Board is holding up well. Thought I would run through some things I've discovered and came up with while working on this board, and tinkering with it.
First- absolutely do not put off any maintenance or work on the board longer than needed. Will get back to this later.
I don't have any pictures, but I managed to get access to a makerspace at my new college, which is amazing. The parents aren't as happy that I've now got a place to go work on my projects that has A/C, access to 3D printers, CNC, waterjet and laser cutters. I've signed up to get training on the CNC, waterjet and laser cutters so I can gain some new skills and expand on what I can do next. I have a few projects I want to embark on once I get settled in and see how this semester goes. (Stepper-Motor powered guitar anyone?(Learned that Bambu A1 printers generate their boops and beeps via motor vibration, I'm now obsessed with playing music out of my printer. Roommates might hate me now))
I got the chance to put on some new heatshrink over the cable harness that runs from the battery to the controller. The hard part was running the new heat shrink over all of the cables. I started out with the largest wires, then pulled through the smaller ones using a length of string tied to the ends of a set of wires through the heat shrink. Also discovered that I had somehow lost length on the XT-60 even though I didn't cut it (black magic I guess). Gonna make a two inch extension using some length of wire and a female/male set of XT-60s so the main battery power leads aren't any tension. Remember to put the cable gland on before you put your XT-60 on or else it'll be trouble.
Did discover that if you leave neopixels powered but without data plugged into an ESP32, interference from the motor will cause the LEDs to flip out. Plugging in the data from the LEDs into the ESP32 negated this, and there is no reported issues so far. Will let the smart people figure this one out.
Old wiring harness heatshink wasn't made for the length of BTG, so I barely had any cable gland on the meat of the heat shrink, making for some very poor sealing. Waiting on the new MK8 Ennoid to come in, which has 120V FETs to allow for 20-22S shennanigans once I finally figure out how to properly route and manage wires. Thinking of using some zip-ties and hot glue to work this, and some pre-planning.
Ordered stainless steel m3 screws to replace the ones in my battery box which have finally stripped out. (I hate tiny torx for a reason. I hate tiny screws for a reason.)
Need to look at sealing the front and battery box, though I want to do this after I'm absolutely sure my board is 100 percent wroking. Found a couple trails near the college that have some trecherous terrain I could totally throw the board down to stress test it.
Thinking back on the Hall sensor swap and VESC Tools Hall Analysis tool, I think I may have a reason as to why hall analysis was showing very wacky hall readings. It could be due to the fact that BLE isn't stable and may cause data to be intermitently dropped, leading to data being lost during trasmission. Could be the Vesc software itself on my iPad or computer being generally pretty jank and having some issues that cannot be diagnosed. It could be the VESC itself is old and is just showing it's age. Yes, I'm blaming my tools for a problem I can't solve, but it's the only thing I could think of outside of user error.
Off-topic time:
I went to San Japan over Labor Day Weekend. It's not my normal crowd, but it was fun. Sucked going alone, but it was genuine fun to see people and get to meet people who seemed to be important. Used my board to get to and from the convention between the convention center and my hotel. Got caught in the rain saturday night on the way back, and that soured my mood for a moment.
Anyways, they had a car meetup thing in one of the halls where they had a bunch of crazy cars with anime/waifu wraps, similar to how Warstik was back in 2024, but better. It made me want to do it again, but Craft and Ride is dead and even if they weren't, I don't wanna drop the money on rail gaurds that wouldn't be removable or easy to protect. Came up with the idea there to have removable rail guards using the screw holes found in stock XR rails for those rail clips. BTG WTF rails don't have these, but they can be added with the help of a drill and tap set. Could have a set of screw holes, two on each half of the rail, one on top and one on bottom. You'd have a bit of the rail guard wrap over the rail and would be bolted in place to hold them on. Can't really prototype without proper training on a laser cutter or CNC, but it doesn't mean I can't make ideas. Now I just have to find a way to print on acrylic on the cheap.
