Best posts made by AngusOfStockholm

@lia ❤️❤️ Thanks for putting this together and for hooking me up. The forum is dead. Long live the forum. 😂

I have a clutch of 60v PowerWorks and GreenWorks batteries that I use for my lawn mower, grass trimmer, and not least my OneWheels!

I want to keep all my batteries healthy and strong, so they need to get used regularly. I decided I was going to start rotating though my various batteries so that they all got used and never sat around with a full charge. I put numbers on them with my paint pen, then I fired up an Excel spreadsheet and started designing my data table. WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG — WRONG!!! It needs a database.

I googled for an online database and airtable.com came up. That was yesterday, and today I now have a little system I can use in my phone to log my battery use. I can pick the date off of a calendar interface; choose the battery from a list; select the ending % charge from a dropdown.

Bonus! It's nice to have the voltage data table in the phone. Don't know how many times I've googled that picture.

Cool. So now when it's time to use a certain battery again, I'll know how much percent charge it has, and if/when it's safe to connect it to the OneWheel. The session viewdoes a lookup for voltage in the voltage data table based on the percentage I linked to.

Oh yeah, that's important because I usually don't charge these external batteries on their charger, except when I've been mowing the lawn. I usually charge the board and external battery together so that they're exactly the same voltage. I did it this way for 9,000k on my Pint and it worked for me.

TLDR; I made a three table relational database to manage my external batteries that I can use in my phone. Instead of Excel.

Pints take 60v batteries for a VnR. Unfortunately, the brand that made 60v power tools has moved over on to batteries that do both 48v and 24v. Now my Pint is in Pint heaven, but if you VnR'd your board, I could set you up with a couple 60v 4Ah batteries to borrow here in Europe. I can ship them inside the EU no problem, I think. I loved doing trails on my Pint. I'm Pint Positive.

But you can carve-power charge with the 40v batteries. I'm making a carve power setup right now and have been searching and searching for a Goldilocks battery. I found a 13Ah 48v battery for under 300 EUR., which weighs a bit over 4kg. I'mma try it for charging my XR when I'm out on adventures in the woods. Last summer I did a 105km adventure on a Pint (with two charging stops) so a stock XR's range just feels skimpy!!

I offer this: In addition to the equipment already mentioned, I’ll often throw on some hard plastic shin guards in the socks under the jeans when doing challenging or unfamiliar forest trails. I had my board flip/roll towards my shins one time and the edge/grip tape took a nice little slice o bacon off my leg.

It was far from the trail head, so I immediately got back on the board and headed for the car while the adrenaline was still working and shock hadn’t set in. 🌲 🪨 🔪 🥓

Welp, my conclusion. It’s a whole different riding experience. It’s what I expected the XR to be in the first place, having come from the OG Pint. It now has a solid, responsive, confident power that it lacked before, with the option to dial it back from there if desired.

Having seen the GT reviews now, riding a Badgered VnR’d XR seems exactly right for me. Big deck, good speed, long range, generous power, mellow pushback.

I've ridden in a lot of really cold weather, but that's usually pretty undramatic because it's dry/icy.

Last summer, though, It was soooo windy sometimes. A sturdy peanut butter sandwich stands up to all winds, though. (Clip 1)

And then I tried twice to ride super far unsupported in northern Sweden. First time, it rained and hailed really hard and I had to get picked up after hiding out under an abandoned house for an hour or so (Clip 2). The second time, I had to shelter on the front stoop of an abandoned house when the sky just opened up (Clip 3). At least that time it actually stopped raining.

Apparently, my super power is to be near abandoned houses exactly when I need them!

Weather action footage! Links to maps of these long-distance escapades in the descriptions.

@biell - I get it, but one good look at the bone sheath of my shin bone was really enough for me. My scientific curiosity has its limit. :D

Sunny day in Stockholm, and not too much snow/slush to keep me off my onewheel. Yay! I started out with a demonstration against the war in Ukraine. Lots of feelings there, for sure.

After that, a quick lunch with the wife, then I grabbed my gear out of the car and took off north. I planned to ride to a spot where the mass transit boats go, and then to take the boat across to my island, thus avoiding the bridge.

I got there and only then realized it was 2 hours between boats during the winter. Blast! I decided to charge my board while considering my options. Today was actually the maiden voyage for my newly-built charging solution. For lack of a more glamorous case, it lives in a salted caramel ice cream tub, and it has its wires zipped tied to the sides of the container to make sure I don’t accidentally tug them and break the very fragile connectors on the voltage booster. I put XT60 connectors on there in case I want to use a different battery in future, or use it to charge something that doesn’t use an XLR. I’m pitiful at soldering, I’m afraid, so I’m proud of this. Not gonna lie.

While it charged, I re-read the timetable and discovered the boat I ACTUALLY wanted was coming in about 20 minutes. Woohoo! I grabbed about 25 percent before I had to stow all the stuff back in my backpack. Seems to work great, though.

Once on the boat, they asked where I wanted to get off, but when I told them, they said they don’t stop there during the winter. WHAAAA?!? Luckily, they did stop at another place on the island…just further away from home…and at a place with a really steep icy road out from the bay. 😬 it was fine.

I ended up riding past the bridge I was avoiding. I took the opportunity to take a picture of the new bridge that’s under construction (right next to the old bridge). I’m sure it will be very functional when it’s done, but it is rather a homely structure.

So it didn’t turn out to be THAT long of a ride. But I did ride (unsupported) for 106% battery, so that qualifies (barely) as long-distance, self-reliant for me. According to my tests, I should be able to charge my board from almost empty to almost full three times with the 48v 13Ah battery in my setup.

It was FREEZING by the time I made it home, so I hopped in the sauna before dinner to thaw out. Hoping for a lot more km this year! 🤙😀

Mainly because I'm still not sure if I want to modify my new-used XR with a VnR, I'm trying to make a carve power-style charger with one of those green solar power converter box thingies. We'll see how that goes.

Question though: Is it really THIS EASY to VnR an XR? (If you don't mind riding without the app) I mean, that's redonkulous that you don't even have to take stuff apart besides that little plastic hatch!

@lia Only too happy to do it. :D

@s-leon Ok. I VnR'd my Pint and it was great until eventually some water got to my BMS. That Pint mod involved disassembling and drilling and ugh! Now I recently badgered my XR, but it doesn't seem like I'd need to break the seal on anything. Bonus!

I have a raft of 60v batteries, so if it's really just tap-n-go, I'm really tempted. :)

I will answer my own question now soon!

Today I VnR'd my XR, tapping into the leads in the cable tray next to the controller box. It might be of interest to @NotSure that I used the same kind of wire tappers that they use in the gt40 mod. They are small and easy to use, but they are not THAT small. And not THAT easy to use.

It was slightly tricky to tap the cables in the right place and with the connectors shooting out in the right direction so that they didn't get in the way when putting the plastic tray back in. So think twice, pierce once.

If you end up buying the wiring from the gt40 guys, you won't have to worry about the wiring too much, but I ended up soldering the spade connectors that go on the wire that runs between those taps and the battery. Because crimping feels sketchy. Also, I put hot glue on both the taps and the spade connectors, because dust and moisture.

On the outside end, I have an XT60 connector, which is then compatible with the Sonnywheels 3D-printed battery connectors I already had from my Pint VnR and the stylish cloth-covered backpack cord and my parallel connector for multiple batteries, etc.

And if I may -- the brass thread barrels in the front bumpers, WTF?!? I think one of those was already spinning when I bought the board (used) but today I had to use FORCE to get the bumper off, then epoxy it back together before I could re-assemble. So I ordered a new bumper set today, which I will install the next time I need to dis-assemble the board, because the epoxy didn't really work. Plus, who knows how long there'll be spare parts for XRs.

Anyway, yay! My board now has an extra 4Ah battery connected and the whole rig is charging. This means I won't get to work with just under 50% battery, which has been SOOO annoying because it means I need to have the charger with my to work, and back, and forth and back and forth andbackandforthandbackandforth.

@notsure - Such a funny reading. It was so on the nose - and I try to give you a physical description of the perp!

Your reading:

@s-leon

Put the proton torpedo in the ventilation shaft at the end. Amirite?

Range is one thing, but can we talk about ride quality?

One thing I find slightly disappointing about the XR vs my old Pint is that surging you get going uphill. Also, I kinda fear how people say “don’t do anything fun under 50% charge on an XR”.

Now it struck me: if I VnR more batteries into the XR, that’s going to give me more volts more of the time. Would that reduce uphill surge, or is that just an XR thing you have to live with?

I almost never rode the Pint without an external battery once I VnR’d it. Maybe all the goodness I experienced was VnR goodness and not Pint goodness.

(PS - I’m managing the XR surge pretty well via custom shaping, but I still worry because it freaks me out.)

@lia It was the Powerworks ones that I can't get any more. I ordered a 6Ah Greenworks one from NL one time, since they don't sell those in Sweden. That's awesome if Greenworks're still going.

@notsure oh, yeah. Of course! You were going to Europe on a plane, so it had to be a pint! 🤦‍♂️ 😂

@notsure

Oh, no! You definitely need good power to keep your salted caramel ice cream nice and frosty. Will be totes worth it.

@lia

That one looks awfully wet, but do keep clear of those kinds of fallen trees. People have been known in Sweden to use those for shelter from the wind when having a cuppa in the woods. If the fallen tree snaps off, anything under the roots gets smooshed, often with a deadly outcome. ☠️ 🇸🇪 🌲

@lemur :(((