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What new features would you like to see in the next generation of wheels? ✨


chrisjunlee

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15 minutes ago, Esper said:

How does this work?

Sorry, I should just have been clear from the start.

I meant one wheel with two or more batteries (like most wheels nowadays) where each battery can be hot-swapped. Then, when you connect a second battery with a different voltage from the first, it wants to balance = high current from the lower charge battery to the higher charge one = wires melting/batteries getting hot and igniting if there's no other safety mechanism limiting the current. Same as with wheels now if were to put in a full and an empty battery and connect them.

That's the only scenario I ever meant.

Now it gets interesting: you can of course limit the current going between batteries (with a simple diode or whatever), but the question is, how for example does a wheel deal with one full and one empty battery (or in general with differently charged batteries) while it is being used? (Even though the Z10 kind of does that by only recharging one battery or something like that.)

Your hot-swap idea is great and I fully support it, but as soon as more than one battery is involved, it gets tricky (tricky enough so I wonder if I want to see that from the current manufacturers). That's all I meant:)

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23 hours ago, meepmeepmayer said:

Sorry, I should just have been clear from the start.

I meant one wheel with two or more batteries (like most wheels nowadays) where each battery can be hot-swapped. Then, when you connect a second battery with a different voltage from the first, it wants to balance = high current from the lower charge battery to the higher charge one = wires melting/batteries getting hot and igniting if there's no other safety mechanism limiting the current. Same as with wheels now if were to put in a full and an empty battery and connect them.

That's the only scenario I ever meant.

Now it gets interesting: you can of course limit the current going between batteries (with a simple diode or whatever), but the question is, how for example does a wheel deal with one full and one empty battery (or in general with differently charged batteries) while it is being used? (Even though the Z10 kind of does that by only recharging one battery or something like that.)

Your hot-swap idea is great and I fully support it, but as soon as more than one battery is involved, it gets tricky (tricky enough so I wonder if I want to see that from the current manufacturers). That's all I meant:)

I still think that if there are 2, 3, 4, even 5 sets of batteries, a normal person would think of taking out all the batteries and replacing all of them at once. If you have a remote for your TV at home that dies, you don't just replace 1 of the 4 batteries. I feel like common sense would say that they'd replace both of the dead batteries with fresh ones.

In the case of equalizing, why not just make the wheel be able to run on 1 battery if only 1 is plugged in, have external battery chargers, individual battery gauge lights, and if there are 2 batteries plugged in, it can pull from both at the same time after, lets say a 20 second boot sequence that measures the batteries. I mean, I can think of solutions for this idea and I am not even in this profession. If you and I can think of ideas to prevent possible failure points at a stage at which it's not even invented, I think the designers of the product can think of theses things as well and it'll turn out fine.

None of this takes away from my desire to still have hot swap batteries.
EUC manufacturers, if you're reading this, please make it a thing, I really want this to be a thing. Just don't make the batteries disposable for extra money in your pockets. 

Edited by Esper
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15 minutes ago, lqwertyd said:

Maybe you understand this better than I do? If not a gyroscope, what exactly keeps the wheel from going forward and back? What's the mechanism? 

The gyro (gyroscope? gyrometer? I don't know...) sensor name is misleading (if maybe technically correct, I have no idea). The wheel simply knows how it is tilted (so tilt sensor would be a better name).

ALL an electric unicycle ever does is enganging the motor in one direction as soon as it detects a tilt in that direction. So the motor is the thing balancing the rider, according to an algorithm that keeps the wheel upright ("Drive in the direction that the wheel is falling towards..."), which takes as (pretty much) only input the wheel's tilt and how fast the tilt changes.

Imagine balancing a standing pencil on your hand. As soon as it starts to fall/tilt over, you move your hand so it gets back to being upright. That's what a EUC motor continually does to keep the wheel and rider on it from falling over as well. By leaning back and forth, you force the wheel to move forwards (accelerate) or backwards (brake) if it wants to keep balancing you, so you can actually ride it as a vehicle. Imagine the pencil had a will and would intentionally lean so your hand moves it along a route.

-

When you drive fast, the spinning motor does act as a gyroscope (spinning disk) that keeps you stable against falling sideways. So you're right, if you added a spinning mass just like that bike does, you could stabilize a EUC against falling over sideways.

You could put that inside the motor. Maybe the inner hub is the actual motor, and the outer part could have an extra spinning ring.

Or you add two controllable spinning disks to the sides of the motor (on one side only will probably be wonky). That would make the motor wider (and heavier).

You control how much it extra-stabilizes by controlling how fast it spins.

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1 hour ago, lqwertyd said:

I'm not sure how this would work, but some sort of variable lateral stabilization would be cool. That way, you could get a start on the wheel and then dial back the lateral stabilization progressively. It could also be useful for longer trips where you don't intend to hit sharp corners. 

Lateral stabilization would require a flywheel in the plane perpendicular to the plane you want to stabilize. In our case, that ends up being a flywheel spinning in the same direction as the wheel, aka an inner flywheel within the wheel :)

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@Esper Haha sorry I still wasn't clear enough. By "battery" I mean a physical battery pack, not the individual cells. Most wheels have two packs (e.g. 2x 800Wh on the 1600Wh wheels), and if you connect those at different charge states (= voltages), they want to equalize. Too strong and cables might melt or the cells heat and ignite from the heavy usage.

You're right that this could be easily dealt with. But there's too much to go wrong if I think about how much I trust the manufacturers. That's all I meant to say. Not that it is impossible or undesired, just... complicated;)

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7 hours ago, Elder Meat said:

Nope. EUCs have gyro sensors (to measure angular rate and angular velocity), not gyroscopes (a physical disk that spins rapidly). Two totally different things.

A gyroscope is a device to observe (scope) rotation (gyro): it is a sensor. Just like a telescope is a device to see far away. It traditionally uses flywheels but that doesn’t make it a flywheel. Modern gyroscopes are solid state and uses photons sent in a loop, the time they take indicate the rotation of the loop.

Edited by Mimolette
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I would like an adjustable seat. Not the one that you slap over the handle either. I’m talking about a true adjustable seat pole , like on a real unicycle. And you can easily remove it or place it all the way down to the handle but, can adjust high up around 18 inches (45 centimeters).  That a way I can ride seated yet my legs are still stretched out. :rolleyes:

Edited by Daniel-Son
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3 hours ago, yuweng said:

i'm using one now :efee6b18f3:

  Hide contents

O1CN012G61Bx0IDLXNtZa_!!2998328965.gif.961e7c939d84a033ee954dad0bbf9639.gif

Further info then refer to this thread

 

I could see a seat design that second as trolley handle. 

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9 hours ago, Mimolette said:

A gyroscope is a device to observe (scope) rotation (gyro): it is a sensor. Just like a telescope is a device to see far away. It traditionally uses flywheels but that doesn’t make it a flywheel. Modern gyroscopes are solid state and uses photons sent in a loop, the time they take indicate the rotation of the loop.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gyroscope

a wheel or disk mounted to spin rapidly about an axis and also free to rotate about one or both of two axes perpendicular to each other and to the axis of spin so that a rotation of one of the two mutually perpendicular axes results from application of torque to the other when the wheel is spinning and so that the entire apparatus offers considerable opposition depending on the angular momentum to any torque that would change the direction of the axis of spin

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I would like 1) a mechanism, when triggered, that would flip the pedals down when ready to ride or up when finishing a ride and 2) the same with trolley handle that can be triggered to rise and lower. Also, 3) a fail safe system protecting rider from face plants if ever there is a battery cutoff or any mechanical failures. 4) An anti collision system that would save riders colliding with pedestrians or running into any objects. Wow, I hope I am not asking too much....:w00t2:

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37 minutes ago, walsus said:

Some way to lock your weel. My V10 has it using the app. To me it's essential and it means I don't have any wheel to upgrade to.

Z10 also has this.

I don't really understand the use.

2 minutes ago, scubadragosan said:

I would like 1) a mechanism, when triggered, that would flip the pedals down when ready to ride or up when finishing a ride and 2) the same with trolley handle that can be triggered to rise and lower. Also, 3) a fail safe system protecting rider from face plants if ever there is a battery cutoff or any mechanical failures. 4) An anti collision system that would save riders colliding with pedestrians or running into any objects. Wow, I hope I am not asking too much....:w00t2:

how would you trigger the trolley? If it is with a button on the wheel you might as well just grab the trolley handle :D 

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48 minutes ago, Elder Meat said:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gyroscope

a wheel or disk mounted to spin rapidly about an axis and also free to rotate about one or both of two axes perpendicular to each other and to the axis of spin so that a rotation of one of the two mutually perpendicular axes results from application of torque to the other when the wheel is spinning and so that the entire apparatus offers considerable opposition depending on the angular momentum to any torque that would change the direction of the axis of spin

Are you arguing a gyroscope isn’t a sensor? Because that’s what your first post was claiming. That it can be based on flywheels is unrelated and your copy pasta doesn’t add anything other than noise.

Ill just use that nifty ignore user function, I don’t have time for people like you.

Edited by Mimolette
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18 hours ago, Elder Meat said:

It's called a gyroscope. Problem is where you would have one is where the hub motor is. Here's an example: 

 

It's not called a gyroscope. A gyroscope is a sensor. It's called a flywheel.

18 hours ago, lqwertyd said:

They already have a gyroscope -- it just stabilizes the unit forward to back. So the idea would be to add a lateral gyro as well. 

The problem with a lateral gyro is that there is no way the wheel can actually do something with the input to stabilise left-right. 

The solution would be to integrate a flywheel, but that would create an entire list of other issues wrt inertia when you want to turn. If you think your Z10 is hard to turn, try turning it with a flywheel installed :lol: 

Also, this seems the solution to a problem that isn't one, and might cause more problems than what it solves.

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Well however you discuss this back and forth, a concept already exist since 2010ish, from Honda. 

Jump into this at 0:30....

This does what we would like a future EUC should do, but only at 4mph...and range 1 hour battery capacity.

On the hand it is pretty cool device. 

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19 hours ago, meepmeepmayer said:

The gyro (gyroscope? gyrometer? I don't know...) sensor name is misleading (if maybe technically correct, I have no idea). The wheel simply knows how it is tilted (so tilt sensor would be a better name).

ALL an electric unicycle ever does is enganging the motor in one direction as soon as it detects a tilt in that direction. So the motor is the thing balancing the rider, according to an algorithm that keeps the wheel upright ("Drive in the direction that the wheel is falling towards..."), which takes as (pretty much) only input the wheel's tilt and how fast the tilt changes.

Imagine balancing a standing pencil on your hand. As soon as it starts to fall/tilt over, you move your hand so it gets back to being upright. That's what a EUC motor continually does to keep the wheel and rider on it from falling over as well. By leaning back and forth, you force the wheel to move forwards (accelerate) or backwards (brake) if it wants to keep balancing you, so you can actually ride it as a vehicle. Imagine the pencil had a will and would intentionally lean so your hand moves it along a route.

-

When you drive fast, the spinning motor does act as a gyroscope (spinning disk) that keeps you stable against falling sideways. So you're right, if you added a spinning mass just like that bike does, you could stabilize a EUC against falling over sideways.

You could put that inside the motor. Maybe the inner hub is the actual motor, and the outer part could have an extra spinning ring.

Or you add two controllable spinning disks to the sides of the motor (on one side only will probably be wonky). That would make the motor wider (and heavier).

You control how much it extra-stabilizes by controlling how fast it spins.

Got it. That makes sense. Thanks for the thoughtful explanation. 

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1 hour ago, Unventor said:

Well however you discuss this back and forth, a concept already exist since 2010ish, from Honda. 

Jump into this at 0:30....

This does what we would like a future EUC should do, but only at 4mph...and range 1 hour battery capacity.

On the hand it is pretty cool device. 

Yes! But at 20mph.

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24 minutes ago, lqwertyd said:

Yes! But at 20mph.

It is almost 10 years back. Give it time. Goodyear also had development going on to ball shaped tyre. Technical it should be able to do the same thing. Just think back how fast things develop, 5,10,20,50 years back. Today we have phones with the power as PCs. We have Internet faster than diskdrives used to be. Cars are very different too. 

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2 hours ago, Unventor said:

Well however you discuss this back and forth, a concept already exist since 2010ish, from Honda

Does anyone know how this works?

How do you control 3 degrees of freedom of the vehicle (ride forwards/backwards, rotate left/right, strafe left/right without rotation) with 2 degrees of control of your body (lean forward/backwards, lean left/right)?

Is there an extra input beside leaning? The butt pads? Does it somehow combine strafing and turning into one thing that is controlled by the sideways lean?

I'm talking principle, no details of the tire or anything (the tire is omnidirectional, right?). What am I missing?

edit: Looks like it doesn't rotate, only goes forwards/backwards and strafes.

Edited by meepmeepmayer
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