ReWheel | Can it be used to modify the max speed?

LOAFFETTE

NotSure

@loaffette as far as i can comprehend it, its a torque problem. u need more voltage to spin faster, n all the field modulation gimmicks simply displace the problem elsewhere. vescmann spun his motor up to a buck fifty but everyone said its unsafe beyond just the blistering velocity. motor has no torque. like riding an electric toothbrush. supposedly fm firmware uses field weakening but i dont know how its implemented. but if it is a configurable value without some obvious hardware restriction, then perhaps u could speed up a stock pint. pushback itself is just a pitch value tacked onto the nominal state. my guess its the value the board gets while u initialize it while upright.

LOAFFETTE

@notsure I see. So mainly it's a hardware, hardware being battery voltage

NotSure

@loaffette its a technical problem not to be trifled with lightly.

OneDanGTS

@loaffette Being an ex-software engineer, this did kind of pique my interest, so thanks for the link.

That said, the main goal of the project is to take a dumped (copied from your board) copy of your OW firmware (currently, Pint, Pint X, or XR), patch it with some changes, and then flash it back onto your board. I looked at the dump process and, as they say in the notes, it's not for the faint of heart as it seems to require some mods to the circuit board and some special equipment. It's not like FM puts USB ports on their OW to allow these kinds of things (woudn't that be nice?).

Having owned an XR and currently riding a Pint X and a GT, my interest would be to up the speed limit on the pushback for the Pint X. I ride my GT pushing 20 mph and my XR I could get up to 19 mph as pushback was quite weak on the XR. The Pint X is my vacation board, but with the super aggressive pushback at exactly 16 mph, coming from the GT, it takes some getting used to to stay within that limit.

I've read through all the notes and it seems they have patches to make the Pints' riding modes mimic the XR and patches to adjust the nose elevation on all of the boards, but nothing to alter the pushback speeds.

So, if it were possible to patch the Pint X to bump the pushback to 18 mph (which I think it can handle as the Pint X seems to have as much, if not more, torque than my XR did), I'd be very interested, but I don't think I would risk bricking or breaking my Pint X to dump and flash the firmware using the methods described.

If you want to be the guinea pig however, I'd be willing to follow in your footsteps! :D

blkdout

@loaffette said in ReWheel | Can it be used to modify the max speed?:

@notsure I see. So mainly it's a hardware, hardware being battery voltage

@loaffette Yeah, pretty much. Every component is drawing power from the battery and it only has so many amps to give at once. When you start adding variables such as acceleration, inclines, wind, weight and of course high speed, the limitations become more apparent. Hence why the GT has higher top speeds and load handling, because the larger battery provides more power to play with.

blkdout

@onedangt

So, if it were possible to patch the Pint X to bump the pushback to 18 mph (which I think it can handle as the Pint X seems to have as much, if not more, torque than my XR

This would be my impression too as the two boards seem to have the same power on tap but I still wouldn't risk it lol.

LOAFFETTE

@blkdout I've got an idea, but could it's probably just a pipe dream.

Could a bigger battery with a BMS that can supply more power be a solution? It's only an idea, and maybe the actual controller part probably has a limit on the amout of power it can provide.

NotSure

@onedangt first thing this needs is amenable hardware! as u said: no usb. frankly, im astonished there are no emulator boards out there yet!!!

S. Leon

@loaffette -- A bigger battery? Yes. Kind of. VESC often makes use of a higher voltage, and probably more capacity battery along with adjustable app parameters to achieve 30+ mph. Early model Onewheels, including some XRs, allow more battery to be paralleled in, or in the case of the V1 and Plus, to run without a BMS at all -- in my case I am using high capacity EGO batteries and no BMS.

Often I ride my Onewheel Plus at greater speeds than most people ride their XRs. A nosedive, though, is certainly still possible. I use a BadgerSense to visually tell me how much of the battery I am drawing at any given moment -- but I did nosedive at 25 mph when I was distracted by something else and was not watching the BadgerSense display.

Looking for speed can get you hurt, hospitalized, or disabled. Again, I personally seriously gear up with helmet, wrist guards, knee pads, hip pads, and a Fox mountain bike armored vest with an extra d3o pad for the shoulder and elbow. The vest undeniably saved me in this fall by allowing a long, smooth pavement slide on the hard plastic neck-to-tailbone back scallops.

In other falls I have broken a wrist, cracked ribs, shattered a collarbone, and suffered a concussion even through a full face motorcycle helmet. Luckily, none has disabled me -- and too, lucky that insurance paid most of the medical bills.

Onewheeling is great fun! ...Be safe! ...Take it easy! ...Enjoy the learning experience!

LOAFFETTE

@s-leon
Sorry for late response, college work got nuts
I did ahve some time to think and I was wondering if people have put a VESC in an XR or something. I've heard VESCS are getting closer and closer to acting/emulating the feel and the "Onewheel-ness" of a onewheel

blkdout

@loaffette Jake Leary is saying VESC is there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWp4XteFnXo&t=1s

However, from my understanding, it's no walk in the park to setup and tune. I plan to VESC my XR once the internals fail but have a feeling I should start studying now lol.

outlandnish

@loaffette just saw this question, sorry for the delayed response! I'm the author of that rewheel project.

Currently, you can decrease the pushback + increase the Pint aggressiveness to give you higher speeds using those firmware patching tools. Past that, you could modify the Pint to higher current limits, but I haven't looked into doing that yet. As everyone else has mentioned, you run the risk of drawing too much current from the battery depending on the riding conditions (incline, rider weight, etc.).

The reason why the Pint X and the XR can draw more current (and have an even higher max speed) is because they have that second string of batteries run in parallel. Your safest bet would be to get an XR / Pint X until we find a way to dump firmware without pulling the chip off of board.

OneDanGTS

@outlandnish said in ReWheel | Can it be used to modify the max speed?:

until we find a way to dump firmware without pulling the chip off of board

I didn't follow that link, but that definitely sounds like something that is not for the faint of heart! :D

LOAFFETTE

@outlandnish couldn't you make a jig or some sort of "hat" that can latch onto the chip, or is it one that doesn't have the legs? If it has legs, you could just make something that latches onto the top of the chip and have contacts that touch onto the leads?

outlandnish

@loaffette I wish! The hack requires setting the BOOT1 pin high. And either by accident or forethought, Future Motion grounded that pin underneath the chip.

You have to physically disconnect it from that ground to load the firmware dumping exploit into SRAM. Sadly, we haven't found a way around that.

Now if the Bluetooth chip on the controller, the OTA mechanisms, or one of the other peripherals have access to the memory of the STM32, then we have a chance. But all of that kind of stuff is way above my head too.

I was only able to do this hack because there was a research paper documenting this exploit and someone had already tried it on the Onewheel.