Faceplant with my Firewheel

[DBr]

I would like to share my experience with you.
Just shunted my BMS to avoid a faceplant, and some days later ironically a had my first serious high speed faceplant on asphalt ground caused by a power cut off. :-(

Yesterday I was in hospital because beside my left hand starts to get blue and hurt when grabbing something, my shoulder hurts very much. I can’t move my arm freely.
First result of examination: No bones broken. Good!
But if the articular capsule and/or sinews in the area of the shoulder are injured, is not clear now. 
This will be uncovered by the recovery process, the doctor said. Mhm, not so good.

The reason for the faceplant?
I fear, that I was too fast and too sure every thing is under control. 
But this time I have to be lucky about the consequences of the face plant. It could be easily worse.

Trying to analyze the cause this faceplant, but it is very hard for me to remember the seconds (or fractions of seconds) it happens.
Short before I fall over (because the unit/main board cut off the power) I remember something that was disturbing my balance. May be it was a hump in the asphalt or a very short but quite noticeable tilt back from the unit as final speed warning (as I mentioned in the BMS shunting thread). However, just after that I start to fall over. It was one of the worst feelings I remember, when the paddles sag through and I know what is going to happen. 
Next I remember was laying on my back and that my left shoulder, arm and hand hurts. In addition I have some scratch at my left knee, even nothing happened (at least visible) to the jeans I wore.
My only gear was a bicycle helmet and some motor cycle cloves. In this case it was sufficient, because I had some scratches at the helmet and the touch down with both hands protected by the cloves. The force when landing on my hands transferred mostly via my left arm to the shoulder could not ward off by any gear equipment, I believe.
The Jacket I wore, has a 12 cm long crack (on the back in hight of the left shoulder) and is not longer usable. Shoes and trousers are  not damaged. The wheel lies on the side, prompted me „Restart the unicycle“ and has some more scratches than before.

Later on I checked the max speed on my mobile phone measured with the GPS app android tacho: 30 km/h! So even slower, than the app measured the last max speed I rode (accidentally) with 33km/h and had no power cut off! 
The battery was quite good charged and showed after unit restart 86%. That’s reasonable for my F528 after a fully recharge and about 8km riding. The outside temp was about 7 degrees Celsius and the ground was flat.
Thus either the GPS speed measuring is very imprecise or the main board cuts off the power on different high speeds, even the battery is almost fully charged.

Conclusions:

- Wear gear to protect your body as well as possible!
- Never go beyond the the final warning, here „take care, take care“ at about 28 km/h.
Note: As I wrote in my BMS shunting thread, I made the speaker volume adjustable and it was switched at this time to low volume mode (about 50%), so I didn’t hear the voice warnings.  So if you would like to speed, make sure your hear the (voice) warnings, even it is annoying.
- Don’t make a race with bicycle rides, you may loose … and not only the race, but also your health!
- Never think you have everything under control, you won’t. 

 

Did you have similar experience?
What’s your conclusion?

[jer]

I wish you a speedy recovery.

And thanks for the detailed breakdown as well

 

 

[Frankman]

Very sorry for your accident. Thank you for sharing your experience.  I agree with you:

52 minutes ago, DBr said:

Conclusions:

- Wear gear to protect your body as well as possible!
- Never go beyond the the final warning, here „take care, take care“ at about 28 km/h.
Note: As I wrote in my BMS shunting thread, I made the speaker volume adjustable and it was switched at this time to low volume mode (about 50%), so I didn’t hear the voice warnings.  So if you would like to speed, make sure your hear the (voice) warnings, even it is annoying.
- Don’t make a race with bicycle rides, you may loose … and not only the race, but also your health!
- Never think you have everything under control, you won’t. 

    WISE WORDS

[OliverH]

I've driven on some occasions a Firewheel F779. If you drive it in comfortable mode you shouldn't get problems. Sport mode could react crazy at some points. You don't need to shunt the BMS.

Does the case has the CE sticker? Otherwise firmware is to old and believe me there's a difference.

[esaj]

Ouch, that sounds really bad!   Hope you recover fast & no permanent damage was done.

I've ridden my (shunted) F260 above 30km/h on many occasions, and never had a shutdown (luckily). I do ride with full gear always (full-face motorcycle helmet, knee- & elbow-pads, wrist guards), though, as I've never trusted it 100%, and like I've stated here many, many times: any wheel can shut down any time, even if it has worked perfectly before that for a long time. I believe mine has (had) the older mainboard, which has an extra wire going to the BMS, and it doesn't do that "sudden acceleration" somewhere around 30km/h.

I did have a BMS-related shutdown (BMS cut power) with custom-packs once (slow speed, braking downhill, landed on my feet as the wheel shutdown under me), and the wheel did not start repeating the "please restart the unicycle"-message at all, although it did get it's power back on a fraction of a second later (the BMS cut shortly due to overvoltage).

[dmethvin]

@DBr very sorry to hear that, I hope you get better soon! I have had two high-speed falls but none that sound as bad as yours. Both of mine were due to over-leaning I think, and I was lucky to get away with nothing more than a few scrapes. Since then I've decided that going slower is better.

[Jed]

9 hours ago, DBr said:

I would like to share my experience with you.
Just shunted my BMS to avoid a faceplant, and some days later ironically a had my first serious high speed faceplant on asphalt ground caused by a power cut off. :-(

Yesterday I was in hospital because beside my left hand starts to get blue and hurt when grabbing something, my shoulder hurts very much. I can’t move my arm freely.
First result of examination: No bones broken. Good!
But if the articular capsule and/or sinews in the area of the shoulder are injured, is not clear now. 
This will be uncovered by the recovery process, the doctor said. Mhm, not so good.

The reason for the faceplant?
I fear, that I was too fast and too sure every thing is under control. 
But this time I have to be lucky about the consequences of the face plant. It could be easily worse.

Trying to analyze the cause this faceplant, but it is very hard for me to remember the seconds (or fractions of seconds) it happens.
Short before I fall over (because the unit/main board cut off the power) I remember something that was disturbing my balance. May be it was a hump in the asphalt or a very short but quite noticeable tilt back from the unit as final speed warning (as I mentioned in the BMS shunting thread). However, just after that I start to fall over. It was one of the worst feelings I remember, when the paddles sag through and I know what is going to happen. 
Next I remember was laying on my back and that my left shoulder, arm and hand hurts. In addition I have some scratch at my left knee, even nothing happened (at least visible) to the jeans I wore.
My only gear was a bicycle helmet and some motor cycle cloves. In this case it was sufficient, because I had some scratches at the helmet and the touch down with both hands protected by the cloves. The force when landing on my hands transferred mostly via my left arm to the shoulder could not ward off by any gear equipment, I believe.
The Jacket I wore, has a 12 cm long crack (on the back in hight of the left shoulder) and is not longer usable. Shoes and trousers are  not damaged. The wheel lies on the side, prompted me „Restart the unicycle“ and has some more scratches than before.

Later on I checked the max speed on my mobile phone measured with the GPS app android tacho: 30 km/h! So even slower, than the app measured the last max speed I rode (accidentally) with 33km/h and had no power cut off! 
The battery was quite good charged and showed after unit restart 86%. That’s reasonable for my F528 after a fully recharge and about 8km riding. The outside temp was about 7 degrees Celsius and the ground was flat.
Thus either the GPS speed measuring is very imprecise or the main board cuts off the power on different high speeds, even the battery is almost fully charged.

Conclusions:

- Wear gear to protect your body as well as possible!
- Never go beyond the the final warning, here „take care, take care“ at about 28 km/h.
Note: As I wrote in my BMS shunting thread, I made the speaker volume adjustable and it was switched at this time to low volume mode (about 50%), so I didn’t hear the voice warnings.  So if you would like to speed, make sure your hear the (voice) warnings, even it is annoying.
- Don’t make a race with bicycle rides, you may loose … and not only the race, but also your health!
- Never think you have everything under control, you won’t. 

 

Did you have similar experience?
What’s your conclusion?

@DBrthis is the issue l have 2month ago.did you saw the photo I send to euc forum?l face plant twice already.this is the cause of over speeding!my kingsong 18"spec has been abused by the seller that it is 1200w but actually is 800w only!so 1200w actually can speed to 40km/h but 800w just 30km/h only.so l speed it up to 31km/h and the motor off and l'm afloat without control and faceplant.so the inventor of this euc still cannot solve this problem.pls go to youtube type"Malaysia kingsong(motor suddenly stop)"you can view my the incident!take care do a lot of exercise and take some whey protein to get well fast!

[DBr]

Thank you all very much for your recovery wishes! 
I think, i'm on a good way...

10 hours ago, OliverH said:

I've driven on some occasions a Firewheel F779. If you drive it in comfortable mode you shouldn't get problems. Sport mode could react crazy at some points. You don't need to shunt the BMS.

Does the case has the CE sticker? Otherwise firmware is to old and believe me there's a difference.

Why shouldn't I expect problems in comfort mode only? What du you mean with "react crazy at some points"? 
From my intention I have a much better control of the wheel when riding in sport mode, especially when doing curves or hard breaks.

You mentioned also "You don't need to shunt the BMS"
What makes you think that?
My conclusion from all discussions here at the board was, that I have to shunt to avoid a power cut off by the BMS due to undervoltage or overvoltage.

CE sticker. I didn't find a CE sticker at the case. I purchased the wheel in Sept. 2015 in Germany. The main board has a printed lable indicating a verion 4.0. Whatever that means for the HW and FW.
Do you have more specific information?
 

9 hours ago, esaj said:

I believe mine has (had) the older mainboard, which has an extra wire going to the BMS, and it doesn't do that "sudden acceleration" somewhere around 30km/h.

I have this 'extra' wire as well! From each of both BMS to the main board. But I still have no idea about the function of this extra wire.
May it is providing some control / supervision information?
We had started to disuss this in the BMS shunting thread...

[OliverH]

1 hour ago, DBr said:

Thank you all very much for your recovery wishes! 
I think, i'm on a good way...

Why shouldn't I expect problems in comfort mode only? What du you mean with "react crazy at some points"? 
From my intention I have a much better control of the wheel when riding in sport mode, especially when doing curves or hard breaks.

You mentioned also "You don't need to shunt the BMS"
What makes you think that?
My conclusion from all discussions here at the board was, that I have to shunt to avoid a power cut off by the BMS due to undervoltage or overvoltage.

CE sticker. I didn't find a CE sticker at the case. I purchased the wheel in Sept. 2015 in Germany. The main board has a printed lable indicating a verion 4.0. Whatever that means for the HW and FW.
Do you have more specific information?
 

I have this 'extra' wire as well! From each of both BMS to the main board. But I still have no idea about the function of this extra wire.
May it is providing some control / supervision information?
We had started to disuss this in the BMS shunting thread...

Sport mode sometimes gives a to heavy power output. It's nice for cruising, but not driving on a non flat road or uphill.

I've never seen problems with the battery. We're doing a lot tours over here. I'm a heavy weight driver and I only have problems to overlean it. The weak point is anyway the Mosfet part of the mainboard. They can blow up.

All PCBs have Version 4 printed on the layout. The difference is the firmware you can't upgrade byself. Modells with CE sticker have a different firmware to adress issues with instability. You can't read out the CPU memory as it's protected. Doing this will erase it (if noobs like us doing this, specialists can do this without openening the deck of the CPU). The firmware and PCB is made by hopemotion and not firewheel.

[esaj]

1 hour ago, OliverH said:

Sport mode sometimes gives a to heavy power output. It's nice for cruising, but not driving on a non flat road or uphill.

I've always ridden with the sport-mode, for me, the comfortable-mode is way too "soft", even for riding in the forest paths.

 

Quote

I've never seen problems with the battery. We're doing a lot tours over here. I'm a heavy weight driver and I only have problems to overlean it. The weak point is anyway the Mosfet part of the mainboard. They can blow up.

Only instance of mosfets burning up on a Firewheel I've seen was the post in the french-forum, although since we have very few Firewheel-riders here, it could be more common. Hasn't happened to me though (luckily), although I've pushed the wheel a lot (like 20km tour with average speed of 25km/h & testing the new batteries accelerating uphill as fast as I ever dared). But we didn't have much hot days last summer, so I don't know if it could happen easier with warmer ambient temperature (like +30C or above?) due to overheating, at least high currents haven't blown mine up.

 

Quote

All PCBs have Version 4 printed on the layout. The difference is the firmware you can't upgrade byself. Modells with CE sticker have a different firmware to adress issues with instability. You can't read out the CPU memory as it's protected. Doing this will erase it (if noobs like us doing this, specialists can do this without openening the deck of the CPU). The firmware and PCB is made by hopemotion and not firewheel.

I have three Firewheel mainboards: one that was burned early on with the original owner, then another that came installed in the wheel, that probably is either the same revision or the one that had the step-down circuitry in the mainboard changed, and then one "newer" from 1RadWerkstatt that no longer has the "extra" BMS-wire. All of them seem to say "4.0" (that part is partially covered in each of them), although there are subtle differences in the components at least with the latest one and the earlier ones. Probably also different firmwares in each of those.

EDIT: About the first burned mainboard: the earlier hardware-revisions of the mainboard had a different type of voltage step-down circuitry that was prone to burning up. I suspect that's what broke in the first board, I've removed the heatsink etc. and all the mosfets are ok (at least from the outside).

[OliverH]

21 minutes ago, esaj said:

I've always ridden with the sport-mode, for me, the comfortable-mode is way too "soft", even for riding in the forest paths.

 

Only instance of mosfets burning up on a Firewheel I've seen was the post in the french-forum, although since we have very few Firewheel-riders here, it could be more common. Hasn't happened to me though (luckily), although I've pushed the wheel a lot (like 20km tour with average speed of 25km/h & testing the new batteries accelerating uphill as fast as I ever dared). But we didn't have much hot days last summer, so I don't know if it could happen easier with warmer ambient temperature (like +30C or above?) due to overheating, at least high currents haven't blown mine up.

 

I have three Firewheel mainboards: one that was burned early on with the original owner, then another that came installed in the wheel, that probably is either the same revision or the one that had the step-down circuitry in the mainboard changed, and then one "newer" from 1RadWerkstatt that no longer has the "extra" BMS-wire. All of them seem to say "4.0" (that part is partially covered in each of them), although there are subtle differences in the components at least with the latest one and the earlier ones. Probably also different firmwares in each of those.

As we're ridding inclines over here and having strong summers and doing tours around 30-40 km I've never seen a cutout. One guy over here maanged to damage his batter while riding again and again with the warning message (battery low or so). If you ride it to the speed limit it can become soft and cut out (with enough weight).

Interesting that you like the sport mode. But this depends on the firmware The 3 different version I've driven are better on comfortable mode. Yes it's very soft and a special riding style. But the Firewheel is the best one riding on a flat road. Very comfortable to ride (shape of the shell and the best pedals (they are big and need no modification for wet conditions, they're not slippery) over all EUs). The Swiss distributor (ewheelz.ch) may have some of the good Firewheels in stock with CE sticker.

[DBr]

1 hour ago, esaj said:

I've always ridden with the sport-mode, for me, the comfortable-mode is way too "soft", even for riding in the forest paths.

Agreed. I have the same experience. In sport mode I (70 kg) have a more direct response a thus a better control independent of the terrain. In comfortable mode it was much harder or even impossible to handle difficult maneuver independent of the terrain, at least for me and the firmware on my wheel.

14 hours ago, OliverH said:

You don't need to shunt the BMS.

Ok, even you are right. Shunting should not take down the reliability of the BMS in terms of providing continuously power to the wheel. 

1 hour ago, OliverH said:

... Firewheels in stock with CE sticker.

Where should I find this CE sticker on the case?
Could you post a picture?

[OliverH]

22 minutes ago, DBr said:

Agreed. I have the same experience. In sport mode I (70 kg) have a more direct response a thus a better control independent of the terrain. In comfortable mode it was much harder or even impossible to handle difficult maneuver independent of the terrain, at least for me and the firmware on my wheel.

Ok, even you are right. Shunting should not take down the reliability of the BMS in terms of providing continuously power to the wheel. 

Where should I find this CE sticker on the case?
Could you post a picture?

I've no Firewheel at home. It was on tours from other guys. There's a small CE sticker on top of the shell. Not sure if they do it on all deliveries (CE sticker). The hardware is the same. Organizing a binary of the firmware would offer the possibility to write it to the CPU via debug port. I'm having a tool/ device for that and can borrow it. But I've no binary of the firmware.

[viti]

@DBr UHH, sorry to hear about your accident.

Tank's for sharing.

Wish you a quick  and full recovery!