Poll on EUC Failures and what are the consequences?

[Cumulus Libre]

Hey guys, 

we all get that feeling of being overwhelmed by joy when riding our EUCs, lot's of people look at us and some of them come over and ask questions... 

Most questions are about how they work, speed, range and safety.

We all have perception working against us, riding on one wheel is for the most not that logical, two or four wheels on the other hand  

I have a flying background and there we try to investigate the possible failures and learn from them.

We all know that equipment/electronics can fail, but I wonder how EUCs fail and more importantly what's the outcome of such a failure, can some brands cope better with failures than others? I don't know what to reply in case of such a question, I am quite sure that it will not be as transparant or black and white, nor complete but for the fun of it, let's try and maybe we can learn from it and it can maybe grow organically into something more serious/professional. As I am a newbie (1 year) I'll probably overlook certain failures or possibilities, so let me know, then I will simply add them... 

I also understand that different brands will possibly have different outcomes.

It's a multiple choice poll, meaning more then one answer is ok, since we all could have experienced different outcomes on different problems...

In the end I ask about brands, It seemed interesting to know if unavoidable crashes are brand dependant, or not? 

 

cheers

CL

 

 

 

Edited September 7, 2019 by Cumulus Libre

[Arbolest]

So for the first question, are you looking for what we have actually had happen, or just what we think is possible? Because I can think of specific scenarios where every single option could definitely occur, but I don't want to skew the data if that's not what you intended with the question.

[Cumulus Libre]

I only think about real life scenarios or things that really happened to you.. or that was the initial idea behind the poll, hypothetical ones that didn't occur to people are less interesting for the poll..

4 minutes ago, Arbolest said:

Because I can think of specific scenarios where every single option could definitely occur, but I don't want to skew the data if that's not what you intended with the question.

Feel free to elaborate, but the poll is more simple , but if you mean that I missed out on some scenarios feel free to advise and give input

It's not about my poll but ours.. , it's about learning and since I had no real big crashes and I only rode about 1200 km's the last year I am sure other people have more input.. 

I am not sure if I can add lot's of other scenario's to the poll (for instance I couldn't add an extra poll, I was limited to the 4 , which is fine by me  )  I am happy with such good forum anyway...

[Arbolest]

Alrighty, I'll limit my poll votes to what I've actually experienced.

Well, I will once I can. I just tried and got stopped short on the first question 

I have never had any sort of mechanical or electronics failure occur that stopped my wheels from working in any way, so I didn't select any of the options for that question. Unfortunately the poll doesn't seem to like that and is requiring me to pick at least one item. Is it too late for you to add a "None of the above" option or something similar?

Also, I assume this will be an issue with the last question as well...

Edited September 7, 2019 by Arbolest

[Cumulus Libre]

2 minutes ago, Arbolest said:

so I didn't select any of the options for that question. Unfortunately the poll doesn't seem to like that and is requiring me to pick at least one item. Is it too late for you to add a "None of the above" option or something similar?

Also, I assume this will be an issue with the last question as well...

good to know and hint !

my first poll here, so I didn't know you couldn't skip.. I try to implement "none of the above... "

 

[Chriull]

Nice collection of points - looking forward to the outcome of the poll!

My thoughts to some points:

Electronic failures with tiltback afterwards:

Could not think of any. Maybe some strange firmware faults, but afair such was never reported.

Cutout due to low battery:

Is not possible anymore with the new wheels. This were just BMS cutoffs until ~Ninebot one E+?

Cutouts with the wheel working fine afterwards: You mean most probably an overlean? The wheels electronics/firmware does not "cutout" anything ever. Its just the mosfets that can fry, cable insulation melting leading to a shortcut and immideate "cutout". (As good as ) Everything else is just an overlean - not repecting the wheels limits.

 

[Arbolest]

15 minutes ago, Chriull said:

Electronic failures with tiltback afterwards:

Could not think of any. Maybe some strange firmware faults, but afair such was never reported.

The thing that jumped to mind when I read that point was a failed Clinometer of the type used in the cheap "3-axis" gyros that tell our wheels their orientation. If that fails, it would result in either erratic balancing/motor behavior, or (if the firmware was robust enough to detect it) the wheel disabling its self-balancing and giving some kind of indication of the failure. While I guess that's not really a "tiltback" as such,  I took most of the "tiltbacks" in the poll to mean an addressable, non-catastrophic failure that leaves the control board able to function and indicate a possible cause of the problem in some way.

That's just me putting words in someone else's mouth though... sorry about that 

[Arbolest]

Sweet! the "None of the above" option is working for the first two questions! 

Awesome! Now I can vote!

Edited September 7, 2019 by Arbolest

[Cumulus Libre]

Just now, Arbolest said:

Now I just need that for the last question and I can vote! 

your to fast  I was busy with it...

[Chriull]

2 minutes ago, Arbolest said:

The thing that jumped to mind when I read that point was a failed Clinometer of the type used in the cheap "3-axis" gyros that tell our wheels their orientation

Can't remember or really have never heard of a crash caused by a failing gyro/clinometer the last ?5? Years...

[Arbolest]

Just now, Chriull said:

Can't remember or really have never heard of a crash caused by a failing gyro/clinometer the last ?5? Years...

Good, because I've had that in the back of my mind for a while and uh... let's just say I'm glad to hear it's not even a remotely common thing. 

I used to have a few small quad-copters (toy grade...) and several of them crashed so hard that their gyros stopped working and were sending garbage data to the rest of the system... I always hoped that could never happen with one of our wheels, but it's been a little private nightmare for me... 

[Arbolest]

Anyway, thanks for putting this poll together, @Cumulus Libre! I look forward to seeing it flesh out with more data!

[Chriull]

24 minutes ago, Arbolest said:

Good, because I've had that in the back of my mind for a while and uh... let's just say I'm glad to hear it's not even a remotely common thing. 

I used to have a few small quad-copters (toy grade...) and several of them crashed so hard that their gyros stopped working and were sending garbage data to the rest of the system... I always hoped that could never happen with one of our wheels, but it's been a little private nightmare for me... 

If the gyro is ever destroyed in a major EUC crash one will notice this imediately once one mounts the wheel again. If not one falls of the wheel at zero speed 😀

[Arbolest]

19 minutes ago, Chriull said:

If the gyro is ever destroyed in a major EUC crash one will notice this imediately once one mounts the wheel again. If not one falls of the wheel at zero speed 😀

I know, I know. It's just a nonsensical little "what if?..." 

[Cumulus Libre]

No real interest in this Poll? Has this been done before ? Or is something lacking? 

[Mono]

6 hours ago, Cumulus Libre said:

No real interest in this Poll? Has this been done before ? Or is something lacking? 

I don't even understand the first question. Almost every outcome is possible, and possibility isn't even a useful category to begin with. In general, EUC failure is a possible but minor (EDIT: meaning improbable) reason for crashes, which makes spending time on thinking about it less interesting.

Some real data on failure statistics can be found in this thread:

 

Edited September 9, 2019 by Mono

[Cumulus Libre]

26 minutes ago, Mono said:

I don't even understand the first question. Almost every outcome is possible, and possibility isn't even a useful category to begin with. In general, EUC failure is a possible but minor reason for crashes, which makes spending time on thinking about it less interesting.

well that's an interesting feedback , and my questions were maybe not clear enough let me elaborate and let me go over point by point : 

1. don't understand the first question : Possible outcome due to electronic or mechanic failure of EUC?

Well, in another post we discuss that people tend to ask what price the EUC cost, how far, how fast and a lot of times the answers you get back is, I won't dare to ride it, it's dangerous, then I often reply it's like learning to ride a bike... But a lot of people reply yeah but it is technology , it can fail and then you'll crash hard at high speed.. In that case I don't know what to answer honestly since I never had a problem with my EUC's, hence my question to the larger community. If your EUC fails what was the outcome? No crash since it simply was faulty by turning it on? Some EUC's I have seen get tiltback and stay there without being able to resolve the problem, again this is not leading to a crash , hence a safe failure.. That's why I stipulated the different probable outcomes.. if the community (larger group) answers then we can see what the possible outcomes of failures are and give feedback to strangers when they ask us the question :" Yeah but what about when the electronics fail?"                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

2.EUC failure is a possible but minor reason for crashes, which makes spending time on thinking about it less interesting.

That is an awesome feedback, one that I am very happy with, but maybe that's your opinion based on stories.. but I am not sure if it really is the case.. it's just your feedback , hence a poll.. 

the link you provided to the new post is excellent, but it's from 2017 and most new chosen models are not on it.. 

 

cheers

CL

 

Edited September 9, 2019 by Cumulus Libre

[Chriull]

2 hours ago, Mono said:

EUC failure is a possible but minor reason for crashes, which makes spending time on thinking about it less interesting.

+1

1 hour ago, Cumulus Libre said:

That is an awesome feedback, one that I am very happy with, but maybe that's your opinion based on stories.. but I am not sure if it really is the case.. it's just your feedback , hence a poll.. 

Add my opinion as a second one to this counter .

Most accidents happen by rider errors and overleans. Overleans are technically rider errors, too - as they don't respect the wheels limits. But as there are just insufficient warnings before an overlean and many riders don't really understand/have heard of the wheels limit one could put these overleans in some gray area between "rider fault" and "firmware fault"

And then there are blown mosfets/molten wire insulations/blown fused - the majority of the "real" hardware faults. Fortunately they happen mostly at high currents at low speeds (going up inclines, etc,...) - so no "tragic" accidents arise.

And as resellers/riders reported wheels with hardware problems normally fail quite fast.

So the risk to have an accident caused by a hardware failure at high speeds after owning a wheel long time wo probs is fairly low.

[RockyTop]

I thought my wheel was fully charged. I took it off the charger. It should have been fully charged but the cord had come unplugged from the brick.

The wheel had a 20% charge as I accelerated up to 30 MPH. I hit 30 just before finding myself leaning way too far forward........ A familiar feeling of flying through the air at 30 MPH just two feet off the asphalt brought back fond memories of my dirt bike days. ... Well!? Expect for the asphalt part. I prefer landing on dirt. 

All my fault. Although the beep could have been louder. .......... I was wearing a new shiny DOT approved motorcycle helmet that covered my ears. ...... Just for the record, the helmet made it  out without a single scratch. 

[mrelwood]

Good poll! I also misunderstood the first question. I would leave out the word ”possible”, as you didn’t mean to ask which scenarios are possible (everything’s ”possible”), but which ones actually happened to the reader.

On 9/7/2019 at 1:21 PM, Chriull said:

Electronic failures with tiltback afterwards:

Could not think of any. Maybe some strange firmware faults, but afair such was never reported.

The Z10 issue threads have several riders having experienced exactly that, one local rider pretty much every time he rides. Seems that the battery monitoring system has a failure that temporarily reads the cell voltages wrong, forcing a tiltback to stop riding. A reboot temporarily fixes the issue.

[Mono]

Does a piece of wood blocking the wheel to spin count as mechanical EUC failure? That was the reason of one of my most violent falls.

My first InMotion V8 broke down after 8000+km while I was riding it. I was somewhat predicting this to happen (as it were making a funny noise) and can't even for sure remember whether my hands touched the ground when it happened, they probably did.

Recently one pedal broke off when I went down a small curb and none of my hands touched ground during this mechanical failure. EDIT: As I knew that these pedals break, I would need to count it under irresponsible usage if I would have been hurt.

Edited September 9, 2019 by Mono

[Mono]

2 hours ago, Cumulus Libre said:

That is an awesome feedback, one that I am very happy with, but maybe that's your opinion based on stories..

That's my internal category meter of crash reports collected over the last four+ years 

[Yxzygäilijä]

I rode too hard with my Ninebot one S2 and battery dead. Not leaded to crash. It's really good wheel but don't ride too steep slope with it. Espicially if you are heavy rider.

And my Kingsong 16b's axle snapped while riding. Not leaded to crash. Do NOT buy this wheel. Axle is very thin and breaks easily. Poor desing quality and too weak. it has VERY low torque and power. Really not the safest wheel.

Edited November 9, 2019 by Yxzygäilijä