and design solutions to this project were hard to come by, and I just want to share what I've learned to promote what I consider a pretty amazing form of transportation. V1. 5 – Dual Reduction Belt/Chain Drive The current  version is what I am calling v1. 5, which is the same bike as v1. 4 but with some basic changes: a n ew timing belt drive system with a chain final drive. Basically, the motor drives a belt that spins an intermediate shaft or ‘jackshaft' mounted next to the motor and spinning on ball bearings. This shaft then drives a chain going down to the rear bike wheel. Same motor and all other components. Earlier versions are documented on following pages. ) BASIC SPECS OF V1. 5Scott 24 V DC, 1 hp motor (3 hp max) – still available from cloudelectric. com   * Gates Power Grip GT2 belt primary drive * 1/2†³ steel jackshaft on custom shaft ball bearing mount – 3:1 reduction * #35 chain final drive to rear wheel – 2. 77:1 reduction * 8. 44:1 overall gearing gives top speed of about 27 mph * 2 x 12V Hawker AGM-type lead acid batteries, 13 Ah each; later replaced by B&B 12v 16Ah batteries (also AGM) * 4QD â€Å"Scooter 180† speed controller – 180 amp with optional regenerative braking * 24 V charger charges in 2-5 hours typically pedal in all 18 spee ds * batteries and motor removable in 10 minutes * range 15 miles on the flat depending on pedal assist * weight 85 lbs. Motor The Scott motor is 24 V DC, brushed, and is rated at 1 hp (746 watts) continuous power and draws 41 amps. It cost about $250, however in 2008 I see the price is closer to $350. This model no. 4BB-02488. This motor is available still from cloudelectric. com. Don't let the rating fool you, this motor will put out 2. 5HP peak and can even be over-volted (judiciously) to 36V where it will put out 1. 5 HP continuous and around 4HP peak.If you're crazy enough to gear it up, it would propel a bike to around 50mph (please don't do this. ) So the Scott is pretty heavy and suitable for slightly larger vehicles; for a bicycle, a better alternative might be one of the motors at evdeals. com such as the 500 watt 36V motor for only $60. Cloud electric also has a selection of motors from $80 to $170 that would be very suitable according to your budget and power desired. A very interesting choice is their ‘Motor 36 Volt 1000 Watt' model that has an integral freewheeling clutch. This can also be run at 24V to get 535 watts of power. I may have to switch over, these sounds like an ideal motor for a project like this. )   You cannot just use any old motor to drive a bike. People often ask me, can I use a motor from an electric drill, or a starter motor from a motorcycle or a car. The short answer is no, these motors are generally not suitable at all. The efficiency is poor, they will overheat, they are not powerful enough, the speed is too high, they're too noisy, or any number of other reasons. The Scott is a very high quality motor with high efficiency, good cooling, and ball bearings.At 16 pounds it is pretty heavy but motors in this power range were hard to find five years ago. If I were doing this today I would undoubtedly use a lighter motor of the type that has subsequently become available. There has been a tremendous influx of scooters a nd smaller electric vehicles, and many of the motors on these vehicles would be suitable for a bike. There are also a number of motors used by people making combat robots or battelbots. These are generally high power and  quite tough. However battlebots don't really need efficiency so this is something to look out for.Efficiency of greater that 80% should be looked for at a wide range of speeds and currents. In my opinion, a bike needs a motor of at least 400 watts and probably not more than 1000 watts. Any less and you might as well not bother, and any more and the motor will probably be large, heavy, expensive, deplete your batteries in a flash, or all of the above. The reason for a motor this powerful is simple: hills. I live on a steep hill. While a Zap or a US ProDrive bike rated at 400 watts goes a decent 17 mph on flat land, they slow to 3 to 5 mph on a decent hill. I can pedal that fast.I have ridden a Schwinn with the Currie US Pro drive. It was actually great, I would re commend it to anyone as a very good turn-key kit solution. However I wanted to go faster and be able to get up a hill. The simple fact is that you need from 5   to 10 times as much power to go a given speed on a decent grade. This is why a car that only needs 12 hp to go 60 mph on flat roads has an engine that can put out 100 to 200 hp. The Scott motor was used in many go-carts and Electrathon vehicles. (Electrathons are efficiency competitions using ultralight closed-course battery electric vehicles carrying one person.The point is to go the farthest distance in a given amount of time. ) So the efficiency is obviously pretty good. The motor cost $269 total shipped, and weighs about 16 pounds. It has ball bearings and massive cooling fins and is built to last. Brushes do not wear out very fast at all, this is not really a concern. It draws around 41 amps while producing a continuous 1 hp. Put a greater load on it and will draw well over 100 amps and produce up to 3 hp. This is why it needs a 180 amp controller. More about controllers later. Speed Reduction and Gearing: a big issueI will spend quite a bit of time here describing the speed reduction scheme, as this is the most difficult problem to solve in fitting a motor to a bike or other small EV. The big issue with all motorization schemes on bikes is this: how to reduce the speed of a typical motor, which may turn at upwards of 3000 rpm, to the necessary speed of a bicycle rear wheel. A 26†³ mountain bike wheel at 20 mph is turning only about 265 rpm. The overall reduction required is therefore between roughly 8:1 and 11:1 depending on what top speed you wish to achieve.Now it is certainly possible to simply bolt, say, a 130-tooth chain sprocket to the rear wheel and drive it with a 13-tooth drive sprocket off the motor. But this is a very large wheel sprocket (about 15†³ in diameter) and, critically, the chain would be unbearably noisy. My basic observation about chain drive is that if any chai n sprocket turns faster than about 750 rpm, it will start to make a racket. If only there were a good quiet 3:1 gearbox you could bolt on to the Scott, the final 3:1 or 4:1 ratio could be easily achieved with a chain and sprockets to the rear wheel.However I don't know of such a gearbox ready made, and a gear box is very difficult to machine from scratch. Straight cut gears also tend to make a whining noise. This big problem of gearing down the motor has lead to the development of the hub motor. This is simply a bicycle wheel hub with a motor built in, which can then be spoked to a rim. Such hub motors either have gears built in, or they are very particularly designed to just turn at a very low speed while still having good power and torque. This is a difficult trick. It's much easier to make a motor that derives its power from spinning at higher rpm.At any rate, at the time I could not find many hub motors, and the few that were available were expensive, made a gear whine, and were underpowered. Also, a hub motor has one set gearing by design, and you can't alter it. I wanted something where I could experiment with different gear ratios, top speeds, and hill climbing ability. I have come up with this belt drive to achieve the primary speed reduction of 3:1. The dual-reduction drive system is much more solid than anything I have tried before. It's a little more complicated but slippage is absolutely eliminated and I feel confident that this system would be able to take even more power.This is important because the Scott motor is often bumped up to 36 volts rather than 24 and I may eventually switch over. Why belt primary drive? Wouldn't two chains be easier? Basically, as I say, belts are much quieter at high RPM. At 3000 rpm a chain would be about as loud as many small gas engines. An electric bike should be whisper quiet, and this belt drive is. Many electric go-carts use a single straight chain drive; however, they go faster while having smaller wheels, so they  need less speed reduction,  and the wind and tire noise and speed tend to mask the racket the chain makes. Plus, carters don't really care much about noise.I used a Gates PowerGrip GT2 belt. This timing belt has rounded teeth so it's quieter than other belts. The teeth are closely spaced for better grip on small sprocket wheels. This is the 5mm pitch type. At 25mm wide, the short belt is much less likely to stretch and is easily tensioned by pivoting the jackshaft mount slightly – three of the mounting holes are slotted, so the mount can pivot around the un-slotted fourth hole. Does this wide belt seem like overkill? The Gates Co. has  very nice simple little engineering software they give away on their website that will tell you what size and type of belt you will need.You plug in the power, gear reduction, speed, and a couple of other things and the program will give you some recommendations. I used the program and this was one of the recommendations and what do you know, it has been great. Has never been adjusted and and has never slipped or worn. The jackshaft itself is a 1/2†³ steel shaft running on two R8 sealed ball bearings. The mounting plate and bearing housing is welded aluminum. Sorry that I don't have a diagram of this but hopefully you get the general layout from the photos. If belts are so great, then why chain final drive?Since the jackshaft is now speed-reduced to 1000 rpm max, running a chain down to the rear wheel now makes sense. There is a reason so many bikes and motorcycles still use steel chain final drive. It makes sense here because the run is longer and the available space narrower, and chain is much stronger and less stretchy than a long narrow belt. At this speed the chain may be slightly audible at top speed, but not noisy, and the wind and tire noise while riding will actually be louder. A chain doesn't need to be tensioned nearly as tightly as a belt.Finally, chains have a master link which makes assembly and removal much easier, like when changing tires and repairing flats. (Belts are endless. ) The #35 chain is a very common American size. It has a shorter pitch than bicycle chain but is much stronger. (Bicycle chain is made flexible to allow for the side to side misalignment resulting from different derailleur gear combinations. ) You will notice the extra bar running in between the chain, from the jackshaft to the axle. This is a reinforcement and has an adjuster nut at the lower end to establish proper chain tension.The bar acts to maintain proper driveline rigidity – the Scott motor can put out a tremendous amount of torque and the motor mount and bicycle frame will twist and compress under heavy power loads without this bar. Actually it attaches to the bike frame near the axle using the stock rack mount on the dropout. The driveline parts are as follows They were ordered from Bearing Belt Chain in Las Vegas at  Ã‚  www. bearing. com. * belt:  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   GATES POW ER GRIP GT2 5MR-400-25  Ã‚   Gates part # 9390-8080  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   $11. 35 * motor sprocket:  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   GATES P21-5MGT-25-MPB  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Gates part # 7709-5021  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   $17. 0 * jackshaft sprocketGATES P64-5MGT-25-1610  Ã‚  Ã‚   Gates part # 7709-2064  Ã‚  Ã‚   $30. 52 * sprocket hub mount   for above:   GATES 1610 1/2†³ TAPER LOCK BUSHING part # 7858-1608 * jackshaft ball bearings:  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   MRC part # R8Z  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   $11. 56 ea. (2) * jackshaft:  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   machined from 1/2†³ stainless steel stock * jackshaft chain sprocket:  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   #35 chain, 13 tooth   MARTIN 35BS13HT 1/2†³ bore  Ã‚  Ã‚   $6. 91 * rear wheel chain sprocket:  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   #35 chain, 36 tooth MARTIN 35B36  Ã‚  Ã‚   $11. 56   (modified on my lathe to fit) * chain:  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   #35 chain that I had lying around – length is 50 links (100 rollers) – 37-1/2†³ longA number of machining, fabrications,  and modification s I had to do myself. The jackshaft mount is the most elaborate part to make and took some time. The jackshaft and motor need to be very rigidly connected and aligned, yet adjustable to set the belt tension. I used a 1/4†³ aluminum plate and welded a 1-1/4†³ alum. tube to this. There are two diagonal braces welded to these – you can only see the upper one in the photos. The braces just clear the motor. Then the tube was bored in the lathe for the two ball bearings. It also has ring grooves for retaining rings to hold the bearing in place.The 1/2†³ shaft is about 5†³ long, also with ring grooves. There are a total of 4 stainless steel 1/4-20 allen bolts holding the whole thing to the face of the Scott motor using the existing tapped holes. As I mentioned, three of the holes in the jackshaft plate are actually curved slots to allow for adjustment to tension the belt, the whole thing pivoting a little around the fourth bolt. The 21-tooth motor sprocket was bo red to 5/8†³ on my lathe. It is fixed to the motor shaft with a 1/8†³ steel split pin or ‘roll pin'. I had to drill a hole for this pin through the sprocket and motor shaft.Roll pins are much stronger than set screws, and they are pressed or driven in, so they don't come loose. They're also easier to machine than Woodruff key-ways. The large 64 tooth belt sprocket arrived in solid steel and was ridiculously heavy. Aluminum was not available. So I drilled it out extensively to lighten it as you can see. The chain sprocket bolts to the hub of the belt sprocket with two 10-32 allen screws, the holes for which I drilled and tapped. The motor is mounted to the bicycle frame on a specially made 1/8†³ thick stainless steel bracket. The whole bracket bolts to tabs welded to the bike frame with three allen bolts.The chain, drive belt and motor can be removed from the bike in about 3 minutes. Finally, I had to attach a sprocket to the rear wheel. I finally decided to just try clamping a sprocket to the spokes. This may seem like a clumsy solution but I have seen it done on a number of other applications. It has been reliable and has not damaged the spokes at all. Sometimes simple and direct wins the day. For those of you familiar with the Currie US ProDrive, a very popular electric drive kit for bikes, this is basically the same way they bolt their motor plate to the bike wheel.Looks somewhat unsophisticated? Fine, but it works, bolts quickly to a completely unmodified bike wheel, and has been  trouble free. I started by boring out a standard type-B 36-tooth sprocket (the kind with an integral offset hub) to where the hole would just fit around the protruding wheel hub. This locates the sprocket nicely on the hub center. Then I basically faced the hub down to nearly nothing on the lathe, just enough to space the sprocket out away from the spokes. Then I drilled 9 holes for 10-32 screws. The screws go through the spaces where the spokes cross.I mad e three curved clamp plates with three holes each for the inside of the wheel. For off-road use I intend to get a different wheel with a knobby tire and a larger sprocket to lower the gearing for better hill climbing. A couple of extra chain links will make it easy to switch out. The net of all this is that finally I have got it really right. I can whack the throttle open and closed at any speed and there will be no belt slippage of any kind. The first thing I did was to go down the street and climb this steep rocky trail that gave the old bike problems. Even with the relatively igh gearing, the new driveline shot me right up the thing. I even popped a little wheelie over the top of it. That sure never happened before. Now I can finally use all of the torque this Scott motor can put out.DESIGN & COMPONENT DETAILS BATTERIESThere is no question that the battery is the single thing,  the one and only, overriding thing, that is holding back the development and mass proliferation of el ectric vehicles. At this point in time most of us are still stuck with using lead acid batteries. I am now using B&B 16 Ah batteries, made in China.Originally I used Hawker Odyssey batteries model PC545, 12 lbs. each, which are basically the same as the Hawker Genesis G13EP. All of the batteries I have used are deep-cycling, AGM (Absorbed Glass Matt) sealed lead acid batteries (SLA) and are about the best quality lead acid battery available. They can be mounted in any position except upside down and they are sealed and maintenance free. They are much like the Optima batteries used in many advanced electric vehicles like the EV-1 and the Sparrow but are available in a wider variety of smaller sizes. I got them at Thunderstruck-EV. com.They now run about $50 each. It is nice that there is some competition now in this type of battery and the prices are coming down by about half from what I paid for my first set. Of course lithium ion batteries of some kind would be the great enabler. L ithium is just now entering the market, they are still quite expensive and something of a question mark. Conventional lithium cells, as used in laptops, have a thermal runaway potential – meaning they tend to catch fire, in some cases like a Roman candle. New materials and chemistries based on lithium are attempting to address the safety problem.I have seen batteries called LiFePo4 – lithium iron phosphate – offered for sale at various websites selling electric bikes and accessories. They are claiming no fire problems, At this point, it looks like a decent battery pack for a bike like this would cost around $1000 or more. That is a lot of money to spend on a battery with a 1-year or 2-year warranty. In my opinion, these batteries need to come down to the sub-$300 range before I would really be interested. A battery is rated in voltage and amp-hours. Voltage times amps times hours equals watt-hours and this is the total energy available from the battery.So my bat tery pack has 2 x 12V x 16Ah = 384 watt hours. In other words it will give 384 watts for an hour. But actually, it won't. The â€Å"16 Ah† is a rating to be taken with a very large grain of salt. An essential thing to know about batteries is that  they give a lesser amount of total energy when discharged at a high rate. Read that last sentence again and absorb it, it's important. A battery's electrical power is not like a glass of water. If you drain that glass quickly or slowly, it contains the same amount of water. Batteries, not so. Draw high amperage, and your total amount of energy is less!Because of this, batteries are often rated nominally at a slow 10-hour discharge rate, in which case they will give more total energy and thus seem like a better battery. Bikes and all electric vehicles use energy at a very high rate. A bike can easily draw enough current to discharge a battery pack fully in under half an hour, so batteries will not give their rated output under thes e conditions. Another tempting choice for cheap batteries might be Panasonic or Powersonic or Sonnenschein gel-cell /lead acid batteries. Gel cells are the typical batteries that come with most stock electric bicycles and kits.They are not AGM. Longevity is not as good, though the stated juice per weight ratio seems better, and they are available in a variety of smaller sizes if weight were more of an issue than range. Hawker makes slightly larger AGM batteries such as the G16EP like my B&B which have a little more juice but are also heavier. The Hawkers are very well made. Another great thing about AGM type batteries is that they can be charged quickly at much higher amps than other kinds of lead acid batteries. Likewise they have the ability to give high current with no problems.AGM batteries are also unique among almost all battery types in that they retain a full charge for months with no ‘charge leakage. ‘ One of the big drawbacks of of NiMH batteries is that they d ischarge about 1% to 2% per day. Regular lead acid batteries will just go dead in a few months as well. Because of this, AGM batteries are also marketed to people with antique cars and snow plows – vehicles that aren't used very often and are likely to have a dead battery when you finally want to start it up. All lead acid batteries have two big drawbacks. They are quite heavy for the total amount of power they deliver.And even these so called â€Å"deep cycle† batteries really should not be deep-cycled too often, as repeated deep discharging dramatically shortens their useful lifespan. This is where NiCads have lead acid beat, as they are more power dense and can be run down pretty much all the way without much damage. Of course large NiCads are much more expensive and must be recycled carefully due to the toxic cadmium. So until better batteries like NiMH or Lithium Ion are more widely available in vehicle sizes and less expensive, Hawkers and other AGM type lead aci d are about the best we can do.More ruminations on the Great Battery Quest below. Batteries and 120 amp speed controller mounted in the main frame space. SPEED CONTROLLER A speed controller or motor controller is essential in applying the voltage and power that is delivered to the motor from the batteries. All decent electric vehicles need a motor controller of some kind. On a bike with a very small motor it might be possible to just have an on-off arrangement, and I suppose there are other less expensive and much cruder ways to control speed but I feel that a decent controller is absolutely necessary with a powerful motor like this.The controller is a rather expensive electronic black box with no moving parts. A modern PWM or ‘pulse width modulation† controller is very reliable  as long as it's current limit is not exceeded. Unfortunately a high ampere capable controller is not cheap and may cost about as much as the motor. Curtis controllers are well known in golf ca rts and other industrial vehicles, however I am using a Scoota 180 amp speed controller from 4QD. –  www. 4QD. co. uk  . This is a small company in England, that specializes in smaller and cheaper controllers for light electric vehicles. The controller with a matching thumb-lever throttle was $248.It is capable of regenerative braking, thought you can easily disable this function. Previously I tried a Scoota 120 amp model that was nearly identical. It failed after a few months. I was just working it too hard and the output connections overheated and melted. The 4QD factory has a nice policy of repairing their controllers and exchanging them for different ones if you want, with a very fair exchange allowance. The new 180 amp model gets a little warm but has been quite dependable for well over three years now. I originally used an Eagle 80 amp controller from the same company. It was $120.It failed due to overheating but that was completely my fault for using a much too-sma ll controller. If I lived on flat terrain I think it would have been fine and would have lasted a long time, especially since I added a finned aluminum heat sink from an audio power amplifier – try a decent electronics store, maybe even Radio Shack. You need to size your controller at about 3 times the rated power of your motor. My motor is rated at 41 amps continuous, HOWEVER it will draw a lot more than that at full throttle under load. Manufacturers tend to state their controllers at intermittent current limits.For example a Scoota 120 will put out 120 amps  for a short time  but should not be run that high continuously. Regenerative braking – nice idea but . . . A lot of people inquire about regenerative braking. Hybrid car manufacturers often tout the ability to reclaim electrical energy when the car is going downhill. I don't know how much energy they are getting back in a car, but on a little electric bicycle, it is almost certainly never worth the added tro uble, expense, and operational hassles. You would be much better off with a freewheeling setup. Let me explain how I've come to this conclusion.The speed controller I use  has regenerative braking available. After trying it out for a while, adjusting it and testing it every which way, I ended up  disabling it. Regenerative braking means that as you brake or coast downhill the controller will use the motor in reverse as a generator to re-charge the batteries. On my route to the market, for instance, I am on flat terrain for a while and then go downhill for about a mile to reach the store. Conceivably this could mean that I arrive at the store with nearly full batteries, which would make the ride back less likely to drain the batteries completely.However, the regenerative braking is a function of the speed controller. If you have the region set up for maximum regeneration, the throttle can be quite touchy. And if you just suddenly release the throttle, which is fairly normal behav iour, the braking effect would be full. It is really not very good to have the throttle set up to brake that hard. I found myself about launching over the handle bars every time I lost forgot and snapped the throttle off. Also, this is a good way to have other people ride your bike and crash it. Note there is no freewheel on the electric side of my bicycle.A custom freewheel is yet another surprisingly difficult mechanical part to machine or to buy. Of course the pedal-drive freewheel still works, which means that you can motor without the pedals being forced to turn. However, it  you pedal the motor will necessarily be turning, which is a drawback if the batteries die. The regenerative braking function requires a solid connection to the wheel. However, after some time with this bike, using the regen function of the special speed controller, I came to a surprising conclusion  against  using regen. As I say I bought a controller with regenerative braking.With this set-up, I cou ld basically use the thumb-throttle carefully as a fairly powerful rear brake. The amount of braking could be adjusted to make it less grabby, but I never could get it to the point where I liked it at all. It was obtrusive and difficult to control. I suppose if you could hook it up to a pressure sensitive brake lever, it would work better, however, that is a bit beyond the level of sophistication I think is really necessary on a little electric bike. Luckily the regen function can be defeated which is what I finally decided to do. Realize, all vehicles are â€Å"regenerative† going down a hill.Turning the engine off down a long hill in your car and coasting – this is reclaiming the energy spent to climb the hill. Unless the vehicle is very heavy and/or has great aerodynamics, most of the energy going down a hill will just be used to overcome air resistance, with little left over to recharge the batteries. Normally on a bicycle, very little braking is ever necessary, an d top speed down most hills is quickly limited by poor aerodynamics. The net result, I felt, is that the regen on my ebike was just slowing me down and creating heavy backloading on the drive train needlessly.It would be better to put the motor on a freewheel and adopt a method of getting up to speed and coasting as often as possible with the motor shut off. This riding technique is apparently very effective at extending your range, probably more so than having regen. Many people who deal even with larger EVs and hybrids have also formed the opinion that a pure freewheeling function would be better in many instances than regenerative braking. The regenerative braking function of hybrid cars, for instance, is vastly overstated. Hybrids work by generating their lectric power onboard using the gas engine; they have a power generation function built-in, it is central to the entire concept. So why not use it for braking as well? Sure, but in reality this produces very little in the way o f reclaimed power. The batteries in hybrid cars are charged at least 95% by the using the gas engine as a generator; and the reason they are so efficient in city driving is simply because they can run at slow speeds very efficiently on predominantly electric power. It is only while driving at higher speeds down long steep grades that any decent power is truly regenerated to the batteries.How much of this describes typical driving conditions? Coasting with minimal drag from the motor is actually much more efficient. While coasting the vehicle uses no juice whatsoever. It is common practice during mileage or efficiency runs with a hybrid like the Honda Insight, to accelerate to speed, then go into neutral and coast for a ways. This actually produces the greatest mileage and efficiency. On an electric bike it is undoubtedly most efficient to pulse the motor on till you get up to speed, and coast on downhills, or pedal on the flat to maintain speed. Having the motor freewheel would be a big advantage.Unfortunately, a decent ready made right-hand drive doesn't seem to be available, at least for a reasonable price. A minor drawback. THROTTLE At first I simply got a $2. 00 10K potentiometer from Radio Shack, wired it up to the 4QD wiring and mounted it on a plastic spacer beneath the right-hand hand grip. There was no spring return, you had to turn it down to slow down, but on the other hand it was cheap and simple and the brakes can easily overcome the motor in an emergency stopping situation. Also, it worked perfectly as a cruise control. Then with the new larger motor controller I got a box-mounted thumb lever throttle.This is just a short-throw 10k pot with a return spring and lever mounted on the end. There are now motorcycle-style twist grip throttles with built in pots widely available at scooter shops for about $50, such as the Magura. The Scoota controller requires an on-off switch – I got a small rocker thumb switch from an electronics store, and mou nted it in the throttle box. thumb-lever throttle and on-off switch BATTERY CHARGER I found a great 24-volt 5 amp automatic charger made for the now-defunct e-bike EV Warrior from All Electronics surplus in LA. It was 20 bucks, it's compact and works wonderfully.What a bargain – I got two. These may not still be available but there are a few sites that deal with scooters and electric bikes now that have similar chargers for $50 to $80. When I was first building this bike, in the new world of electric vehicle hobbyists, a good non-12V charger (or any decent component for that matter) was hard to come by cheaply. For instance, I scoured the surplus electric suppliers looking for a decent, powerful, cheap 12V or 24V motor and basically came up empty. Before this I used a Sears 12V auto battery charger, charging each battery separately.This worked fine but remembering to go out and switch the charger between batteries was very inconvenient. The EV Warrior charger shuts off automa tically, the bike is always charged and ready to ride.COST AND CONSTRUCTION DETAILSI used high quality parts and the total cost of all the added components including charger came to about $950. Not cheap, but my new mountain bike cost more than that – and you have to pedal it. You can get a turn-key electric motor kit for around $400-700, or a readymade e-bike for $1000-2000, but of course the motors and batteries are all only 1/3 as powerful as this. WeightAt 85 pounds, this is pretty heavy for a â€Å"bicycle,† but I think of it more as an ultra light moped. And it is a true â€Å"mo-ped† in that you can still meaningfully pedal it. Plus I can still lift it into my pickup or my car trunk if needed. My old Peugeot moped weighed twice as much at 150 pounds with similar speed capability, and pedalling it was a joke – the pedals were geared really low, purely for starting the motor. Brakes The old brakes on this bike were okay for 12 mph but hair-raising at 30 mph. A new side pull â€Å"vee brake† as used on decent Modern Mountain bikes luckily bolted right onto the old brake mount posts.Regular bicycles are too light and top heavy to use the front brake as the main squeeze, but as any motorcyclist can tell you, on any heavier two wheeler the front brake does 90% of the work. The vee-brake kit was about 25 bucks on sale at a bike dealer, and came with a new lever for the handle bar. I only replaced the front brake, as the rear posts are in the wrong place. A number of people have written to ask me where the rear brake is – it looks like there is no rear brake at all. Look closely in the photos: the rear brake on this GT mountain bike in mounted down low, on the chain stays, just aft of the pedal crank.Frame I would encourage people doing this kind of conversion to use a heavy duty steel mountain bike frame. The components can take the added force and weight of the motor system. Mountain bike components now are amazingly strong and durable – they are made to take off-road abuse. The wider wheels especially are much better for the additional weight and power. Also, a steel frame is easier to weld or braze motor and battery mounts onto. Stay away from aluminum unless you can figure a way to bolt or clamp everything on without welding. Welding onto an aluminum frame will likely ruint the tempering and severely weaken it.It's quite difficult to weld on thin aluminum. My old GT was too heavy for a good mountain bike these days but just the ticket for an electric motor project. The peculiar geometry of the GT rear frame design actually makes a perfect place for the motor. Construction I had to weld a motor mount onto the rear frame behind the seat. The chain just clears the wheel and frame and it was critical to get the motor solidly mounted. With such a powerful motor,   the motor mount must be strong, and it's really pretty important to have a ball-bearing motor. The motor mount is removable fr om the frame with three allen head screws.I have a TIG welder and lots of metal working tools so it was not a big deal for me but I don't see why all this couldn't be done on a steel bike frame with silver solder or brazing rod and a gas torch. The batteries also have a very solid welded-on mount with a screw-down top retaining rail. The batteries are heavy and need a good solid mount with shock padding. These batteries are narrow and don't interfere at all with pedalling. In this arrangement they are also low and keep the center of gravity down. LEGAL ISSUES OF ELECTRIC BICYCLES At 20 mph this bike is basically legal as an unregistered motorized bicycle in Calif.I believe the Federal laws now allow up to a 750 watt motor, which is what the Scott is (1 horsepower = 746 watts. )   Also, the Federal Law limits such bikes to 20 mph. I fully expected the Feds to cripple these vehicles with a something like a 400 watt limit, but for once was pleasantly surprised – it's actually a rational and reasonable law and probably promotes good electric bikes rather than underpowered toys that no one will buy. Geared for 30 mph this would technically have to be registered and insured as a motorized cycle or possibly as a full motorcycle.Not sure exactly what the difference is but I believe there is a technical distinction. However, used judiciously, most people are still going to assume that it's just a particularly fast bicycle, especially if it's being pedaled. Actually I have no problem with a legal limit of 20 mph. Slow is not bad. The wind noise is less and you can actually hear the world. A bike limited to 20 with no registration and no insurance and no driver's license (and no noise and no vibration and no gasoline and no mechanics and no smog checks and no smog and no parking hassles and no car payments . . . )   Not a bad tradeoff, to put it mildly.I would not recommend riding on bike paths or foot trails. Most of these bar motorized vehicles of any kind, even if it's not posted. It is tempting since the bike is silent and by pedaling, most people will not even notice that you've got a motor. I think speed is the key. If I must ride on a bike path, I use the pedals and just don't go any faster than a gently pedaled bicycle. It is hard to argue with that, and no one ever has. I think eventually there will be a lot more electric bicycles and other small powered vehicles and it will probably become a problem competing with pedestrians, roller bladers, etc.The advent of affordable lithium batteries will mean that electric vehicles of all kinds will be become radically better, and immensely popular. It's just inevitable. There's already enough friction between these groups on crowded paths and trails. This is another reason why keeping maximum speeds under 20 mph is probably a good idea. FUTURE IMPROVEMENTS, VARIATIONS AND POSSIBILITIES It's the batteries, stupid. This bike is great fun right now but I can see a lot of room for improvemen t. Ah, batteries, ever the Achilles' heel of the electric vehicle.Oh how I hate lead acid batteries but – still stuck with them. NiMH, Lithium Ion, or Nickel Zinc batteries would improve the juice-to-weight ratio enormously, and would probably double the range, which is the single least satisfactory thing about this and all electric bikes. The batteries now weigh over 25 pounds and are the heaviest single component. There are some reasons for hope. The increasing numbers of hybrid cars are generally using NiMH batteries which should trickle down eventually and be very suitable for electric bikes.Other battery chemistries as well have made it to market, though success always seems elusive. The biggest promise right now is that GM and Toyota are really pushing to put lithium batteries in the next generations of hybrid cars and plug-in hybrids. GM's Chevy Volt, due out by 2010, will only work if they succeed in mass producing lithium ions, and getting the cost down. It's kind of a chicken and egg problem: huge mass production will bring the cost down, but until they're cheaper, there isn't enough demand to mass produce them.The soaring price of motor fuels and the resulting demand for more and better hybrid cars is probably what will convince manufacturers to bite the bullet and build the factories. The promise of lithium ion. Certainly the lithium battery has the greatest potential of all the next-generation chemistries. It has the most energy per pound and is well proven in smaller applications like cell phones and laptops. A practical battery with this capacity would almost instantly put battery vehicles on a competitive footing with gasoline powered ones.Current conventional lithium ions have a serious weakness – they die completely after about 2 to 3 years, no matter what. But again, if GM and Toyota succeed in getting lithium batteries into hybrids, as they say they will within the next two years, it will mean that they have largely eliminated or minimized these drawbacks. Progress with this battery seems to be steady. They are now being used in some cordless power tools, which use bigger cell sizes and draw heavier loads than electronic devices. They don't use any heavy metals. There re a number of new types of lithium cells that don't burst into flames when overheated or pierced. A123 has some of the most successful new cells, and Toshiba has even demonstrated cells that can be recharged almost fully in just a few minutes. Chinese cells are now on the market especially for bicycles called LiFePo4. These cells are available in a battery pack for small electric vehicles called the Eonyx, as well as from other packagers. They are still something of an unknown quantity. Once these get into more people's hands, we will be able to get a reading on their longevity and performance.Right now they are still about  ten or fifteen times as expensive as lead acid batteries. Well, what about fuel cells? Of course the concept and d emonstrations of this still-experimental technology is very compelling, but there has been so much hype on the subject that it is still hard to say if this is all just incredibly successful marketing spin by the FC developers. I also think that in the early 2000's there was an element of clever subterfuge by the auto industry to take the heat off the fact that average fuel economy in this country was decreasing due to ever more popular and larger SUVs.It is so much easier and cheaper for an auto company like GM to run a relatively small early research project on fuel cells, than it is to do serious engineering on real live production-ready hybrid development. Even in 2006 there are still basically no economically practical fuel cells in actual use and even their promoters say that any commercially viable model is at least 5 years off and maybe 10. It is the running joke that the day of widespread fuel cells and the hydrogen economy always seems to be 20 years off –   no mat ter when the question is asked.And then, where do we get all the hydrogen? Seems to me hydrogen is and will remain way more expensive than any petro fuel and I have never seen any realistic ideas to overcome this problem. And we store it in 10,000 psi cylinders in the trunk? Uh, OK . . . Believe me I would love to be proved wrong and initially was excited about this technology like everyone else, but increasingly I am thinking the emperor has no clothes. Maybe a loincloth. Motors are already pretty much perfected, right? Well, yes and no. My Scott motor is starting to look like a dinosaur, it ould stand to lose some weight. The power is actually about right for a bicycle but just look at it, it's too big and heavy. There are tons of little scooters out there and it would be possible to get a 500 watt or 750 watt scooter motor, which is would undoubtedly work well. Currently (July 2009) I see that a 24V Currie 600 watt motor is available for around $130. It is compact and powerful. T he MAC 600W motor might be a better choice but is $279. Try evdeals. com for an updated motor availability. I would love to get a Lemco pancake motor, www. lemcoltd. om   – they are light, powerful, and efficient but expensive. This company is now making even smaller motors that would be perfect for high-powered bikes but $800 for a motor is a bit much. And of course my whole motorization scheme, with the belt and chain, is not terribly clean or elegant. I personally think  the â€Å"hub motor†Ã‚  is the obvious solution for electric bikes, as used on Lee Iacocca's E-bike and the Wavecrest (which seems to have died and resurrected as the E+) and others. Heinzmann of Germany seems to still be making a variety of hub motors, as are other companies.Try Heinzmann's site www. estelle. de for some pretty interesting ideas – I guess they are now selling bikes, complete kits, motors, batteries and controllers. However, at this point they are still only about 300 wat ts = 1/3 HP which is about 1/3 of what they ought to be. Also, Heinzmann motors tend to be a little noisy and expensive. A hub wheel motor replaces the normal wheel hub and obviously needs no other transmission, chain, or belt which is a huge simplification – although of course this can also be a slight drawback in that the gear ratio can't be changed.A very popular and reasonably priced hub motor made in China seems to be the  Crystalyte, though I haven't used one myself. There is a similar system sold by  Wilderness Energy. These are  sold in kits where the hub motor is basically spoked to a bike wheel rim  of your choice and you just replace your old wheel with the motorized one. They tend to go on the front wheel but can also be installed at the rear. The kits include a pretty slick speed controller, throttle, and brake-switches to cut the power. Often batteries are a separate purchase.The hubs themselves are made in various voltages, powers, and rotational speeds to match various wheel sizes and top speed requirements. This seems to be a decent site with links to dealers in the US and Canada – www. evsolutions. net. The gearing, for my use, could certainly benefit from a nice simple  two-speed transmission. One speed for the hill and the other for the flat. Electric motors have such great torque throughout the RPM range that more than two speeds just isn't necessary unless the motor is severely underpowered. The obvious thing to me would be a hub motor with two or three speeds built in. I have never seen such a beast.I think with better batteries and motor, this bike could easily weigh 25 pounds less or have twice the range, maybe both. The frame and wheels are no lightweights either, at 36 pounds. That's a good 10 pounds more than my new mountain bike, and it's got a suspension fork. So in short with modern components this type of bike could easily weigh less than 50 lbs. Performance would improve, it would be easier to pedal and you could even carry it on a car roof rack. How about a  solar cell battery charger? They sell these to RV owners. Actually there's no reason why you couldn't throw a solar cell on your roof and charge the batteries all day.Imagine – this is real-world fully solar powered transportation, doable today. As further work on the existing bike, I would love to put a suspension fork on the front and maybe a suspension seat post. Lights would be nice. At this point this bike would be an amazing transportation unit by any standards, not just electric vehicles. Also, this starts to become a pretty intriguing possibility for a trail bike. I used to have dirt bikes but they are dirty and noisy and environmentally a big problem. A dirt bike is a blast but you're not exactly communing with nature.A completely silent electric trail bike would be much more like hiking aesthetically, and would open up long-range trails – can't wait to get some better batteries and go up to the mounta ins. I can also see going to a  higher voltage system. 36 or even 48 volts  would be a lot better and keep the current draw down. I started with a 12 V system for simplicity's sake but the power was low and the current draw was high. I won't go into the basics of electric power except to say that lower voltage is bad because it leads to higher current which creates more heat and requires a much bigger motor controller.Controllers are basically sold by amperage or current capacity, and high amperage controllers are much more expensive than lower amperage ones. The same controller can put out twice as much power at the same amperage level if the system voltage is doubled. I have even considered simply adding another battery on this bike and just over-volting the motor to 36 volts. The motor is probably able to take it (though I'm sure the manufacturer wouldn't recommend it) and my controller can easily be switched to 36 V. The bike would be heavier, faster, and have better range.I t's just a trade off. Intriguing. (Note that most controllers have voltage limitations and must be altered or jumpered to make system voltage changes. )   That's what's neat about electrics for the tinkerer – you can change motors, change batteries, change controllers, change gearing – it's all so easy and interchangeable compared to an internal combustion vehicle. Imagine a having an old Vespa scooter, and you think one day â€Å"Gee, wouldn't it be interesting to put a nice new Honda 200cc engine in that thing† – you'd have to be half nuts to even consider it.Turnkey solutions. So you don't have a TIG welder and a metal lathe? You just want to bolt something onto your bicycle? As I've mentioned the turnkey kits made by Wilderness Energy and Crystalyte seem to be the simplest and cleanest ways to electrify a bicycle. Since I made this bike there have been some developments in the electric bike world. The popular Curry USProDrive bolt-on kit that I esch ewed as too undepowered was always a decent kit but I don't think it's available at all anymore.The batteries were not AGM quality, the stock controller was jerky and mounted inside the motor where it's hard to keep cool, and the drive train was not terribly robust, but all in all a decent kit, and they sold quite a few of them. A similar concept called Lashout seems to be available. This kit has a built-in freewheel on the motor which is nice. MISCELLANEOUS THOUGHTS Here in 2008, with the cost of gas now at $4. 50 a gallon, true pain is being felt by almost everyone at the fuel pumps, and by the sellers of old fashioned gas burning vehicles. Big cars and SUV's are sitting on dealers lots. There are 4 month waits  .There is now tremendous pressure to come up with solutions. This should, finally, lead to some real improvements in pure electric transportation. I love the idea of electric vehicles but the practical electric car is still not quite a reality. The electric bike to me is now a real-world, affordable and practical solution. The limited range is not a big deal for errands around town and short commutes. Given that really nice batteries are going to be expensive for the foreseeable future, it makes so much more sense to use a couple of small ones on a bike than try to pay for 300 big ones for a car.Most people won't justify a limited range full-size electric car just for groceries and errands, but many people could throw an e-bike or two in their garage without thinking twice. Grown adults giggle when they ride my bike. It is very quiet –   it's like some genie is pedaling for you. The silence is very important – it just completely changes the whole picture. You can actually hear things and stop and pull up onto the sidewalk and talk to your neighbors when you ride down the street. I have pulled up directly into my ATM booth and people hardly give me a second glance – not even thinkable on a motorcycle.Electrics are not intimida ting like a motorcycle or even a scooter – to most people, they're just a bicycle you don't have to pedal. Theres no clutch, no gears to shift, no kickstarter. They aren't just environmentally friendly – they're neighborhood and people friendly. Another amazing thing to me: this is not rocket science technology. This is lead acid batteries powering a DC motor on a steel bike frame –  this bike could pretty much have been made 80 or 100 years ago! Those new-fangled high pressure pneumatic tires may be the most modern component! Why has it taken so long for e-bikes to take off?I offer these design and component ideas to anyone who can make use of them and encourage anyone with a garage and some tools to make an electric bike or buy a kit or a ready-made. At my house we have a very fast motorcycle, a hybrid car and a pickup, but the e-bike is the most fun – I use it almost every day. And the most amazing thing that I have learned after all of this   â₠¬â€œ you really don't need 4000 pounds of gasoline powered steel-rubber-plastic-and-glass, $30,000-120-mph marvel-of-modern-transportation-engineering to go a mile and a half for a quart of milk, a loaf of bread and a newspaper.EARLY VERSIONS V1. 0   had just one long vee-belt from the motor to the rear wheel. It had a top speed of around 30 which was great but slowed to about 12 mph on the steep hill near my house. However, other people building their own have asked about using the single vee-belt because it is easier to put together without machine tools, and it works pretty well on the flat. The goals were these: * gear reduction from a 3000 rpm motor – in the neighborhood of 8:1 to 10:1 * retain existing pedal function – derailleur and freewheel * rear wheel drive * simplicity * quiet operation * use available parts can be grafted onto the existing bike wheel * power transmission efficiency * stay away from friction tire-drive – too much slippage and tire wear * stay away from chain drive – at 3000 rpm a chain is too noisy The single belt reduction runs from a 1. 75†³ drive wheel on the motor directly to a 16†³ driven pulley mounted to the left side of the rear wheel. This is actually a 20†³ bicycle rim mounted to the wheel hub using half of the rim's spokes through additional spoke holes drilled into the wheel hub. This setup gives a reduction of about 8 to 1. ^ The vee-belt setup, giving a reduction ratio of 8:1 V1.   Ã‚  Ã‚  After using the single vee-belt reduction for a while, it seemed   that I needed to gear the bike down some more. At full throttle the belt would slip on really steep hills off-road. Also it was overheating on my hill and ended up burning out my 80 amp controller. So after some thought I added an idler shaft or â€Å"jackshaft† for an initial belt reduction. I have a metal lathe and fabricated a bearing housing for a 1/2†³ shaft running on ball bearings. This is mounted on a pivoting system in order to get the belt tensioned correctly. With the pulley combination pictured below I have an overall reduction of 17 to 1.This translates into a top speed of 13 mph and good hill climbing ability. The most critical thing on a setup like this is to mount the jackshaft very solidly so that it stays parallel to the motor shaft under belt tension and during high power loads. This required a lot of reinforcement of the mounting bracket, as the whole thing mounts to the motor   face using two bolts, and flex was a problem. Double reduction using toothed belt to a jackshaft running on ball bearings I suspected the ideal gear ratio for my needs lies somewhere in the middle. I will probably settle on a top speed of about 20 mph. The good thing about his setup is that I can change the gearing fairly easily with just a couple of different toothed belt wheels and possibly a slightly different length belt. The primary belt I added is a Gates Powergrip XL belt. I actual ly had a bunch of belts and wheels lying around from other motorization projects but these are available from ball bearing and rubber belt industrial suppliers. This belt is really way too small and narrow for a motor this size at full throttle, but hey it was free. 80 AMP CONTROLLER Controller with added heat sink mounted to the top tube This is the previous Eagle 80 amp controller from 4QD.It melted down from driving over 100 amps for extended lengths of time. It is really too small for the Scott 1hp motor but worked surprisingly well for quite a while. Like the Scooter 120, it has adjustable acceleration and deceleration curves, but no regenerative function. V1. 4  Ã‚  Ã‚  had a single long timing belt. After experimenting with a single vee-belt and an earlier two stage belt reduction, I tried to simplify in the name of efficiency. I especially wanted to get rid of the vee-belt completely, which would slip on really steep hills and also is less efficient than a timing belt.This setup was less than ideal because the belt is so long. There was not enough room for a wider belt and this belt was simply not strong enough for the amount of power being delivered. Also, this Type L timing belt was noisier than I had expected. The trapezoidal tooth shape is noisy, and the idler tensioning wheel added a surprising amount of racket even though it was running on the â€Å"flat† side of the belt. I. WHAT IS MEANT BY â€Å"POWER ASSIST†? A power assist is any vehicle with any number of wheels that is primarily or partly human powered, and assisted by a small motor.An electric bicycle is probably the most common such vehicle. Power assist enthusiasts are typically interested in simple human-scaled transportation that is earth-friendly, fun, non-intimidating, and affordable. Transportation that either extends the range of their bicycling, allows them to arrive at work without needing a shower, or allows them to leave the car at home more often. Many people are somewhat familiar with old-style mopeds, which are technically power assists. However they are too heavy to really be pedalled more than to start the engine.Mopeds are really lightweight scooters with pedals and limited top speeds which allow them to qualify in most parts of the world for lesser registration and insurance classifications. Many people feel that  a more useful set of pedals is important. This means the vehicle must be light enough to pedal meaningfully, either with or without the motor energized. Practically speaking it should weigh less than 75 lbs. or 35 kg and of course the lighter, the better. A power assist is not meant to entirely replace human power. The exact amount of assist desired, however, is really up to the individual.Today electric vehicles are becoming more popular, but there are still internal combustion engine (ICE) power assists that perform well. They both have their adherents, but really they each have their place as their strengths and weak nesses are in different areas. ELECTRIC ASSISTS  Ã¢â‚¬â€œÃ‚  today’s practical electric vehicle The practical electric car has become a kind of Holy Grail and is the subjec