Hacks & Odds
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@maciak -- Can you ride a VESC without a BMS? -- Like I can ride a Onewheel Plus without a BMS. Or maybe just use a BMS in charging?
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@s-leon Yes, the idea is to use the bms charge-only anyway. The max battery amps for discharge are set in the vesc. I just like to see my cell balance status and battery temperature before/during/after ride on an experimental product. The rest of the board parameters are visible in the vesctool app.
External balancing would be great but a bit of a hassle to get 21 balance leads outside the battery box while still keeping it water-resistant.
Aka "Vommbat"
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@maciak said in Hacks & Odds:
the idea is to use the bms charge-only anyway
This. Saves needing all that extra space for the fets and heat management.
I think most of the DIY eSk8 guys prefer charge only too for this reason along with them generally being much cheaper. -
Riding my V1 at slower speeds in the grass today I was missing the feeling of the pushback. So, to simulate the pushback stance feeling I put the V1 in Elevated mode -- my back, hips, legs, and feet like it.
On the OneDanXR I have the opposite problem, a lower trailing foot than is comfortable. First I tried a thick shard of foam grip-tape just stuck on the footpad, but it wasn't really enough. So here's the hack: A flat skate shoe on the leading foot -- and a thicker clog with a bit of a heel on the trailing foot. Riding the OneDanXR is much more comfortable now with two different shoes, specifically chosen for the purposes -- and the BadgerSense tells me at a glance that I still have plenty of battery power available in reserve, even riding the pushback.
On my Leaderboard Plus with no battery underfoot I just built a custom trailing footpad out of three-quarter-inch? plastic wood with a wide strip of black rubber stall mat, about a full quarter-inch thick, on top. The combination is nicely comfortable with matching flat skate shoes -- but the ride does get uncomfortable for any length of time below pushback speed.
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This hack continues to amaze me: An eight pound 10ah EGO battery so far forward rides well. One photo is to get the sense of where the heavy battery sits in relation to the whole board -- and remember there is NO weight/NO battery under the trailing footpad, so ALL the weight is forward. The other photo is from above, to picture where the battery sits in relation to my leading foot -- note that I strap the battery so that my foot cannot dislodge it up from the contacts of the non-locking LandSurf adapter. Note, too, that while this looks like a Onewheel Plus, it is actually my V1 with Plus rails and an XR sensor pad -- but I have used this same fender/battery set-up with my Plus, too, as the sole-and-only power source.
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@s-leon said in Hacks & Odds:
same fender/battery set-up with my Plus, too, as the sole-and-only power source.
is that pine? looks like pine...
XR's got what plants crave!
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@notsure -- Pine indeed. Scrap pieces of 2x4 and half-inch plywood make up the fender/battery platform. Handy. Solid. No cost.
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An odd hack that has been working for me: For Onewheeling I have been strapping my leading arm under the wide elastic Velcro of the waist band of my Fox upper body armor. Thus I cannot automatically stick my arm out to try to break a fall. It's the stuck out arm that transmitted the force to break and shatter my collarbone in March 2022; once before I took a twenty-miles-per-hour fall directly on shoulder armor resulting in a sore shoulder -- but nothing broken or dislocated. The difference was not sticking my arm out. So far the tether has not been tested in an actual fall.
In similar precaution, I took the Fangs off the OneDanXR and off my Onewheel Pluses because in case of a fall I do NOT want time to react -- I would rather trust my shoulder armor, hip armor, knee and elbow armor, wrist guards, and helmet to keep me from serious injury at high speed on asphalt-paved Greenway. However, I did put my Sonny Wheels Sliders back on my V1 because riding it in the grass exclusively at speeds topping out at 13 or 14 mph, extra reaction time in that case, at slower speeds, could be good.
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@s-leon hmmm coming from a north shore downhill mountain biking background, i have gotten adept at doing ninja rolls. i did a couple recently on pavement doing about 12mph (?) without padding and without losing anything but skin.
not trying to brag, but just wanted to point out that the technique is to use your elbow and roll with the force in a somersault or cartwheel. having my arm strapped down probably wouldn't allow that and i'd be in worse shape.
since you're all armored up, have you considered also getting a mountain biking neck brace? i have one for biking, and it saves you neck at the expense of a collar bone, which is worth it. but it needs to be used with a full face helmet.
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@swinefeaster -- Thanks for your input. I do wish my instinctive reaction would be to tuck and roll. Instead, if I see trauma coming, my reaction is to stiffen up. So this old dog armors up, uses forethought-caution, and works to minimize reaction time.
Now with four years of Onewheeling and over 22,000 miles logged, a 21-23 mph range is my everyday speed on paved Greenway trail with either my Pluses or the OneDanXR. And while I have broken bones in falls and suffered bruises and a concussion, I have actually never scraped skin -- knock on wood.
I have considered a Hovding (with an umlaut over the 'o') which is an airbag cyclist's helmet that also protects the neck. But I am not yet ready to track one down.
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@s-leon depending on your budget, i'd recommend one of these
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My solution to a tire that somehow got out-of-round:
Lower the psi to less than 10, and ride the Plus now, too, as well as my V1, slowly (less than 15mph) and exclusively in the grass -- instead of wobbling down the paved Greenway at high speeds. -
With flat black, tar-colored spray paint I marked a dip that often surprises me when I am Onewheeling on the Greenway. To use black makes sense to me because I can tell other rough spots or bumpy stretches most often by the tar streaks which seal the pavement cracks. The delicious, smooth pavement rarely needs tarred up. ...Edit: Added photo -- the cracked pavement sticks up as a knob, the clear pavement is the dip. At high speeds, either is a surprise...
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@s-leon said in Hacks & Odds:
The delicious, smooth pavement rarely needs tarred up.
I loves me some smooooooth pavement!
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The grassy avenue I have been riding my V1 on, and my Plus with its low-pressure, out-of-round tire, is oriented east and west. And the time I ride it tends to be evening, near sundown. The leg east is great fun, and slightly downhill. The other, return leg, has been blind -- although featureless -- heading straight into the sun. So, here's the solution I came up with: A ball cap under my skate helmet. It fits. And it does a remarkably good job of blocking the sun and letting me see the grassy avenue in beautiful sunshine.
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When I asked the physician who put the metal strut in next to my collarbone, "What if I fall again?" His response was, "If I were you I'd worry about my hips!" -- probably in reference to research that showed that many old folk die within a year of breaking a hip.
So, the same dancer/mountain biker who had gifted me the Fox Titan Sport jacket CE vest that I now wear, at the same time gave me SixSixOne knee and shin guards -- which I have found to cover hips and outer thighs nicely. A fall while averaging 20 mph would call for protection! -- Those are NOT the shoes I wear Onewheeling. -
Had to walk today -- for the first time in a long time. A pull-stick I made from a fallen branch worked well for an easy drag the three and a half miles back to the car.
A contact blade on the adapter for the EGO battery got pushed in to the point of losing contact -- and I had no tools with me. I had stopped Onewheeling for a moment, the board powered off -- and then would not power back on.
Apparently contact-blade-movement on these adapters is a common problem, because once a while back the blades moved on a Sonny Wheels adapter I used, and now I see a blade retracting in on a LandSurf adapter I use.
My solution to the problem is pull the blade to where it should be, drill a hole through the 3D-printed-plastic and the blade, and put in a pin or a screw to anchor the blade -- being very careful not to short the connection by two opposite polar anchor screws touching deep in the plastic. -
@s-leon I found the perfect bucket for you!
If you flip it upside down it even spells out your name :p -
The BadgerSense LED strip needed more than just the clips holding it onto to the baling wire sticking out from my sensor pad... So, I twisted the baling wire around the BadgerSense LED... The shadow of twisted wire is entertaining to look at as I ride -- ever changing!
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@cheppy44 -- Finding the right fit of a can or a cooking pot as a Onewheel fender is surprisingly time-consuming. The only reason my stock pot fit was that I was using extended rails and a narrow 5.5 Hoosier tire, the combination of which allowed for the arc of the lip to not interfere with the sensor pad. The height, or depth, of the pot was a little bothersome for mounting batteries on top -- so, I was looking for a shallower cooking pot of the same dimension, and did not find one. For the convenience of easy modification I then went back to wooden fender/battery platforms.
