Dear Gotway, Please Consider These Upgrades

[Marty Backe]

29 minutes ago, Carlos E Rodriguez said:

THAT IS HILLARIUS!   MOSFET's installed in the same hole!   LOL that is just SPECTACULAR!  

This is very entertaining. I think we shold use all this information and write a book. Real world examples of how not to build electronics!

But Carlos, if this is as horrendous as you think it is, would you not expect there to be mosfet related failures. I'm not reading, hearing, or seeing any such failures.

It may offend your design sensibilities, but there are no real-world repercussions other than the fact that Gotway wheels run cool. 

[Spinner]

On 2017-06-08 at 4:12 AM, Marty Backe said:

As a fervent fan of your products I implore you to consider adding one or more of these improvements to your future wheels:

• Replace the single tone beeper with a proper speaker and vary the loudness of the beeps based on the speed of the wheel. When we ride your wheels fast (like your wheels are meant to be ridden) we often cannot hear the warning beeps because of the wind noise in our ears.
• Provide a means to turn off the beeper. Sometimes we can ride very far on a low battery and we are forced to hear the constant beeping even though we are traveling at 5 mph. This annoys us and it annoys the people that we ride by.
• Provide additional hardness settings. Some people think your Sport mode is still too soft. Why not please everyone?
• Replace the single brightness LED with a multi-level LED, just like the cheap pocket flashlights that everyone owns. The brightest level should be much brighter than your current LED lights, which are just about useless for riding at night. And please keep the flash mode, it's a great safety feature for daylight riding.
• Provide a battery indicator that can be seen by the user when looking down at the wheel. The best EUCs in the world (MSuper, ACM, and Monster) require the user to step off the wheel to see what their battery level is. In a perfect world it would be a multi-digit LED display that would show the battery percentage.
• Provide a fast charger for your high capacity wheels (e.g., 1300wh and above). We don't like having to wait 10 to 20 hours to charge one of your fantastic wheels
• Change the design of your wheel shells so that the screws don't snap in half after a bad fall. Your wheels have a great reputation for performance and desirability, but they also have a bad reputation for cheap screws that snap in half too easily. Your competition doesn't have this problem, so show them that you can make the best shells available. Your wheels are so powerful that we love to push them to extremes. Show the world that you can make a shell that is tough and can take the abuse.
• Many people like the option of wider tires, and have even gone to the extreme of cutting your beautiful shells to accommodate a wider tire. Why not design for wider tires and provide that as an option.
• Trolley handles are so useful, and you demonstrated how nice they can be with your super popular MSuper V3. Why not make them standard in all of your future wheels. People would love you for it.
• You may be the first manufacturer to standardize on one size pedal brackets. Now provide a range of pedal options that can be interchanged between all of your wheels. Some of us have small feet and some have large feet. People love having options to pick from.
• A built-in kick-stand would be extremely useful, and you would leapfrog all of your weak competition forever if you were the first to add one.
• Add a cutoff switch to the bottom of your handles. It's such a nice feature to have when having to lift a wheel over an obstacle
• Add bluetooth speakers, but please don't use them yourself to make announcements to the user.
• When appropriate (Monster, MSuper, etc) add a mudguard. Maybe even a removable one. Surely you've seen the 3D printed mud guards that people have been making themselves for the MSuper?
• So many people have difficulty with your newer phone apps. Many of us don't like to depend on having an Internet connection to use the app when riding or configuring our wheels. Your wheels are the best for riding in remote areas where sadly there is no Internet.
• Please keep the ever useful USB port - such a great feature of your wheels
• Instead of the dozen or more diagnostic beep codes that nobody understands or even knows about, how about providing this diagnostic information to the phone app, or a voice prompt using your new bluetooth speakers.

I don't know if you will ever see this letter. I'm your biggest fan and want you to succeed and destroy all of your meager competition. Maybe some of my suggestions can help you stay the number one EUC manufacturer in the world. I'm rooting for you 

I would also add, for every EUC manufacturer:

-an alarm that you hear through your phone if you have headphones while you're riding. I use bone conduction headphones so that I still hear outside noises. Headphones or not, at 30+kmh with a little wind you can't hear the beeps properly. I tried @Eddrush 's ACM S+ 1600 yesterday. Wow... What a beast... WIth some Kris Holm percussion leg armour it must be a dream to ride for longer periods. I think this will be my next wheel... Thanks, Eddie!

 

[meepmeepmayer]

On the one hand, it's nice that Gotway ask the customers how we want them to build their wheels

On the other hand, it's terrible that Gotway ask the customers how we want them to build their wheels. They should know

3 hours ago, Marty Backe said:

Well said. It's certainly interesting to read your guys opinions on this stuff. I just think it's an academic exercise at this point.

Maybe academic for mosfets, but for Gotway wheels in general the constraint we now face clearly is a lack of proper theoretical design, not lack of enough improvements or bad components of whatever else in evolutionary design. These companies must start to know wtf they are doing instead of winging it.

[Carlos E Rodriguez]

22 minutes ago, Marty Backe said:

But Carlos, if this is as horrendous as you think it is, would you not expect there to be mosfet related failures. I'm not reading, hearing, or seeing any such failures.

It may offend your design sensibilities, but there are no real-world repercussions other than the fact that Gotway wheels run cool. 

Agreed .  Its just bad practice. It just does not give them a professional look. And very likely how the "Bad Practice" is used it does not mean it does make a failure more likely.  Its just that trained Electronics Engineers have already determine what is a good way to do things because it  will or could cause reliability issues or make it difficult to  train. and also it makes the product more likely to have issues now or later.

walking barefoot will get you places and most likely never cause an issue except when it does. does it mean we should tell people to stop using shoes?

 

 

[meepmeepmayer]

24 minutes ago, Spinner said:

I would also add, for every EUC manufacturer:

-an alarm that you hear through your phone if you have headphones while you're riding. I use bone conduction headphones so that I still hear outside noises. Headphones or not, at 30+kmh with a little wind you can't hear the beeps properly. I tried @Eddrush 's ACM S+ 1600 yesterday. Wow... What a beast... WIth some Kris Holm percussion leg armour it must be a dream to ride for longer periods. I think this will be my next wheel... Thanks, Eddie!

 

Great idea! All alarms should be (optionally) mirrored on the phone when it is connected. @Jane Mo @Linnea Lin Gotway

[Carlos E Rodriguez]

2 minutes ago, meepmeepmayer said:

Great idea! All alarms should be (optionally) mirrored on the phone when it is connected. @Jane Mo @Linnea Lin Gotway

All alarms should wired with a blue tooth receiver in your pocket. Then two electrodes wired to your lower belly. If you are not paying attention the electrodes will activate causing you to relieve yourself and automatically making you stop and run away from your wheel. 

[meepmeepmayer]

LOL

Pedestrians (seeing EUC): "Oh no, another shitter!"

[Rehab1]

6 minutes ago, Carlos E Rodriguez said:

All alarms should wired with a blue tooth receiver in your pocket. Then two electrodes wired to your lower belly. If you are not paying attention the electrodes will activate causing you to relieve yourself and automatically making you stop and run away from your wheel. 

 

[Jason McNeil]

On 2017-6-12 at 3:15 AM, KingSong69 said:

wasnt the Firewheel f779 the first high capacity wheel, going 28+???

Yes ACM June 2015.... released in a hurried rush after the popular KS16 arrived April/May, then first with 6 Mosfets, which then failed on their Beta Customers, 2 months later 12 Mosfets.

to call 12 Mosfets an improvement is also questionable. Pure from electrical standpoints it is Nonsens. The right way would have been to implement stronger Mosfets. But Marketing won this battle and 12 Mosfets is seen as an "advantage" by most customers nowadays.

September 2016 was V3....84 Volt Versions about 2-3 months later....v3s+....just know this exactly because i was on the angry side as my 2 monthsV3 was on the "old" side from one day to the other....

Thanks @esaj,  @Marty Backe & @KingSong69 for corrections, will be tapping the fact checking powers of the collective consciousness in v2 

[kour]

On ‎07‎/‎06‎/‎2017 at 11:12 PM, Marty Backe said:

So many people have difficulty with your newer phone apps. Many of us don't like to depend on having an Internet connection to use the app when riding or configuring our wheels. Your wheels are the best for riding in remote areas where sadly there is no Internet.

this is keeeeey... even if I have to plug in whatever device I'm running the app on to the wheel via usb.. seriously- how I else could I turn tiltback off?

[serfy]

I just got an M-Super 18" and since it was brand new the handle won't lock in the up position. I have a V8 and the handle is excellent, so by comparison this one sucks! Is there a way to fix this? I've tried all sorts of ways to push it pull and nothing seems to work.