On Your Phone While Driving An Electric Skateboard

June 9, 2015 by Rick Osgood 28 Comments

Skateboards are fun, but you have to do all that pesky kicking in order to get anywhere. That’s why [Nick] decided to build his own electric skateboard. Not only is the skateboard powered with an electric motor, but the whole thing can be controlled from a smart phone.

[Nick] started out with a long board deck that he had made years ago. After cleaning it up and re-finishing it, the board was ready for some wheels. [Nick] used a kit he found online that came with the trucks, wheels, and a belt. The trucks have a motor mount welded in place already. [Nick] used a Turnigy SK3 192KV electric motor to drive the wheels. He also used a Turnigy electronic speed controller to make sure he could vary the speed of the board while riding.

Next [Nick] needed some interface between a smart phone and the motor controller. He chose to use an Arduino Nano hooked up to a Bluetooth module. The Nano was able to directly drive the motor controller, and the Bluetooth module made it easy to sync up to a mobile phone. The Android app was written using MIT’s App Inventor software. It allows for basic control over the motor speed so you can cruise in style. Check out the video below for a slide show and some demonstration clips.

It’s a popular project, and eerily similar to the one we saw a couple months back.

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Electric Skateboard Rev’ed To Version 2

March 29, 2015 by Rich Bremer 5 Comments

What’s cooler than a sweet skateboard? A sweet electric skateboard! And the only thing cooler than that is a DIY electric skateboard. [comsa42] has proven to be a DIY electric skateboard aficionado with his new project. It’s a rebuild and upgrade from his electric longboard that has previously been featured on Hackaday.

The most noticeable change is the size of the deck, it was cut down to be 31 inches long to enhance its maneuverability. The electronics are housed in an updated fiberglass compartment that attaches to the bottom of the deck. The old compartment had a large port that had to be removed in order to charge the battery. The new compartment has a plug for easily connecting the charger.

The drive components still consist of a brushless DC motor, RC hobby ESC and a LiPo battery. Previously, an RC transmitter and receiver were used to control the motor. [comsa42] wrote an app for his phone to send throttle signals to a Bluetooth module which controls the ESC as well as relays battery life back to the phone.

We think this project is pretty rad and wouldn’t mind taking this skate for a spin around the block.

Serious Skateboard Build Lets You Snowboard Down The Street

February 20, 2015 by Rich Bremer 11 Comments

For some of you HaD readers it’s winter and heading up to a mountain to go snowboarding is quite convenient. Unfortunately, for the boarder-holics, the off-season comes too quickly and lasts far to long. [jfaneumann] is a snowboarder and wanted to get that same carvey feeling during the summer months so he made a DIY skateboard that rides like a snowboard.

[jfaneumann] didn’t come up with the design, it’s modeled after a commercially available product called the Freebord which is basically an oversize skate deck with extra-wide trucks and integrated pivoting wheels (think casters) in the center of the deck. The pivoting wheels stand a little bit proud of the other 4 wheels which makes the board only ride on the pivoting wheels and two of the remaining wheels at a time. This setup allows the rider to carve, slide and spin down the street like a snowboarder would. This looks like fun to ride but at a cost of about $250 for a Freebord, it’s not cheap.

The project started with a home-made deck simply cut from plywood. To get that extra wide stance standard skateboard trucks were modified. Long coupling nuts were screwed onto the truck axles and epoxied into place. On a normal skateboard the wheel rides on an axle that is part of the truck. Since the axles were covered up by the coupling nuts, bolts were used to secure the wheels to the now much wider trucks.

The pivoting wheels for the Freebord look like standard casters so that’s what [jfaneumann] used for his board. He did remove the rubber wheels and replace them with inline skate wheels with real bearings. Wood shims space the casters away from the deck to put them at the right height compared to the other 4 skate wheels.

In the end, [jfaneumann] got the summer riding experience he desired without spending a boatload of cash.

A Cute Little 3D Printed Skateboard

January 19, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 23 Comments

[Julian] has been wanting a tiny little skateboard for a while now, and decided to make something useful on his 3D printer. A little more than twenty hours later a tiny and cute printed skateboard popped out.

[Julian] got the files for his 3D printed skateboard from Thingiverse and printed them off on a MakerGear M2. The parts printed easily, each part taking about six hours to print. The parts are bolted together with five threaded rods, the trucks were screwed on, and the wheels popped into place.

While a normal skateboard probably wouldn’t stand up to the 3D printed parts and threaded rod construction, this Pennyboard is tiny, and most of [Julian]’s weight is right over the trucks at all times. This is also not a board that’s going to see a lot of tricks; it’s basically a micro longboard for moving from one place to another, not something you’ll need to find an abandoned in-ground pool to use properly.

You can check out the video below.

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Self Replicating Skateboard…. What?!?!?

October 26, 2014 by Rich Bremer 19 Comments

[Bart] and company over at Pumping Station One make a lot of skateboard decks. They wanted to build a CNC Router that was not only portable but had a size that was optimized for cutting skateboard decks. The project got a little out of hand and the CNC Router ended up also being a skateboard! As crazy as that sounds, the craziest part may be that they built it in just one night.

The project started off with some stock Shapeoko 2 parts. Achieving the deck-cutting size required shortening the X Axis and tripling the length of the Y Axis resulting in a 250 x 1200mm work envelope. The DC spindle used accepts ER16 collets and has a fully variable speed control. The stand alone selectable 24/48 volt power supply has a neat DIY handle to ease transportation. Even though the router itself has skateboard trucks, it also has a handle at the front so it’s easy to grab and drag behind you.

The guys that built this admit that, as a skateboard, it is kind of crappy. They do go on to mention that a 230lb dude was able to ride it without incident. As a project, however, they hit their goals on the head, ending up with an easily-transportable dedicated skateboard-deck-making CNC Router.

Electric Bubblegum Board

October 20, 2014 by Marsh 17 Comments

The Mini Maker Faire in Atlanta was packed with exciting builds and devices, but [Andrew’s] Electric Bubblegum Boards stood out from the rest, winning the Editor’s Choice Award. His boards first emerged on Endless Sphere earlier this summer, with the goal of hitting all the usual e-skateboard offerings of speed, range, and weight while dramatically cutting the cost of materials.

At just over 12 pounds, the boards are lightweight and fairly compact, but have enough LiFePO4’s fitted to the bottom to carry a rider 10 miles on a single charge. A Wii Nunchuck controls throttle, cruise control, and a “boost” setting for bursts of speed. The best feature of this e-skateboard, however, is the use of 3D-printed parts. The ABS components not only help facilitate the prototyping process, but also permit a range of customization options. Riders can reprint parts as necessary, or if they want to just change things up.

[Andrew’s] board is nearing the 11th hour over at his Kickstarter page, so swing by to see a production video made for potential backers, or stick around after the break for some quick progress and demo videos.

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Electric Longboard Roundup

August 12, 2014 by Marsh 21 Comments

ev longboards everywhere!

Everybody and their grandmother is longboarding electric-style these days: here are some of the most recent developments in the world of kickless cruising.

First up, [comsa42] has punched up an excellent step-by-step visual guide for first-time EV hopefuls, detailing the basics of a battery-powered longboard setup and thoroughly explaining the particulars behind component choices. His build is relatively straightforward: combine a board with a low(ish) kV outrunner motor, some LiPo batteries, an ESC (Electronic Speed Controller), a transmitter/receiver, and a few custom parts for gearing and mounting. This build should be commended not only for its simplicity but also for its frugality: [comsa42] estimates a final cost of around only $300, which is a staggering difference from commercial alternatives such as the Boosted Board and newcomer Marbel.

[comsa42’s] other significant contribution is a low-key and low-cost cover to house the electronics. He simply fiberglassed a small enclosure to protect the expensive internals, then mounted and painted it to blend seamlessly with the rest of the deck. You can find loads of other useful goodies in his guide, including CAD files for the motor mounts and for the wheel assembly.

But wait, there’s more! Stick around after the jump for a few other builds that ditch traditional wheels in favor of a smoother alternative. There’s also a smattering of videos, including comsa42’s] guide overview and some excellent cruising footage of the other board builds doing what they do best.

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