Creating a drive wheel on a self balancing bike

Hi,

I’m creating a self balancing bike (something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEctw-TUCcs).

I am a little unsure how to drive the rear wheel. I need a system that keeps the bike ‘narrow’ to aid balance and would like to buy off the shelf components if possible.

The video shows a gear mechanism. I’ve considered right angled motor with an appropriate wheel. Or perhaps a belt driven rear wheel.

Can anyone recommend a method and some components. Once I have an idea of a good method and the type of parts available, I can then start to size the motor that I need.

Hello.

I recommend first finding an appropriate motor (or set of motors) and then designing your drive train around that motor. In order to pick an appropriate motor, you will have to figure out how much torque that motor would need to provide for your system. If you are not sure about how to go about calculating that, you might find this blog post about force and torque useful. We generally recommend selecting motors so that the maximum torque they need to provide for your system is about 20-30% of their stall torque. You can find all of the motors we carry here.

We do not really have many products you could use to build your own custom drivetrain, but you might consider using our laser cutting service. (It looks like the drivetrain in the video you linked to has some laser-cut components.)

-Jon