Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.
Cleaning up the end of the broken shaft let me shove it into a drilled ball:
Helmet Mirror Ball Mount – repaired – drilled balls
The insert and random screw came from the stub end of the broken shaft: ramming it into the cleaned-up end makes the job look Good Enough™.
Clamp the repaired stalk into the spare mount, drop the drilled balls & lathe fixture back in their bag, and maybe it’ll be another six years before they’re needed.
One of Mary’s garden neighbors recently started biking, she recommended he needed a helmet mirror, and I handed her a spare from the Bag o’ Mirrors:
Helmet Mirror Ball Mount – on helmet
So I built another one:
Helmet Mirror Ball Mount – epoxy clamping
Fortunately, the Bag also had that (slightly rusted) mirror with a drilled ball, so all I needed was a new printed mount with two brass inserts and screws.
Now we have two spares against future need:
Helmet Mirror Ball Mount – ready spares
They’re much better than the old yellow Az-El mount, but I couldn’t have made the ball mounts without that experience.
Both versions outlasted all the commercial versions we’ve had over the decades, so that’s a 3D printing success story right there.
Having verified the brake sensors work and with some idea of their actuation distances, installing them on Mary’s Tour Easy involved no more than:
Remove the fairing
Unwrap three spiral looms from All The Cables
Wrestle the Julet connectors apart
Plug in the new sensors
Stick the sensors in the proper locations
Verify proper brake operation
Rewrap the looms
Install the fairing
The “proper location” put the actuation point about halfway between the brake lever’s released and pulled positions. Given that the previous sensors lacked indicators, I don’t know where their actuation point might have been, other than likely too close to their released position.
A slideshow of the front brake lever positions:
Tour Easy LED brake sensor – front released
Tour Easy LED brake sensor – front activated
Tour Easy LED brake sensor – front pulled
Similarly for the rear brake lever positions:
Tour Easy LED brake sensor – rear released
Tour Easy LED brake sensor – rear activated
Tour Easy LED brake sensor – rear pulled
Obviously, the rear brake lever sensor has the “dim” LEDs.
There’s not much to go wrong and the first ride was uneventful, so we’ll declare victory until the sensors or magnets shift their position, despite the wraps holding their wires to the brake cables.
The magnets come from power toothbrush heads, encased in urethane adhesive in 3D printed mounts.
Stipulated: I sometimes over-do things.
However, I am absolutely not going to back down from saying the lashup shown in this screen grab from the sensor installation video is utterly and completely wrong:
You’ll note the sensor’s signal wire is blue, not white, but red = 5 VDC and black = common on both sides of the splice. This is not to be sniffed at.
With the disk magnet (supplied with the sensors) oriented edgewise to the sensor, so the magnetic field is largely cancelled, the maximum separation allowing the sensor to remain On is about 7 mm:
Tour Easy LED brake sensor – edge – max ON
The minimum distance allowing it to be Off is 8 mm:
Tour Easy LED brake sensor – edge – min OFF
Orienting the disk face-on to the sensor increases the distances, because the magnetic field is not cancelled out in that direction. Similarly, positioning the magnet either above or below the plane of the sensor changes the results.
The maximum On distance is now 20 mm:
Tour Easy LED brake sensor – side – max ON
The minimum Off distance is 22 mm:
Tour Easy LED brake sensor – side – min OFF
The other magnet has a similar field strength and the other sensor responds at nearly the same distances, so they’re reasonably matched.
The LEDs are, however, not well matched: one sensor is much brighter than the other. I only have one connector, so I cannot show both in the same picture. These pictures have the same exposure (1/120 s and f/1.7), with the top sensor appearing in the previous pictures:
E-bike Brake Sensors – LED Brightness comparison
The red LEDs show a similar difference. I’m certain this doesn’t rise to the level of a warranty claim, because, hey, maybe the brighter one should be dimmer.
Several years and realignments later, the brake sensors on Mary’s Tour Easy became slightly mobile on the foam tape holding them to the brake lever mounts and, of course, anything affecting the sensor position relative to the magnet inevitably makes it overly sensitive to the brake lever position.
For unknown reasons, the DPC-18 displays devote zero pixels to the brake sensor status, so the only indication of a brake sensor being active is when the motor cuts out. This is not to be tolerated, particularly in traffic, so both the sensors and their magnets are now remounted on fresh tape with careful attention to proximity.
The magnet is snugged against the sensor when the lever is released:
Tour Easy brake sensor gap – released
The activation point is about a third of the way to the fully pulled position:
Tour Easy brake sensor gap – braking
I would prefer having the magnet move parallel to the sensor’s long axis, but that’s just not the way these levers work.
The left-side sensor cable is now snugged to the brake cables to keep it out of harm’s way as she installs & removes the water reservoir on the handlebars under the fairing:
Tour Easy brake sensor cable – left
For symmetry, the right-side sensor cable sports a similar tiedown:
Heavy winds during an overnight storm on July 4 2026 brought trees down across Dutchess County and caused widespread power outages. Our little generator justified its existence by preserving our food for about 24 hours, but other folks were without power for three or four days.
A large branch fell across the Carriage Hill entrance:
Carriage Hill Bridge – treefall – 2026-07-07
The terrain and lot layout in Carriage Hill often requires heavy equipment for tree maintenance:
Tree Clearing Crane
Many trees along the Dutchess Rail Trail toppled as their root balls rotated or simply broke off:
Rail trail north – treefall B – 2026-07
Others snapped and took out the fences:
Rail trail north – treefall A – 2026-07
We ride as far from this deadfall as we can:
Rail trail south – treefall – 2026-07
Cleanup continued for weeks and we wish the crews well.
The NYS DOT engineer who designed the Raymond Avenue rebuild told me drivers should drive on the median to give cyclists enough clearance. This rarely occurs, because the “design” put bollards / posts / road furniture just behind the curb where they both deter driving and are easily hit.
The July 4th power outage called for refilling the gasoline supply and I’m returning home along Raymond Avenue:
Tour Easy – Passing Gas on Raymond – 2026-07-08
That’s generous clearance, particularly from a hulking pickup truck. FWIW, commercial drivers generally do much better than average civilians.
If towing the trailer weren’t such a nuisance, I’d deploy a decorative gas can on every ride.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 