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My Inmotion V10F Triumphs, Tribulations, and Failures


Marty Backe

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1 minute ago, Marty Backe said:

I rode it in my driveway (a normal driveway, not a cross-country trail like yours ;)). Turned it off, ate lunch, put in it my truck, drove to Griffith Park, took it out to start showing everyone, and it wouldn't turn on. That's the whole story.

u said the charger had stopped working previously, so what was the battery level?

that’s weird isn’t it? for it to be working normally, turn it off and then it won’t turn on. i mean if a puff of smoke emitted and it stopped, that would be what i’d expect.

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58 minutes ago, houseofjob said:

My quick peek into the V10F shell / tire-motor crevice looks like the under-side of the heatsink is exposed to the spinning wheel (active as a fan), which is a common design to many a recent model EUC.

I briefly de-shelled into just the control board layer, but there was no obvious signs of any fans in there (though I didn't do a complete disassemble).

The @EcoDrift V10F disassemble didn't seem to reveal any fans either.

 

Wow, wonder how much it was because of the unit being a pre-production stress/abuse test model vs actual V10F capability.

FWIW IMHO, after subbing it in as my daily driver this week, the V10F feels plenty powerful for most conditions, but not to the degree of the recent 84V Gotways to feed your Gotway fanboydom

 

:laughbounce2:

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34 minutes ago, kjon12 said:

Did you post any pictures or videos of this? 

It’s really hard to take a pic with the small clearance without a complete disassemble or an endoscopic pic.

I’m just a layman enthusiast Lol

36 minutes ago, kjon12 said:

Also, I thought I saw the V10F disassemble by EcoDrift not too long ago, but now I can't find it. Can you provide a link(s)?

https://ecodrift.ru/wiki/monokolesa/predseriynyy_inmotion_v10f_ne_kataemsya_a_izuchaem_ustroystvo/

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1 minute ago, novazeus said:

u said the charger had stopped working previously, so what was the battery level?

that’s weird isn’t it? for it to be working normally, turn it off and then it won’t turn on. i mean if a puff of smoke emitted and it stopped, that would be what i’d expect.

The battery level was ~85% the last I checked. No smoke, just flashing red LEDs.

The wheel had been showing strange power-on behavior. Since this is my first Inmotion wheel I thought it was normal, but apparently not.

I always had to press the power button twice to get the wheel to stay turned on. The first press would cause the wheel to turn on for ~5 seconds, then it would turn off. The second power button press would be the keeper :)

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6 minutes ago, Marty Backe said:

The battery level was ~85% the last I checked. No smoke, just flashing red LEDs.

The wheel had been showing strange power-on behavior. Since this is my first Inmotion wheel I thought it was normal, but apparently not.

I always had to press the power button twice to get the wheel to stay turned on. The first press would cause the wheel to turn on for ~5 seconds, then it would turn off. The second power button press would be the keeper :)

ur braver than me! that power on scenario would have me calling inmotion. hopefully inmotion will comment on that.

i noticed that once i finally got the right wheellog app that it asks for inmotion password. does wheellog work with it?

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15 minutes ago, novazeus said:

ur braver than me! that power on scenario would have me calling inmotion. hopefully inmotion will comment on that.

i noticed that once i finally got the right wheellog app that it asks for inmotion password. does wheellog work with it?

:D In this case I guess it's a good thing I didn't know how Inmotion wheels turn on. I thought maybe it was a self-test feature run every time the wheel is turned on.

No, WheelLog would not connect :(

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1 hour ago, Marty Backe said:

I always had to press the power button twice to get the wheel to stay turned on. The first press would cause the wheel to turn on for ~5 seconds, then it would turn off. The second power button press would be the keeper

My V5F has a funky power-on sequence as well. I think it's because they are using one switch to do different things, such as power up or switch on/off the headlight. I imagine it's a timing thing, where a long press means one thing and a short press means something else, and their meaning could be dependent on whether the wheel is already on. Did you try short presses to turn the wheel on versus long presses? If I were designing a wheel, I would have a couple of switches, one for power on/off and one for other control functions. But keeping parts counts low is important for mass production and reliability.

If Inmotion is smart, they do have a Built-In-Test (BIT) routine that checks important functions before enabling the motor drive. I wouldn't doubt that the flashing red LEDs are indicating a BIT failure and the drive circuits are being disabled. In the teardown pictures by Ecodrift, there's two circuit boards with what looks like their own power supplies. I wouldn't doubt that the green board runs or controls BIT and can drive the LEDs, and can shut down the blue drive board. Or the blue board runs its own BIT, refuses to start if it detects a failure, and reports the status to the green board.

I designed electronics for the military, and we were required to have BIT tests for all of our designs. We were also required to put all new production units through a series of tough environmental tests before the gear was allowed to go out to the field. One of the toughest sequence of tests we referred to as "shake & bake". New production units had to be shaken in all three axes for at least an hour at the mechanical frequencies that were expected in the field and then powered up to show they were functional. The other part of the test cold soaked the units for an hour, powered on and then ramped up to more than the highest expected temperature, continually running the BIT tests to make sure they remained operational throughout the temperature transition. Both of these tests were designed to catch bad wiring and cold solder joints, as well as weed out any "infant mortality" parts, i.e. find the electronic parts that would die prematurely before their expected lifespan.

Of course, consumer electronic producers can't afford such tests for mass production, but I think Marty's tests simulated shake & bake pretty well. More than likely the control board was heated up and cooled down multiple times while undergoing tough mechanical vibration. If there were any cold solder joints or flaky wiring, his rides probably made them show up. The wheel, if it was ready to die from a cold solder joint, could remain operational while on and warm, then refuse to operate after it cooled down and a solder joint shrunk and broke.

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12 minutes ago, kjon12 said:


Did you try short presses to turn the wheel on versus long presses?

Yes, I tried various combinations of short & long presses

 

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3 hours ago, Marty Backe said:

:D In this case I guess it's a good thing I didn't know how Inmotion wheels turn on. I thought maybe it was a self-test feature run every time the wheel is turned on.

No, WheelLog would not connect :(

so,

i’m guessing somebody with inmotion gives u the wheel and charger.

first the charger dies. 

u ride the wheel some and now the wheel dies.

i have a hard time understanding how companies operate and survive. inmotion knew u would be testing the wheel under stress. u would think somebody would have given the wheel a good check to make sure everything was working right.

inmotion’s batting avg sucks right now. two pieces of equipment and two failures.

how did u charge it to 85% after all that hill riding u did?

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4 hours ago, novazeus said:

so,

i’m guessing somebody with inmotion gives u the wheel and charger.

first the charger dies. 

u ride the wheel some and now the wheel dies.

i have a hard time understanding how companies operate and survive. inmotion knew u would be testing the wheel under stress. u would think somebody would have given the wheel a good check to make sure everything was working right.

inmotion’s batting avg sucks right now. two pieces of equipment and two failures.

how did u charge it to 85% after all that hill riding u did?

The wheel started with 100% charge. The mountain trail riding was ~15-miles which brought it down to 65%. The charger managed to charge the wheel up to 85% at night, but died before it could complete the charge.

The wheel had been dropped shipped to me from an event that they had in Seattle I think. It didn't come directly from Inmotion. I think they only have a few wheels and they are shipping them to 'the next event' after every weekend.

What's interesting to me is a whole slew of "production" wheels are going to customers as we speak, yet there's no released App, and Inmotion has no production wheels to show off at their events.

Let's hope the production wheels are solid.

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4 minutes ago, Marty Backe said:

The wheel started with 100% charge. The mountain trail riding was ~15-miles which brought it down to 65%. The charger managed to charge the wheel up to 85% at time, but died before it could complete the charge.

The wheel had been dropped shipped to me from an event that they had in Seattle I think. It didn't come directly from Inmotion. I think they only have a few wheels and they are shipping them to 'the next event' after every weekend.

What's interesting to me is a whole slew of "production" wheels are going to customers as we speak, yet there's no released App, and Inmotion has no production wheels to show off at their events.

Let's hope the production wheels are solid.

i feel better about me smoking both of my kingsong chargers. these chargers must be very cheaply made. i’ve got a another brick charger coming from aliexpress for $20, hopefully it will work.

i haven’t heard from inmotion about them shipping me my wheel yet. i guess Rose’s post about getting it on the 20th wasn’t accurate. it would be nice if they’d communicate a little better.

besides the charger and wheel dying, everything else was fine, ha ha. how bad is the trolley handle? 

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13 minutes ago, Marty Backe said:

Here's where the wheel overheats

 

yup, the high pedals and inmotions quality control(cough) are what got me interested. my pastures are a little bumpier and thankfully a little softer to fall on. big high cow turds or barky weeds will definitely pull u down if the pedal hangs up.riding those trails are definitely exercise and when u get back to pavement ur a much better rider. 

i’ve got  plenty of wheels for pavement but not enough pavement. i’m really hoping the v10f will be my best offroad wheel. the ks18s would be great but the pedals are low. made me feel better seeing u fall just like i do in the pasture. idk if its my feet bouncing off the pedals or just the high shell careening off on an angle after hitting an unseen irregularity in the dirt. 

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Great review @Marty Backe, thanks for that!

We are working on diagnosing the problem now, and hopefully we can find the problem soon, and I'll update here for sure.  BTW, the wheel is actually the very first prototype we sent to US and lots of the board soldering were hand made instead of machine, and the V10 video was shot by this wheel as well. The out shell and the pedals were all torn-up before we replaced with new ones and then shipped to Seattle Demo Ride and then shipped to you. 

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2 hours ago, that0n3guy said:

It's a bummer it doesn't cut out faster when it falls over...

I am surprised. Both V5 and V8 shut off very gracefully when they are dropped, they don't do "gotway dance". Maybe it was just one-time "abnormal" incident, we have to check out how it behaves in other tests

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15 minutes ago, trya said:

I am surprised. Both V5 and V8 shut off very gracefully when they are dropped, they don't do "gotway dance". Maybe it was just one-time "abnormal" incident, we have to check out how it behaves in other tests

My intent was to do more controlled tests (hold the wheel and lean it over), but it failed before I got a chance. But I remember doing one early on and it turned off much later than my Tesla.

So it didn't surprise me when it keep spinning in the grass as you see in the video.

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3 minutes ago, Marty Backe said:

My intent was to do more controlled tests (hold the wheel and lean it over), but it failed before I got a chance. But I remember doing one early on and it turned off much later than my Tesla.

So it didn't surprise me when it keep spinning in the grass as you see in the video.

the last time i rode my ks18s in the pasture, on its last crash, it laid there on it’s side and the wheel kept spinning away until it oversped and beeped and then finally cut off. testing it later, it appeared to cut off correctly. 

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51 minutes ago, Marty Backe said:

My intent was to do more controlled tests (hold the wheel and lean it over), but it failed before I got a chance. But I remember doing one early on and it turned off much later than my Tesla.

So it didn't surprise me when it keep spinning in the grass as you see in the video.

My V8 doesn’t spin out at all when it goes on it’s side.  It tells me to “be careful” , but no Gotway dance.  I’d be shocked if the production v10 would do this.

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1 hour ago, Bobwheel said:

Great review @Marty Backe, thanks for that!

We are working on diagnosing the problem now, and hopefully we can find the problem soon, and I'll update here for sure.  BTW, the wheel is actually the very first prototype we sent to US and lots of the board soldering were hand made instead of machine, and the V10 video was shot by this wheel as well. The out shell and the pedals were all torn-up before we replaced with new ones and then shipped to Seattle Demo Ride and then shipped to you. 

I want to say having your presence here is a big plus in my book for Inmotion/Solowheel.  If you would find out the problem and report back, that would be amazing.  We get some represention here from a few euc companies, but it’s not much.  Mishaps are going to happen, but handling them and following up with good communication with customers is key I’m my book.  Nice job!  Looking forward to future reports on this wheel.  

By the way...that off road prototype is amazing!  You need to build that wheel Bob. @BobwheelVery cool concept.

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1 hour ago, Marty Backe said:

So it didn't surprise me when it keep spinning in the grass as you see in the video.

there is another example in your video (part III) at 8:56 - where it just dropped and shut off as I'd expect, without any extra spinning.

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4 minutes ago, trya said:

there is another example in your video (part III) at 8:56 - where it just dropped and shut off as I'd expect, without any extra spinning.

I know :confused1:

I really wish I had the wheel longer to see if the one spin-out was a fluke. I only have a sample of two :(

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@Marty Backe, thanks for your time and review. Happy that INMOTION is proposing to share conclusions on what went wrong, that would be quite a refreshing change in the world of EUC :).

I would be surprised if the 2 issues were not somehow connected, if they are not, we might need to nickname you Murphy ?.

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