DIY Board builder tool

Ok, so not sure how this idea will sit with the vendors out there but here goes…

I am thinking of building a DIY board builder dashboard/app

So, let’s say a someone is looking to build a mountain board DIY setup

From the board builder they select a mountain board deck from a list of options, then the list of trucks is narrow down to suitable trucks, from there a list of motor mounts or gears drives, narrow down the list of wheels, hubs, then tires etc etc etc. If they pick a particular battery box, i could give them max size pack, (you get the idea)

So building a model will take some time and new additions and combos can be made all the time, but for someone just starting out in this DIY space, things can get confusing really easily. I want the user to create a parts list from across all vendors, with links and pics. I might even crawl this forum to pull similar builds to show examples of where certain components have been used.

Now here is the part some vendors might not like, I am looking to crawl and scrape the contents and items off their sites to add them into this tool automatically (to some degree anyway). (shopify or squarespace should be easy ish)

I am not sure about adding the scraped prices into the builder as this may be contentious with some, and I don’t really want to create a “compare the market” tool as this might be unfair to some, (local tax, import duty etc)

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That’s a sick idea bro!

And it also sounds like a monumental effort to achieve!

Happy to help however i can, which may not be much :sweat_smile:

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this sounds amazing, like pcpartpicker for esk8? I’m so down. it would also be a great way to aggregate vendors and parts categories and find the best price for a given part within a certain build’s limitations or requirements.

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trampa’s website is going to be a fucking pain to scrape, frank sort your shit out!

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I’ve had this idea for years, I just don’t have the ability to do it

Cool thing to bring into fruition @Adstars

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This would be incredible. As a newbie I started out searching this community for something like this…even a flowchart.
Suggestion to make this super noob friendly: at each junction/choice, indicate very basic reasons people would choose different options. Example for wheel choice section: “wheel choice: larger diameter for higher top speed, smaller for more torque.” Would also mention durometer, pneumatics vs PU vs clouds. Maybe that’s not the goal of your idea to really guide a noob in selecting parts that would fit their end goal (street vs AT, speed vs torque, carvy vs stability, etc) and maybe your just wanting to make a comprehensive shopping compendium for experienced builders but I think the more of a “guide” it would be, the more I’d love it and the more new community members would be able to stick with it and follow through on completing a build. Love the idea.

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I feel like if it caters to novices too much it’ll suffer in utility for experienced builders

I would suggest to tread carefully. Some pics can be taken by professional photographers that require attribution.
If you do go for website pics, have written permission to protect yourself

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That is a flawed statement. I have more top speed AND torque than most people have on my 9" tires and it’s not gonna be because my wheels are bigger. It’s not just a fact of one item will give you a feature. A very complex combination of things culminate into the wanted results.

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Hence the value of this tool

Go for it. I can possibly help a little with some Lacroix knowledge if needed

Even though I’m admittedly a novice, yes I know this. But the fact remains if all else is equal, the statement about wheel d is true. What I was trying to say is IF you want to make it noob friendly then at each junction/choice it would be nice to briefly and basically answer the question “why would I want category A over category B?” What’s the number one pro and number one con for… type of wheel, size of wheel, or whatever.
It was just a suggestion but again if that’s not the point of this then that’s fine, would still be awesome.

adjusting values and seeing what changes will tell you the same information

What value would I adjust to tell me why I would want a gear drive over belt?

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It would be great if the tool had a “rolling resistance” result value that would change based on type of drivetrain, with hubs and DD having the most and belts/chains having the least.

this rolling resistance could also be factored in to an automatic efficiency calculation to avoid making people have to guess the efficiency of their build (typically 80%-95%)

Yep, I’m working on it, will publish a demo perhaps late December.

I am looking to provide a little direction and guidance for the new (and more experienced) diy builder. Remove some of that doubt from the inexperienced, that things will work, and make a DIY option a more assured one, simplify the whole process.

The vendors are making some great complete boards, which makes a DIY perhaps less attractive. Was looking at how to recover some of that lost share and get people into DIY. The building itself can be a great experience.

Imagine the user picking a setup based on their requirements, sending a parts list off to a custom builder for review and even for it to be built.

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Okay hold on what

Are you nuts lol

Hubs and DD absolutely have the least rolling resistance (nearly that of a push board), and then gear drives are close after that, followed by chain, and then belt.

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Sounds intuitively correct, but I would love to see some actual numbers on this

Yes some actual numbers would be good, I’ve never gotten them myself but from feeling this is what I have discovered, having ridden all of them except chain.

Would be easy to get some real numbers from a push & roll test

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you misinterpret what I mean. high value meaning least resistance (highest efficiency)