Should I Open Source My Esk8 Hand Controller Project? Need Your Thoughts!

[georgebenett]

Hey guys,

I’ve been working on a pretty advanced hand controller for electric skateboards for the past 15 months, It’s a serious passion project with real effort and money behind it—custom pcbs, firmware, a clean UI, telemetry, safety features, and more.
Think of it as something in the realm of what you’d wish Flipsky or Maytech would release if they really cared about quality and user experience.

Now I’m at a crossroads.

Some friends have warned me that if I open source this project, companies like Flipsky or Maytech could fork it, manufacture a clone for half the price, and even pass it off as their original design. That sucks to think about, especially if they cut corners and damage the reputation of the design, also since I have put in so much time, effort and money into it, i want to be able to make a few bucks back.

At the same time, I don’t want to go fully closed-source and disappear like @WavRX with his iRemote—that was a promising project, and now it’s just e-waste for people who bought into it. I want this project to live on, be supported, be modified and possibly spark a better ecosystem for esk8 builders and riders.

So here’s my question to the community:

• How do you feel about open-sourcing it?
• Would you support a transparent, semi-open approach where the community gets access but commercial use is restricted?
• Do you think it’s possible to protect the integrity of the design and still share it?
• Or is the best route to make a polished product first, then open up the design later when it’s more established?

I’m genuinely torn and would appreciate hearing your honest thoughts—especially from folks who’ve built or released their own hardware or been burned by promising projects that vanished.

Thanks!

here are some pictures and specs of the project!

high sensitivity hall sensor
light sensor (automatic brightness control)
2 capacitive sensors (for dead mans switch)
vibration actuator for haptic feedback
buzzer for sound notification
qi wireless charging
1600mah battery
fuel gauge (has its own power meter and battery health analisys)
amoled touchscreen 1.69"
accelerometer
will have fota updates
there is some options on the UI like calibrating all the sensors, enabling and disabling features, configuring your skateboard, has automatic pairing

you can use one controller to controll several skateboards, no need to re-pair.
a few images:

[jack.luis]

I think you need to answer a question for yourself. Do you want to distribute this product physically? To me it seems like the most proprietary tech here is that custom PCB you made and your code. I wonder if you could just sell that PCB with links to the rest of the parts to distributors or something. Basically drop ship those PCBs and make a flashing tool that keeps the code obfuscated for customers and distributers to use.

If it were me I wouldn’t want to be packing stuff in boxes and going to the post office everyday because I don’t think I could charge enough for it to be worth my time.

[DougM]

Question

If you don’t get the remote manufactured in China do they actually rip off designs? Like are they trolling the internet looking for products and actively stealing them?

It’s my understanding that if you get a product manufactured in China they will just keep making them after your production run and put them on Ali.

Hoyt kept their remote closed source and it was very successful. On the other hand the DaveGa is (I think) Open Source and it’s done really well too.

So if you get it manufactured somewhere other than china I think you can open source it. If you get it manufactured in China then closed, and flash them here, not there.

In terms of market share I’m not sure there’s a lot of space for a high-end remote. Feels like most people in this space are cost constrained and looking for lower end.

Also the market is somewhat saturated.

Or not. If MBoards isn’t going to continue to manufacture the HOYT remote then you are perfectly timed to step in with a good replacement. But your RF reliability has to be as good as theirs.

Bottom line, if it were me I’d release it closed source for now, and then consider open sourcing later on depending on how things go.

I heard, here I think, that if you have a Hall based remote and people bring them near external magnets it can cause the board to react. I wonder if it would be a good idea to put a 3rd Hall on the pcb, not near the trigger, as an external interference sensor that locks out functionality. Though not a lot of people keep spare neodymiums in their pockets so it’s kinda in the weeds.

[BenjaminF]

In my experience from my time working for Hoyt/Metroboard/DBS, that’s not really how it works. I’ll explain.

@DougM

If you don’t get the remote manufactured in China do they actually rip off designs? Like are they trolling the internet looking for products and actively stealing them?

It’s my understanding that if you get a product manufactured in China they will just keep making them after your production run and put them on Ali.

“China” is not a monolith, any more than America is. That’s to say, there isnt just one way in which “China” operates. There are individual actors (people, companies, markets, etc) that all make their own decisions, just like anywhere else.

Hoyt manufactured the Puck in China for over 5 years. I’ve never seen it show up on AliExpress. As far as I know, the manufacturer never did a deal behind our backs to sell Pucks to anyone else. They only ever did business with us, because they were a reputable company who had much larger concerns than the couple thousand dollars they might make by ripping us off. Same with the proprietary hoyt tires, our CNC’d trucks/mounts, etc etc etc.

Flipsky, on the other hand, is a much smaller player. They are a niche engineering/product design firm targeted pretty specifically at the PEV market. When Jan open sourced the original DaveGa, they took that open source and ran with it. When Joey developed the zBMS in his spare time at college, they reverse-engineered it and undercut him. And of course there’s the VESC architecture, which they mostly adhered to the license of for a long time, until their recent “not VESC” that’s obviously a locked down VESC with a reskinned VESC tool.

They absolutely have people on this forum and other places in the online PEV community who are looking for stuff like this. The only question that matters for stuff like this is “will some person notice my design and decide it’s worth their time/effort to undercut me.” That question is true no matter where you share the design, or what country you chose to manufacture in. The calculus might be different, but the underlying consideration is the same.

It’s tempting to point at the times when someone gets their design ripped off as proof that “China is just like that.” But that ignores all of the times when someone outsources their design and DOESNT get ripped off. Which is much much more common. For most manufacturers, your specific design for your very niche market is so far below their notice that it would be a waste of their time to try and undercut you.

And all this ignores the existence of business contracts and exclusivity deals and everything else that exists to add certainty to these situations. Which, yes, you can absolutely get contracts and deals with overseas manufacturers.

[chr1spe]

I was making a reply about how I’m pretty sure Flipsky is selling Davega based screens now, and someone like that is who you’d be worried about if you open-sourced it, but you know more and said it better than I could.

[BenjaminF]

Flipsky has been selling the original davega for many years, because Jan open sourced it. That undercutting is why the next design Jan made (the Davega X) is closed-source. As far as I know, Flipsky never tried to undercut the Davega X, because that would require reverse engineering and they didnt see it as worthwhile.

Its all cost-benefit analysis.

[DougM]

@BenjaminF

that’s not really how it works

I love it when someone who actually knows what they are talking about chimes in

[jack.luis]

Just to make sure I get my share of the credit I was in the same room as him while he was doing all this and making dick jokes which made him laugh sometimes

[MichaelWA]

@DougM

Though not a lot of people keep spare neodymiums in their pockets so it’s kinda in the weeds.

Any type of magnets will work. Mag safe airpods and phone cases is the two common that people have.

[me_ashman]

I’d make a few, see how they sell and perform in the market then decide what to do with it. Looks like a nice remote.

[DougM]

@BenjaminF

Hoyt manufactured the Puck in China for over 5 years

who owns the Puck IP now? MBoards?

[BenjaminF]

You’d have to ask someone who’s involved with any of that. I’ve been out since Hoyt went under in 2024.