DIY Electric Pennyboard Can Hit 40Km/h!!

Home-made transportation is a thriving area for makers to flex their skills. Looking to shorten their university commute, [doublecloverleaf] modded his penny board by adding a motor that can have him zipping along at 40 Km/h!

The electric motor is mounted to the rear truck and delivers power to the wheel gear using a HTD 5 m pulley belt. Finding the deck too flexible to mount the battery pack under, [doublecloverleaf] strengthened it with a pair of carbon-fiber tubes bracketed on the underside. A few custom PCB boards connect ten 5 Ah LiPo battery cells in series to create two, five-cell packs which are kept safe by a thick housing mounted between the board’s trucks. [doublecloverleaf] calculates that they could make up to a 15 km trip on a single charge.

Thinking ahead, [doublecloverleaf] opted to use a DB25 port for charging — 9 pins for voltage balancing between cells within each battery, and ten more (five positive, five negative, in parallel) for charging at 5 A. A USB port allows him to tweak the VESC motor controller — this adds, among other useful features, regenerative braking!

A slightly modified RC car remote controls the motor — simply pull on the trigger to accelerate, and push to reverse and engage the regenerative breaking. It’s currently set to 80% of the motor’s max RPM at 40 A to preserve both the board and the rider’s health. Any faster, and they’d have to think about challenging the land speed record for electric skateboards.

21 thoughts on “DIY Electric Pennyboard Can Hit 40Km/h!!

      1. He’s talking about the spelling, “breaking” vs. “braking”. The regenerative aspect has nothing to do with it.

        Not the only thing cringe-worthy, “PCB boards”…

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