We love [lolomolo]’s Open Source electric longboard project. Why? Because he completely re-engineered everything while working on the project all through college. He tackled each challenge, be it electronic or mechanical as it came, and ended up making everything himself.
The 48″ x 13″ deck is a rather unique construction utilizing carbon fiber and Baltic birch. In testing the deck, [lolomol] found the deflection was less than an inch with 500 lbs. on the other end. He modified the Caliber II trucks to add four 2250W Turnigy Aerodrive brushless outrunners driving the wheels with the help of belts. The motors are controlled by VESC, an Open Source speed controller. There are a lot of fun details, like the A123 lithium cells equipped with custom battery management system PCBs.
The board sports 5W RGBW headlights that are so bright he can only run them at 10% PWM, plus RGB LED underlighting. All of it is controlled by an onboard Linux box. You can check out [lolomolo]’s GitHub repository for code, schematics, and CAD files. His Instructable for this project also has more design notes and thoughts.
If sweet longboards are your bag, check out the 3D-printed longboard and the long-distance electric longboard we published previously.
I made a DIY electric longboard same style as this. Used also turnigy motor. On maiden run I got maybe 500m far until a small rock jumped into motors and broke one of the magnets.
Good luck without protecting the motors :)
I call that bad luck ^^
I drove mine now over 5 km without an issue an a friend of mine drove his for years with the only problem beeing small rocks jumping into the drivetrain and snapping the belt.
Good luck doesn’t substitute for good design.
Keep in mind that if you cover the air intake holes the motors will overheat and burn up. Maybe a fine wire mesh around the motors?
I’m thinking thin aluminium sheet to act as an air-guide.
Being a what it is it may only ever go in one direction at any appreciable speed. I’d say having a simple piece of plastic or metal strategically placed in front of the motor (relative to direction of travel) would suffice to keep most large debris out of the motor. Alternatively he could put a cover over then entire belt and motor unit and have purposely designed vents to allow for air circulation. Something similar to what they do for CVT systems on side-by-sides/UTVs
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Just a FYI for anyone using wireless nunchuks:
Some brands, if the signal is lost, the receiver will continue pushing the last value for 3-4 seconds, which isn’t fun at speed.
(Or you test it unloaded and watch it disappear under a car)
However, this only is an issue if you interface via the Wii i2c.
They have two IC’s – ‘receiver’ and a black blob.
The ‘receiver’ module knows immediately when signal lost, dropping its clock signal to 1/5 (ish) of ‘connected’ speed.
Personally, my uC monitors the freq of the receiver’s clock as a ‘connected’ signal, and use the Wii interface while valid.
You ‘could’ possibly add some discrete circuitry (RC, 555, whatever) to trigger a pin on loss.
I don’t monitor the LED, as it also reflects button presses.
Just remember to not cutoff motors instantly or you will be flying forward very often.
Something similar happened to my coworker on his homemade E-longboard. The motor controllers responded to overheating by suddenly cutting the power and he ate concrete at 30 mph.
Took me a few beats to realize that was his table the truck was sitting on, rather than his board. “Why go through all this effort and have such a ghetto deck? No risers? No cutouts? Wheel-bite much? Ooooooohhhh that’s a table!”
Thank for the exposure!
To everyone here;
I am very interested in collaborating and including more people in this project. PM me for details. I will be keeping the git fresh.
I recently finished my 4th esk8 build, which is also my cleanest build so far. Imgur album of the board below.
https://imgur.com/a/ftAy7
I have also been keeping a ride log to test it’s performance and efficiency, which can be found in the link to a google sheet below. The doc also contains rides for my 2 earlier boards. I’m interested in testing figuring out the effects of battery pack voltage, gearing and wheel type have on the max speed, average continuous power and power consumption.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eorvXba_T8MIPB3ofDTwA8SjOiL4x7r-A7Iy1rNPU9M/edit?usp=sharing
I like the progress!
interested in collaborating?
lets chat
For anyone else looking for more ideas on building their own, check out the community at http://www.electric-skateboard.builders/
A video of it in action would be awesome.