As for how common motorcycles are, their design and use of parts are often more different than cars and trucks. Sometimes it’s good for drivers, such as Honda testing airbags or automatic transmissions. Sometimes it’s a bit suspicious. For example, some American brands adhere to the push rod engine design of the 1940s. Sometimes this is annoying, such as using cheap voltage regulators, which often fail and have poor performance. He was tired of making a custom voltage regulator for his motorcycle.
Unlike modern automotive alternators, which can produce usable voltage even at idle speed, smaller or older motorcycle alternators usually cannot produce usable voltage. Instead, they rely on a simpler but less reliable regulator, which usually does not exceed a series of diodes, but can only deliver energy to the electrical system when the motor is running at a higher speed. In order to improve this design, [fvfilippetti] designed a switching regulator from scratch using MOSFET, and considered some interesting design factors. It can withstand the input voltage between 20V and 250V, which improves the ability of motorcycles to use modern high-power lamps and charge mobile phones and other devices.
In the following video, an LED is added to the circuit to provide a visual indication of the normal operation of the regulator. For those who have used rectifiers or diode voltage regulators on old bicycles before, this is undoubtedly a popular product. Car alternators themselves are also an interesting animal. Their use is far more than the electrical system of running motorcycles.