Revel at the "brand" new competitor in the direct drive Esk8 race!

Vendor Corner (SERIOUS)
731

I’m saying not to ignore the vibration alerts, regardless of how many bars are showing.

It is worth mentioning…and I may be repeating this…the predecessor remote had 4 battery lights.
The first three were blue. The forth one was red. The forth bar started flashing red soon after it was the last indicator showing.

The old L3-x remote can still connect with a revel kit drive – so that tells you that the old ESC/remote are similar to those in the Revel kit.

I liked the old blue/red light indicators. It gave riders some visual queues that the last bar was “danger/warning /different” from the first three blue indicator lights.

That color coding is not there on the LCD remote. So I think that’s a little unfortunate in terms of informing riders about the “extremely low battery condition” that riders might understand if the last indicator turns red.

Again, the key thing is to not ignore the vibration alerts. Those usually happen on the last bar. However, the can happen much sooner if:

  • The wheels are oversized
  • the weather is cold
  • the battery is the travel size
  • the rider is heavy
  • the battery is brand new or has been sitting idle for months.

So if you feel those vibration alerts with more than one bar remaining, don’t ignore those vibration alerts either.

Also, expect about 3/4 range for new or recently out of storage batteries. You will get the range back over about 6 charge cycles if you treat the battery kindly and don’t ignore those alerts.

I’m being fairly critical of the new Revel Kit remote and the lack of instructions on how react to the vibration alerts. This is not to be hostile towards the Revel Kit Brand. Most people know i’m a fan.

The purpose is to save riders the grief of having a dead battery and nothing to ride and wishing “oh darn, i should have listened to Paul”

Case in point, Rob Butler is an Ottawa Revel kit owner with a 2wd Revel Kit. He ignored the vibration alert several times just yesterday. When he got home, the battery would not take a charge. Eventually it took a charge but on hte next ride it only had about a kilometer of range before it shut down. Now it won’t take a charge at all.

I’ve lent Rob one of my favorite electric skateboards until he gets a replacement battery. Rob is a great guy. The first thing he said is “its my fault. I ignored the vibration alerts” and he also shared that information openly and honestly with Flo.

What wories me is that if everyone ignores the vibration alerts, that there could be a flury of warranty claims on the battery and perhaps a bunch of unfair complaints about product quality. That woud really be unfortunate.

If you watch your remote extremely carefully during a vibration alert, it does briefly flash a message in fine print that says something like “Your battery has dropped to critically low voltage”. It is hard to catch becasue the print is small and the message is brief. However, your remote is telling you the same thing that I am. Time to stop and charge immediately.

So I totally agree that the low battery alarm documentation should be better.

Where I disagree with you @jxslepton is that the advertised range is in any way deceptive. Maximum range is not a guarantee. If you are getting almost 11 miles, that is absoloutely within the advertised range of 10 -15 miles. You are also getting far more range that I would expect for myself unless I was riding on eco mode in much warmer weather. At this time of year, with the colder weather and recently out of storage batteries, I am totally amazed that you are getting the range that you are. You must be much lighter than me and have much warmer weather.

Every rider will get a different range depending on weight, temperature, acceleration habits and wheel size. If the range that you get is not enough for you then either buy more revel kit batteries or jumper in a booster battery. Its not hard.

@jxslepton even though I don’t agree with your stance on range expectations, I am grateful that you are a tad hard nosed about it becasue it is an opportunity for other riders to really wrap thier heads around how to interpret a the low battery vibration alert (and the easy to miss on-screen text warning).

And even though you disagree with me, I hope you realize that I’m trying to help you and other riders get the most out of thier board.

Ignoring the critical battery alarm on any electric skateboard can have the exact same result. Riders damage their batteries and feel great regret afterwards.

732

Cell phone GPS apps will be much more accurate than any skateboard remote’s estimate of distance. So don’t rely on the remote to tell you how far you have traveled.

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733

Glad you are safe. Those expansion cracks can be brutal.

I notice that you have 100mm wheels. Larger wheels are very hard on range. Direct drives have alot of amazing advantages. One disadvantage is that you cannot gear down for larger wheels. Consequeintly every time you accelerate on 100mm wheels it is the same as accelerating 10% faster on 90mm wheels. This draws down the battery much faster than the standard 90 mm wheel size because every gentle start that you make is the equivalent of a jack rabit start. And every brisk acceleration that you do, has an effect on the battery that is closer to a drag race.

So to be getting the advertized range on larger wheels, is pretty awesome for you.

I’ve got 110 mm wheels on mine and I’m starting to realize that they are real battery killers. I’ve ordered 100mm and 90mm in the 74A hardness.

Ignoring a vibration alert on an ovesized wheel presents a much greater risk to the battery than doing so on the standard 90mm wheel size.

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734

How are the TB wheels at 100mm? Are they squishy good? Have you tried 110mms before? Most peeps here only go for the TB110s

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735

So far they’re pretty good. They give me piece of mind in that they increase the clearance from the road slightly and also few a bit more comfortable.

Wanted to try out the 110mm but don’t want to reduce my range even more.

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736

I’ll have 90’s, 100 and 110 soon. I’ll be doing some comparisons.

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737

The TB wheels?

Look forward to hear your review in it, I’m choosing between 100mm and 110mm cos the price and also acceleration factor using 36t pulley…

2 Likes
738

I am still waiting for the two smaller sizes to arrive in the mail. However, unless you change the gearing, you can execpect to lose 10% of acceleration and braking when switching form 90 to 100. You lose 20% when switching from 90 to 110. That’s based on the ratio of the wheel circumferece.

The impact on the battery will probably vary greatly depending on rider weight and acceleration. I’ll try to figureout a way to take some measurements. Too bad I don’t have a treadmill.

1 Like
739

Alas, it rains a lot where I live … I rode my X1 pro for several month (a little less than 1000 miles) in puddles, under heavy rain, etc … Really soaked it ! And so far so good, no rust in the hubs, the thing is really almost " waterproof ". I Believe they are ip 55 if I’m not wrong

740

I just saw earlier in this thread that they use the same formula as the 110’s, all 74a. It is not clear on the DIY website though. I bet they feel pretty nice

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741

Hey man,

It seems like you think of batteries as very very delicate things.

And yes in a sense they are delicate, but its not very hightech stuff that fries in one second, or gets destroyed after you “overdischarge” it too much after one virbration. I always run my batteries without discharge protection and once my bms failed on me while charging/discharging. This resulted a battery pair going till 0.8V and two other around 2V, i forcecharged those pairs and they worked well after, even the 0.8V, take note that they probably didnt work as well as before, but they still worked good. I have also fried a lot of stuff touching the two poles of a battery on accident aswell, this includes one of my soldering irons that also fried the outer shell of one of the batteries, i was friggin afraid it would catch fire but thank god it didnt. I had to replace those cells, but the rest of the cells didnt even show any signs of damage.

Now Lion batteries lose charge over time aswell and as far as i have heard they lose a lot of charge after 2 years, or 1000/2000 charge cycles.

overdischarge edited @pkasanda

742

I have some single cell chargers that I ordered in the hopes of restoring my One wheel battery.

When those arrive, I’m going to try to individually charge the cells in Rob’s battery for him. We’ll see how that turns out. But either way its super inconvenient for Rob and he wishes he would not have ignored as many vibration alerts as he did.

You mentioned overcharge. I think you meant over-dis-charge. That’s what we’ve been discussing and that’s how Rob damaged his battery yesterday.

For a discussion of overcharge see the next post.

743

On the topic of overcharge, it is particularly important to immediatley heed the first overcharge alert from any electric skateboard including but not limited to a Revel kit.

There are two ways to wire an electric skateboard to the battery:

  1. Protect the battery even if it kills the rider
  2. Protect the rider even if it kills the battery.

The majority of production electric skateboards are wired using method 1. That’s why stuff like this happens.

https://www.facebook.com/esk8fightclub/videos/1967454149968861/?t=42

The Revel Kit uses Method 2. The Revel kit charger is specifically designed to under charge your battery so that you have about 10% capacity left for regenerative current at the beginning of a ride.

So with a Revel Kit, you as a rider will savely make it to the bottom of a hill wiht brakes, even if you ignore a vibration alert. However, damage to your battery will be done before you reach the bottom.

I have described this topic in greater detail above.

So with a Revel Kit, never switch to a different charger, This includes chargers for the L3-x and V4 landwheels which look identical to the Revel kit but are not. Those chargers will overcharge the revel kit battery giving you zero regenerative current capacity at the beginning of your ride.

The Revel Kit gives you a reasonable but limited amount of downhill braking capacity fresh off the charger. Boosted boards and onewheels have almost zero down hill braking capacity on a fresh charge. So you loose power almost immediately on those products.

The revel kit down hill braking capacity prior to a vibration alert depends on your weight, how steep the hill is and how tall the hill is. But any overcharge vibration from the revel kit means that you have misjudged how soon you can travel downhill and you are about to cook your battery.

744

Also, if you live at the top of a giant hill, then don’t buy any short to mid-range production skateboard. Get something like a Lacroix that has massive 30 to 60 km range battery, These machines also typically are undercharged off the charger so there is ample down hill braking capacity from the get-go. Or get a custom build board wiht a giant battery and a custom charger that lets you select the peak voltage that the battery will charge to.

Thats if you live at the top of a giant hill.

745

Hey @Sharneaustin

You are the first to post pictures of the motors on the third production run. I have a question. When you disassembles the original wheels to replace the adapters, were the adapters bolted to the motors with machine screws? Or is the adapter only held into place by the tightening of the axle nut?

746

4 philips head screws equally spaced hold the adapter around the motor - see my post.

747

Thanks

748

Hey @Bavioze

I just wanted to follow up to both agree/disagree with one part of your comments
You are absoloutely correct that over discharging a battery can damage individual cells or cell pairs.
And you are right that you can sometimes (but not always) succeed in re-balancing cells individually
And you are right that even after rebalacing, that the affected cells are often never the same.

I just wanted to add that a battery with just one damaged or under performing cell can result in a very unsafe battery. It can lose voltage so rapidly that the rider can be caught by surprise with no power. So it is much better to avoid overdischarging a battery instead of hoping to repair it afterwards.

Yes, you can get away with ignoring one vibration alert. Ignoring two or three is playing with fire. Riding on larger wheels makes it more important to stop very soon after the very first vibration alert. The same is true of travel sized batteries. Combinations of travel sized battereis and large wheels present the greatest risk to the battereis if you ride past the alerts.

Again, this is for any esk8. It is not specific to the Revel Kit.

1 Like
749

I guess you are not wrong about that :man_shrugging: if you run no discharge protection you should indeed have a voltage meter on hand.

750

For me I am more concern about the comfort, for me if let’s say the 110mm and 100mm doesn’t feel like a difference between heaven and earth then to me it makes more sense to save the money and go smaller :slight_smile: