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Another 3D printed EUC project


MattJ

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4 minutes ago, HunkaHunkaBurningLove said:

Nicely fabricated!!  What 3D printer are you using?  Once you get your tire let us know how the sharp turning goes if there is enough clearance.

I´m using a CTC fabricator dual, which is a Makerbot dual clone. Printed in PLA. I was thinking about sharp turns, so I mostly lengthened it  but only widened it by 15mm, mainly to keep the two halves together more firmly. It might be possible to reduce this by some 5 mm if necessary, but that will reduce overall stability, but some glue might then be used to attach it to the pedal more firmly.

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9 minutes ago, HunkaHunkaBurningLove said:

Ahhh that was one printer I was looking at here:

What do you think of the printer so far?  Do you recommend it?

I´ve had mine for over two years and I´m quite happy with it. Definitely ok for the price.

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The tire arrived today, so I was finally able to assemble all the parts including the pedal extensions, which are now painted black and covered with anti slipping tape. Also I have replaced the regular nuts with knurled ones for easier disassembly with less tools. Unfortunately, I am about to leave for a 1 week holiday, so no test drive before that since I don´t have time to take care of the remaining electrical installations. But I can already see that the wheel seems quite comfortable and not too wide despite having space for up to 4 battery packs.

 

MS14-528-11.jpg

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  • 2 weeks later...

Up and running - finally!

Today finally a few first test rounds at my house with a borrowed 2200mAh battery from my generic. At first, vertical calibration was off and the response was extremely soft, which made it very difficult to ride. It took me some time to figure out how to calibrate the wheel. I received three android apps with the motor, all of them in chinese, but I finally managed to calibrate the position and change the control board to hard mode, which is still quite soft in my opinion, but manageable.

My first impressions: This motor is fast, quite a difference compared to my generic. It seems to go faster than I dare to ride, at least before I get used to this one. I also like the fact that it doesn´t lift the pedal even at higher speeds. The cycle feels quite comfortable, especially with the pedal extensions, but they are not ideal for very sharp turns since they might scratch the ground a bit.

I just finished putting together a 5200mAh battery pack (2x2600 mAh cells in parallel connection), which I will test tomorrow. I will also add  more packs lateron to get the full capacity.

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Is there a tiltback feature available if you want to implement it or is it a beep warning only?  I find the tiltback really helps just in case it's noisy like in a busy street or windy with a helmet on and you can't hear the warning.  I wonder if soldering one of those spinny, vibrating devices like in cell phones on the inner side of one of the battery covers might help so when it beeps it can vibrate too.

Did you get the wider tire from MicroWorks or is that a standard width tire?

I think it would be nice to print out some curved bolt-on fender covers to add some flare to the wheel and cover up the tire a little.  So what was the cost breakdown of your build?

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10 minutes ago, HunkaHunkaBurningLove said:

Is there a tiltback feature available if you want to implement it or is it a beep warning only?  I find the tiltback really helps just in case it's noisy like in a busy street or windy with a helmet on and you can't hear the warning.  I wonder if soldering one of those spinny, vibrating devices like in cell phones on the inner side of one of the battery covers might help so when it beeps it can vibrate too.

There are (very) small vibration motors available for cheap, but probably they're too small to feel anyway (if located inside the shell), and the larger ones might draw too much current... If MattJ decides to test them, I think it would need also a series and flyback/freewheel -diode (in parallel with the motor) to prevent it from spiking back to the mainboard.

 

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If he adds in this board to tap into that 60V output on the board:

https://wholesaler.alibaba.com/product-detail/converter-DC-60V-to-12V-output_60461417441.html

Epoxy this onto the shell somewhere:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mabuchi-12V-DC-Vibration-Motor-RC-260RA-Size-Vibrator-Weight-Massager-Toy-6VDC-/111516618779

(Okay @Czestnut don't even think about posting in this thread ;))

Would that work?

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9 minutes ago, HunkaHunkaBurningLove said:

If he adds in this board to tap into that 60V output on the board:

https://wholesaler.alibaba.com/product-detail/converter-DC-60V-to-12V-output_60461417441.html

Epoxy this onto the shell somewhere:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mabuchi-12V-DC-Vibration-Motor-RC-260RA-Size-Vibrator-Weight-Massager-Toy-6VDC-/111516618779

(Okay @Czestnut don't even think about posting in this thread ;))

Would that work?

It would at least help in the sense that the current draw couldn't blow anything on the mainboard ;)  The rest is "just" a matter of designing a simple circuit so that when the buzzer goes on, so does the motor.

EDIT: The step-down converter should be connected straight to the battery, unless there's already a connector on the Microworks-board that's just connected directly to the battery lines on the board.

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I´m not sure whether it will tilt or not - I was only testing it for a few minutes in my own yard, so I suppose my max speed wasn´t much more than 20 km/h. I don´t know what happens when you go faster.  I was comparing it to my generic,  which starts to tilt very early, which is pretty annoying when riding near top speed (around 14 km/h) for longer times.

MS14-528-13.jpg

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I wonder if mounting a few of these vibrating motors in the pedal spaces attached to an on/off switch would provide a "foot massage" feature on those long trips.  :D

Maybe @electric_vehicle_lover or @Lz Lee can comment on whether tiltback is present or configurable on these boards.  Did you try the Gotway or KingSong apps as I thought I heard they work with the MicroWorks controllers?  Are you planning to do the voltage read-out mod in a future revision?

@esaj - think there's a 60V point on the controller for powering accessories:

Weird - can't link to @JessicaWu's comment directly... it truncates the link.  Oh well it's on page 5 near the middle.  Also these @ things are so buggy...

60V output.png

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It does not tilt, just beeps. But you can use the GotWay app to configure a vibration of your Android after a specific velocity.

If you want hardware, just use my MOD of the RGB LED strip where you can get 5 or 12v at 2 amps and turn any light, buzzer, vibration motor, etc at any specific velocity - it is just a matter to costumize the Arduino code :-)

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1 minute ago, electric_vehicle_lover said:

It does not tilt, just beeps. But you can use the GotWay app to configure a vibration of your Android after a specific velocity.

If you want hardware, just use my MOD of the RGB LED strip where you can get 5 or 12v at 2 amps and turn any light, buzzer, vibration motor, etc at any specific velocity - it is just a matter to costumize the Arduino code :-)

My GotWay app that they sent me with this motor is in chinese. Do you know where I could get an english version?

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Just now, MattJ said:

My GotWay app that they sent me with this motor is in chinese. Do you know where I could get an english version?

There's at least one older English Gotway-app available in the forum downloads-section:  http://forum.electricunicycle.org/files/

Someone else just today asked me about modifying Wheelemetrics to support the Microworks board (as it apparently works with the older Gotway-app, but didn't with Wheelemetrics, as it has more strict protocol detection), if you can grab me a short (say about a kilobyte) raw binary capture from the data the wheel sends, I can check what's the difference and add support for it.

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1 minute ago, electric_vehicle_lover said:

Esaj, please see my firmware for Arduino, you have there the information already tested!! It is the same you shared on your message you sent me.

If it's exactly the same as the older Gotway, then I don't know why it didn't work with Wheelemetrics:

Maybe an user error then? ;)

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I just added information about the Bluetooth app for this wheel/30B4 control board of MicroWorks:

Read more here: https://github.com/EGG-electric-unicycle/documentation/wiki#Mobile_Bluetooth_app

Mobile Bluetooth app

You can download the Android app here: GotWay3.4.51-English_edition.apk

Main features of the app:

  • Horizontal calibration of the wheel
  • 3 riding modes: Madden, Comfort and Soft
  • Real time battery state, speed, trip distance, battery voltage, motor current and control board temperature
  • Android phone vibration after a specific limit speed (very useful!)
  • Beep the EUC buzzer

Screenshots:
GotWay3.4.51-English_edition-1.png

GotWay3.4.51-English_edition-2.png

GotWay3.4.51-English_edition-3.png

GotWay3.4.51-English_edition-4.png

On 7/4/2016 at 3:26 PM, MattJ said:

 

MS14-528-12.jpg

MS14-528-11.jpg

Congratulations!! Really beautiful build!! <3

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Just finished my second test ride of about 6 km, which includes several steep hills, of which four used to be too much for my generic (my weight is 85 kg). The microworks motor had no trouble whatsoever climbing all of them and the gotway app showed still 80% of the battery remaining after the tour. So it seems that my home made 16S2P (16x2x2600mAh /2 cells in parallel) pack also does its job pretty well. It is still possible to double this capacity. As for ergonimics, it seems that the pedal extensions are necessary for a reasonably comfortable ride, but they limit  the possibility to do very sharp turns. It is possible to ride without them, but it is less comfortable on long rides.

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Another update... Now that I´ve put everyhting together and tested it, it´s time for some fine tuning.  I can now better see where there´s still some wasted space, so I am re-doing a couple of parts to make it a bit smaller. For example I can reduce the overall height by 15mm just by getting rid of the excess clearance above the tire. At the same time, I´m rounding the inner corners on the battery housings on both sides above the tire for added strength.

EDIT: Below the new version of the upper section of the battery housing with rounded corner (above the wheel) and openings for the nuts which secure the threaded rod which connects left and right half, so the nuts will no longer take up any space inside the battery chamber, making it possible to place the battery horizontally. Overall height is reduced by 15mm.


Regarding  what I said about the pedals earlier, it might not such a serious problem after all. When I first tested it, I was wearing tennis shoes with very thin soles and very little support. With thicker soles, it feels much more comfortable, so the pedal extensions might not be necessary after all.

MS14-528-14.jpg

Battery housing upper part - new.jpg

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22 hours ago, HunkaHunkaBurningLove said:

Is there a tiltback feature available if you want to implement it or is it a beep warning only?  I find the tiltback really helps just in case it's noisy like in a busy street or windy with a helmet on and you can't hear the warning.  I wonder if soldering one of those spinny, vibrating devices like in cell phones on the inner side of one of the battery covers might help so when it beeps it can vibrate too.

Did you get the wider tire from MicroWorks or is that a standard width tire?

I think it would be nice to print out some curved bolt-on fender covers to add some flare to the wheel and cover up the tire a little.  So what was the cost breakdown of your build?

It´s a beep warning only, but it´s fairly loud. I have made a tiny opening for the buzzer just below the battery indicators, you can see it in the picture if you look closely. It´s possible to add a second beeper to the opposite side, but I haven´t done it yet as I have no trouble noticing this one. As you might have read meanwhile, it is possible to use the android app to vibrate your phone at certain speeds, so maybe that´s the easiest solution. The tire is a standard 14x2.125 from china. I´ve been thinking about fenders but there are some limitations concering print size and shape. The most stable solution would be a fender which is integrated into the main structure and printed at the same time with the frame. However, that´s not possible due to print size limitations. A bolt-on version needs holes and that would mean screw heads inside the battery chamber, which is not a nice thing. Also, I don´t think that such a solution would be very crash resistant unless you make the part very thick... and thick parts are heavy and print forever...

About the material costs - Most of the costs were for the parts from microworks (motor, controller, pedal assembly&parts, connectors, switches, battery indicator, etc), they were 254.50 USD including shipping, on which I had to pay 24% VAT upon arrival. Tire and inner tube were about 20 USD. 32xSamsung 18650 cells (2600mAh) were about 80 USD at gearbest, the 16S BMS board was about 8.50USD at aliexpress. If I want to add the maximum amount of batteries, then I will have to spend about the same amount once more. PLA filament is about 20 USD per kilogram and I have used maybe 2 kg because I had to do some parts over and over again before I got them right. Then some smaller hardware parts like screws&nuts etc. maybe 20 USD all in all.  So maybe some 450 USD altogether (with import taxes), but that includes some extra costs for trials and errors, which would no longer occur if I decided to build another one. I´m not including any personal labor costs in this calculation, otherwise it would be a pretty expensive EUC... :D

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22 hours ago, HunkaHunkaBurningLove said:

If he adds in this board to tap into that 60V output on the board:

https://wholesaler.alibaba.com/product-detail/converter-DC-60V-to-12V-output_60461417441.html

Epoxy this onto the shell somewhere:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mabuchi-12V-DC-Vibration-Motor-RC-260RA-Size-Vibrator-Weight-Massager-Toy-6VDC-/111516618779

(Okay @Czestnut don't even think about posting in this thread ;))

Would that work?

The converter might work for no longer needing a 9V battery to my under-pedal glow lights, but I'm still happy with what I did.  Battery lasts forever.

As for the vibrator motor,  It may be used for the dildo-seat concept design I did earlier, if it did not have that function already.

As for my current project, trying to fix the plug that ripped off my external battery.  Watch me play with 67.2v now :P

Image2.jpg

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