Marathon Falcon | Landyachtz Evo 40 | 12s5p 21700 | Esk8Supply Direct Drive | MakerX dual | cloud wheels

Thank you!
I’ll try that when I get home tonight :slight_smile:

1 Like

I might have some extras for your weight. At 6 payments of $0.00 you can have them lol, I’ll pm

4 Likes

More updates:
I did everything @Pedrodemio suggested and it seems to work great! Thanks! Theres still a lot of snow outside so I wont be able to do ride tests for a while :frowning:

I got my VX1 set up and working :slight_smile:
with the “current reverse with break” mode I am experiencing this:
(Steps are in chronological order)

  • full throttle to full reverse: motors brake. (DOESN’T start reversing)
  • set thumbwheel to neutral: motors neutral/coast
  • set thumbwheel to full reverse: motors reverse slowly (-1000 erpm for now)
  • set thumbwheel to full throttle: motors coast from -4km/h to 0km/h, and then suddenly goes full speed

@mishrasubhransu is this what we want for DD with hard brakes?

I’m currently thinking about making my own enclosure from folded 1/8"ABS sheet

2 Likes

Pedro did a great job at explaining the steps. I use current mode not “curent with brake” This also allows you to be stop on a downward hill.

1 Like

if you kept holding “break” on a flat even after you’re stopped, would you end up going backwards? (slowly)
@mishrasubhransu

Only in ‘current smart reverse mode’ but it feels weird, should be the bottom option on the list

1 Like

ok, ill try all those out in person when all the snow melts

Made my own enclosure today!
I had a 22" x 12" sheet of 1/8" ABS plastic to start. And used a heat gun to warm it up enough to bend.

Put it in a makeshift jig with a vise and clamps:

I screwed up and the dimensions were off :’( This was because the bending radius was bigger than I expected. So I had to flatten it and try again:

It worked in the end! but looked abit wonky. You can see in this picture that the left side was redone and wonky, but the right side was fairly smooth since wasn’t flattened and re-bent yet:

Overall it turned out pretty good for a first try :slight_smile:

Next time I try it, I’d make a different jig with a hinge that bends to get the curve radius down and bend it more uniformly. For the ends, I’dd 3D print something pretty to plug it up since it doesn’t have to be too structural

Just waiting on my inserts now to mount it :slight_smile:

4 Likes

Worked on this build again today.
I drilled holes and added in M4 inserts.


M4 feels a bit small, but thats ok because its only going to be holding up the enclosure because everythings going to be Velcroed to the deck. Added velcro to the battery and BMS and ESC:

And I added more foam on top of the battery for more padding support because there’s space:

I designed end caps for my enclosure and its printing atm. hope it goes well :slight_smile:

4 Likes

I was able to work on it over the weekend some more and added the 3D printed end cap.
I hot glued the inside for a “seal” with the main enclosure. Not too concerned about the physical strength of the printed part because any hits/scrapes will be against the main enclosure. Pretty happy with how it turned out :slight_smile:

I am still designing the front cap. Because this one will include cutouts for the phase wires, charge port, and switch.

5 Likes

I managed to get more work done on my build. Soldered bullets proper on my esc phase connectors. Upgraded wires to the charge port.

And soldered my as150 on/off switch module! The idea was inspired from Deckoz’s post before he left, but all the files were designed by me from scratch. I might make a dedicated thread later to guage interest for this as a product.

I liked this solution better than a loop key because:

  • You can’t loose it
  • Also has anti-spark features
  • It looks better than an ugly loop key
  • Technically can support more amps, but not relevant here

Design:
The switch is a mechanical slide switch that is fully enclosed:




And the ends are connected to xt90’s to hook up to your battery and ESC:


The entire thing slots into a rectangular hole in the enclosure. (End cap piece of my enclosure in my case)

And it has two m3 mount holes to attach to the enclosure. (Or glue works too)

Plugged it in and everything works as expected. Overall I’m very pleased with how it turned out :slight_smile:

8 Likes

I’ve been waiting to see someone figure this out. Very cool!

2 Likes

Got all the small details done! Electronics, gasket, etc.

Swapped the stock bushings out for riptide bushings! Thanks @Jujo for the hookup! :heart:
Seems a bit loose just standing on it at home, but I cant wait to try them out when the weather clears.

The front seems to be lower than the back. So I added in a thicc riser at the front and its all good :slight_smile:




I’m getting around 1.75" of clearance, which is ok. My current board has ~1.85" of clearance and it only scrapes tall speed bumps. My screws are not long enough to add more risers

And its done! =D

It’s been super fun building it and definately tested my patience at times. Now I just gotta wait for the gross snowy weather to clear up and I can give it a test ride! :slight_smile:

Things to test for:

  • general electronics vibrations
  • bushings tightness/setup
  • top speed
  • range test
    This is the first time using a VESC for a high powered board so I need to test stuff like:
  • acceleration (motor/battery amps)
  • throttle curves?
  • different control modes for braking
  • BLDC vs FOC?

Anything else I might have missed to test for?

2 Likes

Surprise sunny afternoon and I was able to do some test rides! :slight_smile:

Got the VESC settings to what I want it. The jittery start isn’t too bad with a kick start.
I fell during a speed test because my bushings were too loose :’( And that is even after I tightened it lots! I was prepared with gloves and hard knee pads so I was able to slide it out. I scuffed up my remote though :’(

I swapped the cone out for a harder cone and tightened everything more, and it is stable at 50km/h :slight_smile:
Max speed: ~50-52km/h

This is where I need some help figuring out what is doing on.
I started with 60a battery (total) and 60a motor (each). I did some tests up and down my small street for ~8km. I was doing pretty hard acceleration and braking tests.
I went back to my bench, opened it up and checked stuff out. Everything was still in working order. I did some more ride tests going further out this time. At around the 5km mark, at max throttle, I accelerate very very slowly. Like a meepo board speed 2 slow. It still reaches the max speed after ~100m. So I know it is a current limiting issue.

I limped it back home and opened it up and both the motor and the ESC were “hot to the touch” so I wasn’t sure if it was the motors overheating or the ESC.

  • 1. Any idea which is more likely to overheat and throttle first? Overheating ESC or overheating motors?

I charged it up again for ~2 hrs and toned down the settings to: battery 60a (total) motors 40a (each). I did a longer test ride today. I can still feel slight throttling around the 10km mark, but nowhere near as bad and is acceptable in my eyes. However, around 35km into the test, I got massive throttling again. This time I was going only ~6km/h! I had to take a bus home. When I got off the bus, the max speed was still 6km/h even though the motors and ESC had 25 minute busride to cool off. When I opened up the enclosure, both the motors and the ESC cooled off already from the bus ride.

I measured the battery voltage to be 39.3v. My battery cutoff settings is: cutoff start: 40.8v. cutoff end: 37.2v. I guess I found the culprit.

  • 2. Is there any way to draw a bit more amps at “cutoff start” maybe giving me up to 15km/h?
  • 3. What voltages cutoff start value would you guys recommend for a 12s20ah pack? The default setting seems fairly conservative for a pack this large.
    1. My VX1 is showing 3 out of 4 led “dots” on the battery meter at 39.3v… Are any of your dots battery meter showing correctly?
      EDIT: It was set to 10s voltage! No wonder I got stranded thinking I still had 3/4 of battery left! XD I changed it to 12s now :slight_smile:

It was a great test run and I have learned a lot from the experience.

Thank you for your help!
@mishrasubhransu @ryansinatra @Skyart @BillGordon @Pedrodemio

1 Like

Well, it is clear that the low speed was a result of the battery cutoff setting.

I’ve never used a 12s battery for any of my esk8 but, if your battery gets low, expect your speed to slow down. That’s just how it goes

3 Likes

Well it slows down from 50km/h max speed to ~30kmh near dead. (calculated based on kv) It’s because of the VESC cutoff setting that it artificially limited me to 6kmh when that was triggered. I was wondering if the VESC tool has a setting for us to adjust the cutoff behavior. Or asking around for tried and true non-conservative cutoff numbers

Those direct drive motors if they heat up beyond your vesc settings, the vesc will throttle them down.

1 Like

The motors don’t have temp sensors on them. Do you mean the VESC can estimate the heat based on phase/resistance magic maths?

I run 36 start and 33.6 end for a 12s pack

2 Likes

This is we’re having a BT module to log can save a lot of trouble shooting :grin:

Running at these speeds there is a good chance the direct drive is overheating and throttling, you may need to calibrate the beta factor to get it better

And these cut off values are indeed too conservative, I usually set to start at 3 V and end at 2.9 V per cell, for you would be start at 36 V and end at 34.8 V

The goal isn’t even to drain them to that point, but to allow for the battery current to still be reasonable at almost 0 % when you take the sag into account

1 Like