New Parts

It's been a little while since the last update. I've been keeping busy, trying to move along all these different aspects of the project. Some of the most visible headway has recently come to life!

Thanks to my roommate Steve Sorgenti, and the kind folks at Designspring Engineering, I have my first 3D printed part!

That is a hub, which mounts to the wheel, and on the shaft mounts a sprocket. This allows power to be transferred to the wheels. 

All in all the design came out perfectly, and it verifies almost all the other dimensions in my modeling, which means I'm almost ready to send it to the shop for production. But first I need to make a few more tweaks. 

Other than that, I'm working on some circuitry still, and waiting on components, but in the mean time, I've got wireless working perfectly up to its current max speed. I'm also about to file my complaint with the fairfield PD too.

Oh, did I mention the New York Times?  Well, they may be mentioning me some time very soon!

Onca Onca goes Wireless

Last night, this guys electric skateboard went wireless!  It was really exciting! The new joystick control is accurate, sensitive and the microprocessing is VERY responsive!

For those interested, I'm currently using 2 Arduino Fios, with the series 1 Xbee wireless chips, 1mW.  Connected to the transmitting fio is a joystick, identical to the orbital stick on a playstation remote. On the receiving end, I simply a taking the position of the joystick, forward or backward, and converting it to a corresponding PWM duty cycle on the proper DIO pin, which sends the signal to the motor controller accordingly.

Yea there is a little more to it than that, but for the time being that is the gist of it.  Once I finish the code and have it well tested, I'll share the code.

It's also not 100% done. I still had some funny business going on with the wireless braking, but I think it was just bad wires.  The code was doing what it should.  I'll vet it all out this weekend. Maybe I'll even get to post a few pictures.

Onca Onca update

Another productive weekend was had, considering how busy it was. Lots of accomplishments!

Success:
Sunday morning, I added a new gusset to the motor mount to support the torque of the motor under high load. This proved to be very efficient and I had much better success with the chain all day.

Success:
I also have brakes!  I added a momentary push button which activates a variable braking knob to dial in the braking rate.  Before testing, I was concerned that the braking power wouldn't be strong enough, but I sure was wrong. I can easily slow to a near stop, rolling down hill on a moderate grade.   So that was another big success.

Success:
Great wireless progress was made too!  After some trial and error, I finally got my wireless components talking to each other. Even better, I wired in my joystick controller and version 1 code, and it all functioned exactly as I intended!!

Taking what I learned in that test, I've written the receiver code too, but I need to work out a little circuitry before I get to testing it all for real. But we're getting close.

In an attempt to test my range, I thought I'd follow the coast;
Fail:
not more than 100 feet into fairfield, and I got pulled over by the fairfield police. The officer was extremely unruly, and didn't even ask what my ride was;  he simply asked where I was from, and promptly told me to go back to bridgeport. That my "vehicle" is not street legal, and if he saw me again in "this town" he would write me a "very expensive ticket."  Considering his arrogance, attitude and general hostility, I didn't argue. But I will be taking it up with his superiors.

I proceed back to black rock, and looped around St. Mary's a few more times, and then went home to re-read state laws on my ride. All in all I logged around 10 miles, with a max speed around 18, averaged 14mph.   Pretty cool!

Stay tuned. I'm sure more will be reviled. Particularly with the local authorities and on my wireless transmitter/receiver. For now, the prototype components are fine for test riding. I just want to get rid of the wires.

Project Onca Onca: The Electric Skateboard

 As some of you may have heard, I'm in the process of building an electric skateboard. Technically,  it's a motorized mountainboard, but if you don't know what that is, it's kinda like a long board with big tire wheels (8") and a motor on the back.

About 36" long, the current prototype moves at a top speed of 17.5 MPH for a calculated 40 miles!  I do, however, plan to cut that range in half, by adding some more power to the drive system  for faster up-hill acceleration.  But at this point I'm not sold on going much faster that this. At max speed, you are extremely challenged to keep the board from going into a speed wobble. I have adjustable trucks, which are as stiff as I'd like them right now.

Anyways, there a number of revisions to go through before I finalize the design and technical components. For now, I'm riding along and boy does it feel good!

Many thanks to Josh at Gnarboards for the inspiration for this project. The concept came to me, through the natural course of events, discussing hoverboards, Back to the Future and more.  But once i started researching the subject, I quickly found Josh's design, and had a great challenge before me.

I'd also like to thank all those who have helped me with design, parts, etc. Steve, Tom, Jon, cellman and A123, Exact Auto, BDI-USA and most of all, my girlfriend Nora, for listening, helping, supporting and putting up with all my crazy antics.

Stay tuned for updates, pictures, videos and more!