This electric longboard is designed for the ultimate carving experience no matter the terrain, and with a clever design, it can easily swap its wheels
This electric longboard is designed for the ultimate carving experience no matter the terrain, and with a clever design, it can easily swap its wheels
Took a look around on what the DIY scene looks like right now.
With an existing board, I might grab a kit for the electronics from flipsky, and look at buildkitboards for their modular battery and enclosure system. Going that route, using VESC based systems, means you’d need to get comfortable with understanding and configuring the electronics using the VESCTool PC program, as well as wiring the various components together.
The other option is buying the relevant parts of a hobbywing-based production board from a brand like backfire, verreal or wowgo, and bolting them onto your board.
There’s the “mellow” kit which looks similar to the revel kit, except it uses hub motors instead of direct-drive. That means you’d be relying on urethane sleeves which are really uncomfortable compared to full wheels, and potentially difficult to source replacements of, as you can’t just use any wheel.
Not being able to use regular wheels is an automatic pass from me lol, thanks for the advice!
That’s why the G2T ended up as my only hub-drive board. I didn’t buy another.
Direct-drive and gear-drive also allow for the use of any wheel one might like, and don’t consume belts.
Revel was kind of the ideal kit, everything just bolted on to the existing screw-holes, and the motors were direct-drive.
Ok, I have another question: What happens if you drop the controller, it dies, or otherwise malfunctions? Does the board just stop? Keep doing whatever it was doing?
When the controller dies or loses connection, most boards will slowly transition into full brakes, bring the board to a smooth stop. This is standard on Hobbywing, I think, but on VESC you need a remote with a receiver that supports connection loss being detected, which the VESC can then be programmed to react to.
As for dropping it, that’s why you USE THE LANYARD.
The control wheel has to be held for the board to maintain speed or start braking, so when dropped, at first it will just stop doing whatever it was doing and begin coasting. Once you get out of range, same thing as any other disconnect, it starts braking on its own. The range can be kind of far, depending on the board, so this is really not something you want happening while going downhill. If you use the lanyard tho, it’s not gonna happen.
I’ve had no malfunctions. And while I know this is how it works, I haven’t had to rely on it even once.
Any experience with add-on braking systems? I was looking at putting one on my longboard as I learn the basics. Originally I thought my skateboarding skills would make longboarding a cinch but the differences are way more significant than I figured they’d be.
Like the cable diskbrakes you find on mountain boards? No.
I found it very easy to learn to skate on an electric board. I’ve never ridden anything non-electric.
I just slowly used the motors less and less to help in order to get the basics down. Just being able to hold down the brakes while stepping on made it a cinch to get started. And also being able to remotely halt the board rolling away when you bail.
There seem to be a variety of designs, some are just a lever with some rubber with a peg you step on and others are more elaborate. Footbraking seems to be a lot more punishing on my longboard compared to my skateboards so I was looking for an intermediary while I learn to slide.