Bump Count

[Lex Smith]

*warning - this is a ramble based on some thoughts I had riding home this evening :-) *

I was involved with professional wrestling for a few years and it's a strange past time where you try and make it look like you're hurting each other without actually hurting each other (or at least not too much) which is considerably more difficult that just straight out trying to hurt each other.  But as anyone that's watched it will know it involves having your body slammed into the mat with considerable force over and over again (and yes it hurts).  Born from that activity was the concept of 'the bump count' which some wrestlers believed in.  Basically it was the idea that your body was good for 'x' amount of bumps before something serious would break in a career ending manner.  With this in mind some wrestlers were reluctant to take 'big bumps' unless there was a decent audience to perform to with the mindset that they didn't want to waste their allotted bump count.

Riding home this evening and jumping of a reasonably high curb which resulted in quite a jolt (successfully though) I got to thinking that our EUC's probably have a 'bump count' in that they can take so many falls or jumps before something shakes loose on the main board and we have a complete electrical failure with resultant crash.

With this in mind I was thinking it would be useful if the EUC could register and record 'bumps' as it were both in frequency and severity and  have this data stored in an app so that when the inevitable failure happens some sort of 'average bump count before failure' figure could be calculated and future control boards could then trigger a warning when this figure was getting close, perhaps allowing the user to either get the board checked out or replaced.

It could even perhaps temper ones riding to avoid too high a bump count or conversely give peace of mind that one's riding style isn't too extreme after all.

And yeah I know . . . I tend to over think things :-)

 

[.....]

8 minutes ago, Lex Smith said:

*warning - this is a ramble based on some thoughts I had riding home this evening :-) *

I was involved with professional wrestling for a few years and it's a strange past time where you try and make it look like you're hurting each other without actually hurting each other (or at least not too much) which is considerably more difficult that just straight out trying to hurt each other.  But as anyone that's watched it will know it involves having your body slammed into the mat with considerable force over and over again (and yes it hurts).  Born from that activity was the concept of 'the bump count' which some wrestlers believed in.  Basically it was the idea that your body was good for 'x' amount of bumps before something serious would break in a career ending manner.  With this in mind some wrestlers were reluctant to take 'big bumps' unless there was a decent audience to perform to with the mindset that they didn't want to waste their allotted bump count.

Riding home this evening and jumping of a reasonably high curb which resulted in quite a jolt (successfully though) I got to thinking that our EUC's probably have a 'bump count' in that they can take so many falls or jumps before something shakes loose on the main board and we have a complete electrical failure with resultant crash.

With this in mind I was thinking it would be useful if the EUC could register and record 'bumps' as it were both in frequency and severity and  have this data stored in an app so that when the inevitable failure happens some sort of 'average bump count before failure' figure could be calculated and future control boards could then trigger a warning when this figure was getting close, perhaps allowing the user to either get the board checked out or replaced.

It could even perhaps temper ones riding to avoid too high a bump count or conversely give peace of mind that one's riding style isn't too extreme after all.

And yeah I know . . . I tend to over think things :-)

 

I get where your head is at, but I fear implementation in ANY useful manner, would be near impossible. With the varying build practices and glues and designs, I highly doubt a 'reliable' bump tolerance could be assumed. Vibration does a lot of damage to poor soldering. But this is sometimes on a miicroscopic level at first. I'm not sure one could calculate what you are thinking about. Then theres the hard slams.. Again, so many variables to contend with. I suspect that visual inspection of body damage, solder joints, hard parts, would be more useful than a 'bump' count.

It would be cool to compare the bump and vibration stats between wheels and rider styles for sure. Don't let my negativity stop you from designing such a thing. I would think that a few motion sensors on multi-axis would be a good start. Hell, even the gopro has g-force sensors in it. I say to build a modular sensor and hand that beast to Fantomas...

Edited August 6, 2021 by ShanesPlanet

[Singasong]

Some of us (me) could use one of those bump counters on our bodies, never mind the wheel! Those wrestlers were right

[The Fat Unicyclist]

4 hours ago, Singasong said:

Some of us (me) could use one of those bump counters on our bodies, never mind the wheel! Those wrestlers were right

Yeah, but you also get to an age when you wake up with sore bits that were fine the night before....  

Wait!

Is that what is meant by, "Things that go bump in the night"   

[Lex Smith]

1 hour ago, The Fat Unicyclist said:

Yeah, but you also get to an age when you wake up with sore bits that were fine the night before....  

Wait!

Is that what is meant by, "Things that go bump in the night"   

Could it be that the mystery bumps correlate to misdemeanors from the previous day?  Have a look under Chrissi's pillow.  If you find a ballpein hammer there well then there's your answer 😉

[mrelwood]

On 8/6/2021 at 11:58 AM, ShanesPlanet said:

I would think that a few motion sensors on multi-axis would be a good start

Actually, the chip that measures the upright position of the wheel already has an accelerometer built in. It’s data is a part of what is being used to calculate the exact orientation of the wheel. So a bump counter could be added to any EUC with just a firmware tweak.

 But I’m with you on the usability of such a counter. If anything, in most cases it will give a very wrong idea of what to expect. Some mainboards fail already at the first power on, some are good for tens of thousands of kms. An average is way off in both cases.

 Same goes for the durability of the mechanical parts, such as axles, connectors, solder joints etc.

 Also, an accelerometer can’t tell how much weight the wheel has had to endure during the bump. Dropping down a curb with softy bent knees and a smooth technique causes just a fraction of the stress that straight-legging the same drop does. Or riding seated, which stresses completely different parts.

I resoldered the capacitors on my MSX, since I had read about capacitor issues and the joints on mine were lacking. Later units have shown much better soldering work, increasing the expected bump count considerably. Small improvements like this are constantly made throughout the manufacturing cycle of a wheel, which should change the expected average.

So, difficult to implement, yet still deceptive. Unfortunately, because the idea in itself is good.

[WIZARD]

Brain?

A few of us (not all) have one glued on top of a thing called a Spinal Cord.

A long time ago when I was first learning to ride, out in the old Kmart parking lot... there was a special curb. It was Graduated. it was higher and lower at one end. Therefore a guy could practice his tech quite easily at various levels. This is where I learned the Violence of Curbs.

After BEATING THE LIVING SHIT out of my brand new beloved unicycle, I had an idea, a revelation of sorts...

If you BEAT THE LIVING SHIT out of something... is it more likely to break, than if you dont???

I called up into service and asked my BRAIN to answer this most confounding and perplexing question.

In suppringly short order it spit out the answer...

BEATING THE LIVING SHIT out of your wonderful Unicycle by riding, dropping or hurling yourself down or up ragged cliffs of various altitudes will be hard on your Unicycle.

Dent need a computer algorithm or fancy accelerometer to detect the end result.

I've been nice to MY poor little old Unicycle ever since.