Cycle Analyst

[Joe EE]

Hey everyone, soon starting to assemble my first project bike. I will be using the Cycle Analyst by Grin Technologies in place of the standard bike display. I chose that device due to its superior capability at monitoring the battery as well as several other nice features. My question is .. does anyone else have any experience to share with this device. Honestly it does seem a bit more complex than I care for. I don’t have a degree in electronics and I really wasn’t interested in getting one just so I could go for a bike ride. There is an unofficial guide to the device posted online but even that is rather complex. I suppose you have to take the bad with the good but I would be interested in hearing anyone else’s experiences .

 

[JRA]

I have two hub motor ebikes with CA3’s and although they have more features than I use for the ones that I do they work very well. They are easy to program or if you desire you can really fine tune the e bikes systems.

Being able to track the battery ah’s In real-time is indispensable and is much better than the voltage tracking “meters”, although it also tracks voltage and wh/mi usage.

I feel it taught me about my personal usage parameters and quelled range anxiety in a short amount of time that has transferred into miles of relaxing rides.

It is a bit klunky however and I don’t like the standard mount so I made my own which puts it in a better, less obtrusive position.

 

[Joe EE]

I have two hub motor ebikes with CA3’s and although they have more features than I use for the ones that I do they work very well. They are easy to program or if you desire you can really fine tune the e bikes systems.

Being able to track the battery ah’s In real-time is indispensable and is much better than the voltage tracking “meters”, although it also tracks voltage and wh/mi usage.

I feel it taught me about my personal usage parameters and quelled range anxiety in a short amount of time that has transferred into miles of relaxing rides.

It is a bit klunky however and I don’t like the standard mount so I made my own which puts it in a better, less obtrusive position.

View attachment 20526

Thanks @JRA , the range anxiety was my primary interest in the CA. Although I went out of my way to install a cadence sensor on the bike I am also interested in the throttle enhancement features. I am overbuilding this bike and I like the fine controls you can put on the throttle and the PAS inputs. I just feel like I am going to need to take a crash course in electronics to completely implement the device. Aside from what is on YouTube and the very technical unofficial guide, are you aware of any other place to get instructions about how to adequately employee this device?

 

[JRA]

I use the cruise control feature with a throttle instead of PAS btw. For road riding I prefer it personally.

Don’t be intimidated by it, Justin’s online tutorials are all you need. Just break them down and don’t get overwhelmed. Depending on where you live you might find someone close by that could help you out also. Try endless sphere also. Although they can get pretty technical there some are more willing to help than others in simplified terms.

 

[Joe EE]

I use the cruise control feature with a throttle instead of PAS btw. For road riding I prefer it personally.

Don’t be intimidated by it, Justin’s online tutorials are all you need. Just break them down and don’t get overwhelmed. Depending on where you live you might find someone close by that could help you out also. Try endless sphere also. Although they can get pretty technical there some are more willing to help than others in simplified terms.

I think I will relax a bit more when my parts actually show up and I can do some hands on experimenting with it. I am kind of excited about the build, I have been thinking about doing this for about a year so it is fun to actually be at the building stage. I purposely went overboard with the motor knowing that I will probably never go full tilt with it and hoping to get max range by nursing the demand I put on it and pedaling a lot. The bike I am using is not exactly pedaling friendly. You kind of sit way back from the pedals and not above them so it’s a little tough to generate a lot of torque from there, but I am very interested in seeing how she turns out.

 

[Rick Speicher]

I've set up several CA V3's. Always glad to help if you have questions! Make sure you download the Unofficial Users Guide written by @Techlectic on Endless-Sphere and read it through a couple of times. Seems complex at first but after a while you will get it!

 

[Joe EE]

Thanks so much Rick!

 

[Rooster]

Thanks so much Rick!

ebike.ca is a reputable company out of Canada and a pleasure to deal with. Deal with them a lot and never had a problem with them. If you do have a problem, they will make it right.

 

[J Miller]

Hey everyone, soon starting to assemble my first project bike. I will be using the Cycle Analyst by Grin Technologies in place of the standard bike display. I chose that device due to its superior capability at monitoring the battery as well as several other nice features. My question is .. does anyone else have any experience to share with this device. Honestly it does seem a bit more complex than I care for. I don’t have a degree in electronics and I really wasn’t interested in getting one just so I could go for a bike ride. There is an unofficial guide to the device posted online but even that is rather complex. I suppose you have to take the bad with the good but I would be interested in hearing anyone else’s experiences .

I realize I'm a bit late to this, but as someone who has no background in electronics I found the CAv3 to be relatively easy to setup (using it with one of Grin's own kits). Highly recommend using the USB programming cable and the provided software to configure it.

There's little tooltips that pop up when you hover over the various settings with the mouse, and most of them were already set to reasonable defaults I thought.

And I'm really loving the flexibility of controlling exactly how I want the bike to respond.

 

[Joe EE]

Hey @J Miller. I have to say that I am really glad I went with the CA. I really like the features, information and the controls it provides. I am running an old PC so when I tried to use the Windows interface my mouse goes all skippy and I really can’t use it at all. That aside, after working with the onboard buttons and such I was able to have good success and am really appreciating the functionality and accuracy of the device. I think that I was making myself crazy reading the unofficial official users guide for the device without actually having it working in front of me. I think it is better to just noodle around with it in reality and not read so much as someone had suggested to me .

 

[GadgetJim]

I like the variable adjustment for pedal assist. I have a knob that I can turn to make pedal assist easy or more difficult.

 

[AHicks]

I found the CA to be a bit more complex than I cared for and went the LCD3 route using a KT controller. This combo gives me all the features I was looking for, at a level of complexity I could deal with.