Sahhhhhh Dudes. Figured I’d do a short write up of what I’m currently working on for a buddy. He approached me asking if I could make a dyno to measure power of boards, bikes and scooters. I said sure and started digging. After about 30 mins of digging, I had a couple of ideas. Make it out of a treadmill like these guys linked below or make one from scratch and use Vesc tool.
Parameters:
Somewhat cheap
Reliable over a long period of time
Adjustable weight settings
Upgradable
Soooooo, my first thought was to tear down an older treadmill and use the casters. You reverse the polarity on the motor and boom, it’s a generator that increases amps and voltage with higher power output. Plug two multimeters (one for voltage and one for amperage) in and bam you have a makeshift dyno (just video the two together and have AI generate a wattage graph)
Im currently in the process of chopping up a treadmill to fab it back up together and the cool think is the treads gearing seems like it could potentially work. I might have to add an idler but testing will tell. I got some inspiration from the Hoyt dyno that used a brake rotor and pads but ended up just using the brake rotor because that simulated the acceleration of a 300lb rider.
pics and more info to come
Original treadmill:
After 2 hours with an angle grinder:
Potential other material I was going to use to build from scratch:
Lmk any ideas, I’m by no means an electrical engineer but I think this is a cool project. I think it’d be cool to use a graphing multimeter but dems expensive.
Multimeter: https://www.fluke-direct.com/product/fluke-289-true-rms-industrial-logging-multimeter
Link to treadmill inspiration: Build a Bike Dyno- Calculate YOUR HORSEPOWER! : 6 Steps (with Pictures) - Instructables