We were really impressed to see these photos of Rudi’s very impressive bike touring setup. This is a very interesting example of utilizing the products together that we represent through 3 of our 4 specialty shops, BikeTrailerShop.com, BikeBagShop.com and BikeTechShop.com.
Greetings from Berlin, Germany. I have mounted a solar panel on my B.O.B. Ibex. Since I do a lot of camping and carry some electronics with me (GPS, phone, mp3-player, sometimes due to my job a laptop), there’s always the need to charge some batteries.
The rear two boxes carry two 7.2 Ah accumulators which serve as a buffer, a solar charger and the rest of the electronics like step-up/step-down converters for the different voltages I need.
The unregulated 12V outlet is also capable of charging the system via an onboard AC/DC converter in case I find an A/C outlet somewhere.
In addition I have replaced the rear hub with a SON hub dynamo which constantly feeds into the system as well (and takes care of the rear light via a sensor).
The panel can be raised for better efficiency. The most difficult part of the construction was the mounting of the solar panel itself. The Ibex has a suspension, so the rear wheel moves in relation to the trailer. I constructed a rail guide with two rollers which convert the “vertical” movement into a horizontal sliding movement (you can see that on the second picture underneath the panel).
The third picture shows the first field testing near the Elbe river in Northern Germany. System is working fine 🙂 Hope you like it.
