Some of you might know i’m building a super stealth board with an integrated deck with hubs due to laws in my country that’s about to hit next year.
Now begs the question, small remote, or no remote? Or something different altogether?
I made this thread to discuss what can be done, and have a bunch of ideas thrown together so that people like me, who still want to esk8 in an esk8 ‘forbidden’ region, can do so in a stealth manner.
I stumbled upon Low Guido’s Push assist system, using a nunchuck connected via UART, and a button where the rear foot presses onto, and then it retains its speed when you kickpush to a certain speed. Removing the rear foot off the button, causes the board to slow down and then come to a stop as you foot stop.
Since this was a 2016 video, i was wondering if there’s any way to achieve something similar or better, using better tech, if there is any?
Also, here is Mellow Board’s Endless mode. Take a look!
What do you think about a front foot pad and a rear foot pad?
Front one detects Rider and when you step off it very slowly applies brakes. While on front foot pad speed is maintained.
Back foot pad would be accelerate slowly. Maybe different combinations 10 00 11 01 would be higher acceleration and harder braking.
My two cents on this.
If you footbreak you’ll probably do so with you front foot on the board. (except if you usually ride “mongo”) so break on realese from front pad will restrict it to very minor breaking.
Commidity IMUs used for sensing motion in electronics have two separate systems inside: three Gyroscopes, that detect actual rotation about all three axes, and three accelerometers that detect linear acceleration in X, Y and Z. The gyroscope side wouldn’t detect movement of the board other than from turning, and the accelerometer would pick up TONS of noise extraneous from vibration (RC drones have issues with vibration in their IMUs, and they don’t even have to deal with bumpy roads!), as well a hills and any environmental acceleration/deceleration such as from changes in terrain, and would have no real way to distinguish that from any user input such as kicks or braking. (Yes the gyroscope could distinguish hills, but my point is that the noise floor would be so high that I think it would be quite difficult to come up with a robust solution using nothing but an IMU.)
I think some sort of foot position button/pad/sensor is definitely a good direction to pursue. That, combined with motor speed feedback and maybe an IMU, but I think the IMU could be eliminated altogether.
That’s exactly why you need a UART device. Using solely an IMU is nearly impossible, but very doable if you’re keeping track of the motor current (or power) and the rpm’s.
Mellows endless mode operates on a speed control, not a current control. And as a result, their motor power monitoring can remain independant of their input (in the case of speed control, voltage)
Agreed that you need something interpreting the data and doing some control-loop stuff. Still doesn’t negate the noise and lack of signal differentiation though. A button/pressure pad coupled with either a PID loop or just a very slow decay (say over 30 seconds or so) would work without the risk of the IMU getting confused and freaking out the system (It happens - I had my phone’s IMU get stuck in landscape mode, to the point that a hard reboot didn’t fix it. Had to physically knock it back into working order.)
Can I just ask that we dont all try to reinvent the wheel please. Holding a remote is safe and the braking is reliable. So basically just copy mellow hard!
I remembered Wajdi, the guy who did the Photon remote and Proton, was fiddling with the Endless mode on the Proton, but it seems like he’s MIA for awhile now.
It’s not priority no 1 at the moment. The endless mode can be quite tricky. There is also the risk to shooting your board into the traffic etc. I guess it’s more complex than we all think.
Mellow seem to have nailed it on thier esc. It’s not perfect from what I understand but it would add a whole new dimension to what we can do with a vesc.
Might be worth putting that into the first post because people just cant comprehend what it’s about. Whenever this topic comes up we get the “we’ve got cruise control” comments flying in. It’s not even close to cruise control at all.
I would ride at 10mph with this shit on the beach every morning in the sea breeze with my hair blowing in the fresh morning wind. Fully erect the whole way.
Done! Thanks for the suggestion. For my scenario, i’d like to have something that is like Mellow’s Endless mode, but with a really small remote that i can hide in my hand easily, or even no remote??? If that is even possible, and have it a foot button like Guido’s set up.
You guys might be discussing things that simply dont matter? I’m not ee minded at all but all endless ride does is maintain and ramp down push speed. Why are gyros required? Surely this is a simple challenge to at least implement on the flats?
Let’s worry about inclines and fancies later. Right now all it needs to do is hold speed when we push and then gradually ramp it down.
Make it not kick in under a certain speed to stop boards riding away slowly in coffee shops and buses and we’re golden
kinky <3.