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Wee J @ his school talent show, they were a bit short on space. We played a video in the back ground as he wasn't able to fit a flying trapeze or aerial silks in his school. LOL

I designed a motor that has been patented in China, which will change the design of EUC.

12 inch, power 1200W, very suitable for mountain off-road EUC. Also use the 247 package MOS, the controller will be installed in the middle of the motor.

Considering that the axle needs to be hollowed out to have wiring come out of one side plus it requires a flat side or two, wouldn't it make life a lot better to just have a larger bearing and axle diameter? That way you can pass through heavier gauge wiring easier, flatten sides all you want and eliminate the possibility of axle breakage completely? Sure the motor covers would need to be able to accommodate the larger bearings and thicker axles would be needed, but in the end a little over-engineering can avoid problems from ever occurring. If an axle breaks once, it likely will happen again. Why not eliminate that possibility with some simple changes? How much can a slightly larger bearing and axle cost in the large scheme of things? If you ask someone do you mind paying a little extra for an axle that can never break, or do you want a wheel with an axle that might not break if you're lucky, which one do you think they would opt for after riding somewhere for 30 kms in the middle of nowhere?

Like this?

Ohhh, wonderful! It works! Shipping such appliances to the world is part of the "German Initiative for Global Garage Learning Experience (GIGGLE)"! You know, "Give a man a fish..."

Nice, I "lighten" the wheel when going over curbs, taking the impact by bending my knees, not really hopping up. It seems to work well, never fallen going over a curb, but it doesn't always work "perfectly", as in, if timed wrong, the bump will move my feet a bit on the pedals, and is not as graceful. As for falls, I've had 6 falls in total in something like maybe around 3000+km total with 4 6 (forgot I rode a friends' KS16B last summer and had Vee's / EUC Extremes MCM2s on loan) different wheels, but no real damage to myself (so far, let's hope it stays that way ) thanks to the gear. My first and worst one was the very first day I got my 14" generic, I had learned to mount it that day (hopping on and off the wheel for about 20-30 mins, the street I live in hasn't got anything near the road to hold onto, so I had to learn without any support) and could ride forwards and turn in wiiiiide circles, usually I just rode to the end of the street, stepped off, turned the wheel around by hand and rode back to the other end . At one point, I mounted, accelerated and probably just lost my balance, pushing the pedals backwards, causing the wheel to brake and fell down on the pavement. I've been wearing full gear all the time since the first time I ever stepped on an EUC (well, to be precise, I didn't get the wrist guards until a bit later after starting), so no harm there. Second fall was on my 3rd day, coming down from a speed bump, I guess I went too fast and the wheel just toppled forwards. I took a few fast running steps, hit my shoe on the curb (my toe was aching a few days afterwards, otherwise ok) and rolled onto a lawn, I also videoed it and I smashed the camera Later on that same wheel (maybe a week or two), I tried running it as fast as it can up an off-road hill (at that point, I was pretty much constantly riding at the tilt-back as fast as I can, which probably was around 15-18km/h or so). Of course the wheel gave up on a bump, and I took a few running steps before landing on my hands, the kneepads and skid plates of the wrist guards taking the damage (scratches). On the Firewheel, I once fell from a low(ish) speed going over badly ground frost damaged pavement. Again the protections cushioned the blow, only damage I had was a bit of skin lost from my pinky The last fall on the Firewheel was when BMSs of the custom packs cut power on downhill (overcharge... the BMSs were the wrong type), I don't know if it actually counts as a fall, as the wheel just shot off under me and I landed on my feet taking a few running steps and coming to a stop. The Firewheel shell got badly damaged, I got most of it repaired, but it never was really waterproof after that. My last fall was sometime last week (I think), nothing dramatic. We went to a really curvy and stony path with a friend, maybe about 20-30cm wide in the middle of the woods, something you wouldn't probably even try with a bicycle and I was riding the KS16S. My pedal got caught in some stones at near walking speed and as I stepped off, I slipped and fell to my back, but had a backpack with my jacket in it, so it cushioned the blow, and I just got back up and continued riding. No damage to the wheel.

when I started out about two months ago I bought (splurged, really...) a fancy-schmancy carbon full face helmet, wrist guards with dual splints and skid plates (thanks for the recommendation in one of your posts, @esaj...) and knee-pads. I hadn't worn the knee pads at all - just once, I think, since starting riding. but today I decided to wear them, now, whenever I go out riding. there's been a lot of (not undue) fuss about wheels cutting out for various reasons, whether it be an issue with firmware or components/engineering/pick one - but if you're riding around and you're not familiar with the terrain you can just as easily wipe out. today, I rode about 15-16 km and I wiped out twice! first one wasn't really a wipe out, as I didn't fall down, but my wheel fell - I was going uphill on this bike path and decided to turn around. it was kind of narrow and as I was exiting the turn the wheel dipped more than I thought it would and I stepped off... not too bad. fast forward- I'm going about 7mph, not too fast, on a sidewalk I hadn't ridden down- there was one slab of the sidewalk that was jutting out way above the others. I thought,'i can't ride over that,' and the decided I would try to jump it. now, I haven't worked on jumping so this was kind of risky. basically, my jump failed... I don't really know what I did, but it was a weak-ass hop, haha. I ran off the wheel and stumbled forward about 10 feet, dropping the bottle of tequila I was carrying (didn't break!) falling onto my knees and hands on the sidewalk. msuper's fine, I'm fine, tequila's fine... anyway, for whatever reason, you could fall. I might have had a banged up knee or two and bloody palms if I hadn't been wearing my gear. oh yeah, I also found a $20 bill on one bike trail!

Coming DarknessBot 2.0! - Added Siri Support. Say on connected EUC: "How much charge is left in my car?" - Added Neural Network. More smooth remaining mileage prediction - Improved Apple Watch App - Added Rockwheel (GT14, GT16) Support - KingSong / Gotway: fixed voltage and battery level

The Amish are so gracious! Normally they do not like their photos taken but the father agreed...sort of. Interesting contrast in technology.

Here's a cherry I've popped way too many times. My frickin' Bosch piece of crap dishwasher!!! It seemed like such a good deal a few years ago, but gosh darn it German engineering is not so good. I have had to fix it countless of times. So many that I know every component by heart! It leaks (fixed), the soap door doesn't open (fixed), water doesn't drain (fixed), stops prematurely (fixed) and now it quit washing. This is the water pump. It's not really designed to be opened up easily, but I did it anyways. That grey thing is the impeller which has these tiny plastic legs that apparently clip into the thin fibreglassy nipple spinny swiss cheesy thingy to drive water through the spray arms. Notice all the tiny legs have busted off. Why not just make a simple metal propeller pump that would last forever? Nope that would make too much sense. So basically I JB Kwikwelded the impeller back on praying it will stick for a little while until I get a replacement pump. They also use these stupid plastic clips that are impossible to reassemble as you have to press fit the shell back together. Ugh why not just incorporate four bolts with nuts to fasten it all together? That would be too easy. Luckily I managed to reassemble things, and it all works again! Yippee! When it works, it works pretty good, but when it dies it is a pain to fix all the time. I'm glad that I can do it myself rather than call the repair guy in. I have to add appliance repairman to my signature... Bosch. Is that German for "Busted?"

Have you ever considered axial flux motors? Custom design can be made much cheaper than radial flux motor because stator design does not require custom laminations to be stamped .

The father was asking all sorts of questions such as how long did it take to learn to ride, how do you go forwards and control the speed, how much did it cost? I then decided to ask if I could prop my wheel against his wagon and take a photo. Knowing the culture I was prepared for his polite response "No." But the rest of the family was far enough away looking at garage sale items that he finally concurred. Notice how he turned his face away from the camera. The Amish actually do use power tools. I have hired them a number of times to perform maintenance at the lake. They love soda!

I understand that "all technology is bad," but was there any Amish opinion / comment on the EUC? Being how they are bizarre enough in the mainstream community, it must have been quite a different thing - unless of course there is an Amish BC wheeler out there somewhere...

I think part of the issue is that we have a limited lifetime as human beings so we don't tend to see or care that far into the future. The current generations which are alive think oh well, trash it and just buy a new one. But what a lot of people don't realize and keep in mind is that the waste we produce is the problem that future generations inherit. I'm not 100% sure if it's true, but I heard that all the plastic ever manufactured is still in existence today. Some of it breaks down into small pieces, but most just doesn't biodegrade. Sure we have recycling plants, but I wonder what percentage ends up in the landfills. Canada is a huge country, and I'm sure we could stash away a ton of garbage. It's also fortunate that we live in an era where things are still prosperous with resources, energy, and supplies. It just seems terribly wasteful to throw away something that is 99% still perfectly functional just due to the fact that someone designed it with a weakness on purpose or accidentally. Things wear out - that's a given, but I think it's a shame that the mindset is basically who cares, we make more money making crappy products that don't last. When something could have been made just a little better in order to make it last a decent lifetime, I think it's a missed opportunity lost and quite wasteful. Maybe it's just that inner fixer part of me that loves to repair things which makes me see how wasteful society has become. It's easy to forget that all these things add up over time and ignore the consequences until it becomes a huge problem to deal with. It makes me cringe when I see those Youtubers trashing new iPhones, Xboxes, etc just for entertainment. It just propagates the wasteful attitudes among the younger generation. Here's an interesting documentary that shows the bigger picture. Sorry I couldn't find a complete video so you have to go through each part if you want to watch it.

Oh @Marty Backe, if it wasn't for so many lovely people like yourself, American friends on this forum and beyond, we (as in: "the rest of this planet as we know it") should build that wall around the US, make it high enough and put a lid on it to confine this attitude. While we're at it: may we pleeease send Volkswagen and Bosch management over, too?

Hi Guys, I have developed a small electronic circuit. Thus, the steering sensor can be reversed without removal. Advantage: 1. Adjusting the zero point (offset) to eliminate uncontrolled turn to the right or left 2. Adjusting the gain> Improving the steering behavior (gain between 1.0 <> 0.5) 3. Switch between normal and reverse mode by means of a switch Circuit diagram: Construction of the circuit: Connecting cables: For testing, bevor installation, the circuit was supplied with a constant voltage power supply (5.0V), and the Hall sensor was simulated with a potentiometer (4.7KR). Installation: Fazid: by reducing the gain the steering behavior improves dramatically, it runs much more softer and safer. Reproduction: The Operational Amplifiers (OP) (OPA340) must be "Rail to Rail" and "Single supply". These components should also work: OPA365 / TLV271 / ADA4841-1 The connectors are 3 pol. JST-PA connectors. Have fun with the reproduction Greetings Donald

Bosch still makes good tools Anecdotal, but we love our Samsung dish washer. Planet Earth is a lot bigger than people give it credit for. We'll never run out landfill space or resources. And if those items ever were to become constrained then the prices would increase and products would change. It's currently cheap enough to continue throwing stuff away and buying new.

I'm already through almost a whole bag of Pineapple Lumps, and I kind of prefer them non-frozen. They have this chewy, almost bubblegum flavor to them. They are okay, and definitely something to try if you get a chance. I think the UK also has them as I ran across some Amazon sellers from there. Regarding planned obsolescence, I can understand manufacturers wanting to sell more goods and make more profit, but how sustainable can that be? Do we have unlimited landfills and natural resources to be able to continue this design trend forever? We tend to bash the Chinese for their quality control and "good enough" design ethics, but there's plenty of examples of purposely built to fail products out there from other countries. Looking back, I guess I shouldn't bash Bosch too much. I think I must have bought the dishwasher about 10 years ago, but it did break down every 2 years like clockwork. The circulating pump was the last thing to give up the ghost so I should be happy about that. The thing is that my old Maytag lasted 12 years, and I never had to do any maintenance or repairs ever. I should have replaced the control board on that one when it blew up with dramatic smoke billowing out from it. This Bosch was purchased based on internet reviews (which I now know probably were skewed artificially or just prematurely written). They actually designed the machine with an open hole at the base which is covered by a mushroom shaped float on a stick. Guess what happens when water drips calcify in that tube? The float gets stuck so it leaks from the hole! To me it just seems a little counter-intuitive to design a hole into a place where you don't want leaks, but hey I'm no design engineer. Maybe the pump is actually not too bad as it lasted 10 years. If they would have made it more serviceable I likely wouldn't have complained as much. It's well known that FIAT stands for "Fix It All the Time" so maybe I should consider my washer a classic collectible car? At the moment though I'm a little tired of finding out that "Omigosh, it's Boschsted again!"

I mentioned pineapple lumps the other day and I could not remember where in the world I got that from. This thread. That was it. I finally figured it out (as I was rereading an off-topic thread)

So, how long do you reckon before he runs away to join the circus? Or is that all just a part of the master plan?

Someone did this already.

This kept me wondering for a while, why it looked so strangely familiar. Then I found out: Never mind the apparently erratic back and forth movements. When you observe the vertical carriages, their hight is a direct mechanical representation of the currents driving our motors, isn't it?

I know not everyone checks the IPS section so I wanted to show just how slim the i5 really is.

Nice trails, and a big thumbs up for getting off the trail. I was just thinking the other day that I need to travel off-road more. If I can cut across a field, do it!

We had a nice ride over the top of San Pedro Mt going from Pacifica, CA to Half Moon Bay and back. It’s really long, so feel free to skip. Enjoy!

These, pedals mounted directly on motor or not, are the way to go in the future. No more flimsy 14-18mm axles just waiting to break. If you mount the pedals directly on the motor, I would suggest that the connection is made really heavy duty, since it can't be replaced easily. I would like to see these ideas translated into a commercial wheel: With an 16-18" diameter 2.5" with tyre; with a 2000W nominal motor with plenty of torque. Mounting the controller in the hub is an interesting concept, but more important is to have a controller that can take the abuse we place on them and have adequate cooling. 247s are brilliant, but use 12 of them not 6, make sure all other components have a serious margin too before burning out. And all cables should be heavy duty and all connectors should be able to take both high temperatures and vibrations. @陈小杰 I have to applaud you for thinking outside the box, but don't get into unnecessary patent fights. The wheel @lizardmech showed you is like yours in concept, but we need both. We need someone or someones that dare point the way past the current limitations.

that is part of the plan of course!

yeah. Its a good thing we spread the word. now that everyone knows, its not as easy to ignore it

Sensorless performance seems much better than the v4 VESC but I don't have V6 firmware to compare it to yet. Instaspin is much more advanced in terms of features with over modulation, field weakening and real time calculation of motor resistance to compensate for temperature changes. For some reason instaspin motor detection hates large direct drive outrunner motors. I was only able to get it running because I got a scooter with a 2kw inrunner motor and found instaspin could easily detect that motor, I was able to find the specific value instaspin always gets wrong during detection on large outrunners and use VESC to measure it. Instaspin is pretty barebones it only includes software to detect the motor via debug and run it either in torque mode or speed mode.Anything else must be built by the developer.

Strangely hypnotic, the resultant stays the same and the other three rise and fall.

I guess after hearing about the odd KS14 axle breakage that shows up every now and then it just makes me wonder why not up the standards? It's sort of like hearing bicycle pedals breaking off during usage. It doesn't happen that commonly because the thickness of the support is wide enough to handle stresses. People go mountain biking and jump off hills landing with quite a lot of force on the pedals. Why be on the edge when a few extra millimetres can make a huge difference? I know these wheels are likely originally designed for average Asian weight riders, but a simple change like that can rid the problem from ever happening again. I believe with cars, the CV joint is connected to the transmission using a spline joint. With cars they are able to exert a lot of torque without any issues on the joint breaking free. You can see that the circumferential grooves do not compromise the thickness of the shaft. But keeping things simple, a larger diameter axle and bearing to match would likely be the last we hear of axles ever breaking if this change were to be implemented.

Interesting! Why do you need to shave off the shaft! I think you should keep it round. And posibly just add a key way or key pin. If you can find a way to lock the pedal arm to the shaft and not shave any material. It will be the best.

Well said, excellent post. Triple up-vote!

WARNING the replacement boards dont fix the problem. My customer had his board replaced already and today it cut out again sending his acm 1300wh into a deep river. He was on a group ride and has about 9 witnesses that seen his wheel get the wabble then cut out. I advise anyone thats received a new board to fix the problem to take care because it seems its not over yet. Will update later. Im going to bed. Its quite late here. I just needed to inform everyone effected before i sleep because if i waited for the morning someone else may get injured and id feel horrible

(Read that spec sheet wrong.. thank you @esaj for pointing that out)! The mosfet can handle 120A (package limit) but @ 10V not 84V and its also heat limited. See spec sheet: http://www.infineon.com/dgdl/irfb4110pbf.pdf?fileId=5546d462533600a401535615a9571e0b Have a look at figure 8, maximum safe operating area, It can only take 10A but for less than 100 usec if you have a voltage of less that 100V. So its very easy to burn a mosfet with the wrong firmware behaviour.

It's clear that at least one (I think those were low-side on Rehab's board) mosfet on the two phases has been destroyed, can't see if the parallel ones are fried too. There must have a been a lot of heat to burn a hole in the casing, might even be a shoot through? I'd expect that if the mosfet "just" overheats and turns the junctions inside the mosfet into jello, it would just die somewhere around 125-150C junction temperature or whatever, which likely wouldn't be enough to melt the plastic around it, so there'd be no outside signs. Those look more like they exploded, so a very high current spike would seem more likely, but of course I can't say for sure. The large caps in the mainboard can give a very high current spike for a brief moment, depending on capacitor make and model, the internal ESR can be as low as <10 milliohms, if you'd short those at 84V over fully open mosfets with a few milliohms of Rds(on), the momentary spike could easily be several kiloamperes (1000's of amperes), probably the fets would die before they can fully turn on? Sorry, I'm not sure what you're asking here? Maybe turn off auto-correct?

@esaj do you agree with my evaluation? i believe they just need to fix the weak circuit. About FOC. Don't toubned additions circuit to trigger the Zero-crossing in Rotherham to implement without the hall sensors?

Hi guys, Here are some pics from my little night trip with a rented Etwow booster S2 electric scooter, I'll be doing a review of it this weekend !

@陈小杰 A very simple way to alleviate the problem with broken axles, could be to have the flat part of the axle vertical instead of horizontal. Since the shearing forces comes mainly from above and below, having the axle uncompromised in the vertical should be more important than the lateral. For such a change, the only part that need changing is the pedal arm, where the shape of the cut must be turned 90°. That should be a rather trivial change, shouldn't it? After all, the only reason for flattening the axle is to make it NOT spin in the pedal arms, isn't it? And that should work just as well with the flattening being vertical instead of horizontal, shouldn't it?

There are far more ways to destroy a mosfet than just overcurrent or overvoltage either between gate and source or drain and source (although those are probably the most common), as an example:

I think your math is right, I tried some values with the equations given in the article earlier, and the margins would seem to be high enough, even though US1881 has half the bandwidth of the TI-sensor, it's still around 10kHz max with the wheels having a few hundred hertz... Don't know if there could be other other issues (high currents in the phase wires running right next to the hall-wires inducing voltage in the hall-wires or such?). Quickly skimming the sensorless vs. hall-sensors -only comments in the Firmware-thread, the end result is... inconclusive Lizardmech says it's likely sensorless, as that works well with FOC and also got a piece of code from Firewheel & Gotway -clones that showed sensorless operation. Yet electric_vehicle_lover built a sensored control for the wheel and found some other piece of code that was using hall-sensors only, so go figure Lizardmech: I think the position sensors are only used to compliment the sensorless FOC algo, it just feeds the data from them into it along with the park and clark transformations. From my understanding FOC vector control is inherently sensorless and halls or encoder sensors are an additional thing on top of the FOC algo. electric_vehicle_lover: Running with hall sensors should be no problem for all speeds, as the FOC algorithm will detect the correct angle correction value and apply it continually. I don't think sensorless algorithm is a must have to get the correct angle, as even with an incorrect angle with increase speed, given by hall sensors, the algorithm find the correct angle by looking at Id current that must be zero, other values means the angle should be corrected with proportion. And this works well with my current code. Lizardmech: It's difficult to troubleshoot hall based FOC because it doesn't seem to be used anywhere else. All the hall based examples I can find are BLDC type, while the FOC are typically encoder or sensorless. I think hall sensor FOC controllers are just sensorless controllers that only use the halls to assist at startup. It's possible there's a reason few FOC controllers operating only using hall sensors exist. Assuming it's theoretically possible for it to work all I can think of is the delay from the hall sensor possibly combined with deadtime being inserted by the gate driver causes issues. They show part of their FOC code here, it's sensorless with hall sensor startup. Conventional SVM and clark/park transforms. https://world.taobao.com/item/531928634884.htm?fromSite=main&spm=a312a.7700824.w4004-14846006895.18.36MAJg Looks like they offer gotway clone and firewheel clone. electric_vehicle_lover: I know I am being telling that EUC original firmware may be using sensorless after some speed and hall sensor just to start and be able to quick change direction. I also implemented only using hall sensors and no sensorless and it seems to be running well, at least for what I can understand, the motor does the same very low noise as original firmware. Also, as we can see on chinese firmware for EUC: https://eggelectricunicycle.bitbucket.io/FOC--Chinese_controllers_code.html (see first line of FOC_Model()) they seem to use only hall sensor (no sensorless) and just the same way I do, estimate angle between each hall sensor pulse, that's why they integrate the electric angle. Could be either way depending on wheel manufacturer / firmware?

Wow, I'm surprised that there's such a large contingent of Hispanics 'just from over the border' in Salem. You could be describing what I see here, but I'm in Southern California. Salem is a long way from the border. I guess construction in every state of the country has been taken over by cheap labor.

Thank you, @Rehab1! Dunno about KS (I did not try), but my inquiry with @Linnea Lin Gotway about an opportunity to visit was met with great hospitality and openness. She went out of her way to help me find the place (a bit of a challenge if your don't speak Mandarin), showed me around and introduced me to the boss. As the Msuper3 had not been announced at the time, she asked me to hold off publishing details or pictures before they made it official (which of course I respected). I met genuine interest for feedback and suggestions from a user perspective and just wish; I had been better prepared for this unexpected opportunity. I am confident, you will be received with a similar warm welcome.

Cool. Is there actually enough room for a tire?

You could put some kind of thick adhesive like wood glue on the screws to fill in the gaps where the screws were torn out, and put some strong glue like Gorilla glue on the plate where the screws go through, put the door back and stick something in the gap at the other side of the door to put pressure on the glued area for a few hours until the glue dries, that would probably hold. Other than that, I don't know, you might have to hire someone to fix it.

@Questor Haha nice. You inspired me to take a photo of my "two" wheels. Nothing suspicious to see here

@Bob Eisenman how is the broken arm healing up? I saw your photo the other day, are you riding with a cast? With today's technology I am wondering did the doctors recommend any specific supplements for faster recovery? (in case I ever have a bad fall also)

The unexpected upside of getting an EUC for your son; he's now asking if he can take the dog for a walk, even when it's raining!