a build thread for The Green One, an electric commuter skateboard
My tenth esk8 and seventh DIY-esk8 has been born. This is a commuter board for moving around town, going to work, grocery shopping, and is friendly to trains and shopping carts and hauling cargo. It’s not too heavy and has a handle on the nose. It has lights so I can be seen. It’s a sister board to the Blue One, the Black One, and the Red One.
The handle under the nose combined with the 29.62" deck means it’s extremely easy to pick up, and I can carry it straight-armed without it dragging on the ground.
But I connected some USB extenders then covered them in acrylic sealant. Like, a lot of it. Everywhere. Then put silicone on them, wrapped them in fishpaper and put silicone around that. And only run them at 21.5A each.
I guess the first questions most people who aren’t familiar with esk8 ask: How fast does it go? How far does it go?
I’m not exactly sure but I think it tops-out at around 26mph (42km/h), but at a very high level of torque. It will easily knock you on your ass in a heartbeat if you let it. I’m considering moving the gearing ratio from 15/40 up to 16/40, especially with the 72A durometer wheels – they seem very accommodating to “grip”.
Its range is probably around 29 miles (47km) under ideal conditions and 17.5 miles (28km) in real world conditions.
I have plans for those and don’t want to lose them. They also provide some extremely minor level of ingress protection. …Though come to think about it, I’ve never had any issues with water and Mini Remotes, and been in heavy rain many times, and never done waterproofing modifications to them.
But… why not? You go to extreme measures to waterproof your board components, it seems to me that the remote should be even more protected as it is more prone to water damage?
I don’t know, it’s never been a problem. The radio receivers are definitely heavily waterproofed and I’ve had them fail due to moisture and contamination in the past, but the transmitter itself I’ve just never had water problems with so I’ve not had any reason to work on that aspect.
It could be because if water gets inside, it’s not under heavy vibration. So the water could just run to the bottom and not be atomized into a spray all over the entire inside.
I have a phone which has a Lyft application on it. But in practice, that’s only been used twice, ever.
I do carry spare batteries for the remote.
The radio receivers are also 100% inaccessible. Even on the workbench, it’d take me multiple days to get to the pins needed to bind a new remote to them. On the side of a road somewhere, fugget about it
I have the HFI cutoff set at 2000erpm at this moment in time.
Sensorless ERPM HFI: 2000.00
But that’s after lowering it from the default. On another board, I’ve lowered it under 1000erpm and it works even better. Next time I work on this board, I plan to turn that down to about 700erpm or maybe even less. Each time I lower it, stuff works better.
edit January 2023: the low cutoffs worked well ONLY on older HFI code and ONLY on single-drive large-motor vehicles. On dual drive, the cutoffs needed to be higher
