I like the boosted board remote because of its ergonomics + button (rubber soft touch) and like the stary remote for the screen / menu. For a while now I think the VESC / opensource / DIY lovers (me included ) lack a “fancy” finished product style remote.
The things I rally miss om the “regular” remotes are:
Seeing the state of charge of the battery.
Being able to turn down the torque to let other people do their first ride on my board.
See the speed
Being ably to charge simply (it now has 2 AA batteries)
CC would be nice, but the most needed/missing is the “low power / speed” button.
Fiddling with a laptop and the vesc settings every time a beginner wants to ride is really pain in the ass
I bought myself one of those winning (jason is currently using one) remotes. It has an rfm chip and a microcontroller. I am hoping its a pic or an atmel. In that case I am planning on writing new firmware with an oled screen mod. Would be cool to implement all of these features. It should be easy getting the battery data back to the remote. Some options could be built in to tune the pwm range or profile for beginner mode.
This sounds great @JTAG. The number one feature should be 100% reliability with zero dropouts. Everything else is nice to have, but a luxury compared to reliability. The number of people that have SYF’d because of a controller\signal dropout is way too high.
In another thread about remotes, @chaka commented that a hybrid remote would be ideal; FHSS for throttle, AFH for everything else. I completely agree. I would prefer to avoid BT as the transmission protocol for throttle.
Trigger should have gt2b reliability. The telemetry data should be on Bluetooth or similar, because it isn’t nearly as bad if you get telemetry drop outs
For now i’m sticking with a nunchuck as remote for my build. But when my parts arrive i’m going to build one of these.
One with a little display on it. The case is pretty much the same and will be made on the CNC soonish.
Going with a black or antraciet aluminum brushed look. Mainly because the plastic ones are to light in my opinion, need some weight in my hand.
Glad to see that others also like to see a beginners mode option / desire on the remote!
Currently the new VESC design seen to carry the NRF24 chip for control. I looked at the VESC code and it seemed easy enough do be adapted and support the features we desire. So for the remote I am also looking into the NRF24 chipset.
I don’t really see the benefit for a dual radio solution, it doubles the cost and any type of radio you choose nowadays is already full-duplex. Since the upstream data is not that important it can be a very low data speed such that it wont bother the important desired torque setpoint that goes down.
@JTAG the benefit would be signal strength (that it never drops because of distance from receiver) and signal integrity (that it never drops because of interference from other signals in the air).
This is definitely not my area of expertise, so if there is a solution that assures zero dropouts, that’s excellent, please bring it to the masses!
However, reading here and ES it seems like BT signals are far less reliable, and FHSS never drop. Personally, I’d pay double for a controller that never drops. Given the choice between a single SYF incident, and higher cost, I’d say to take my money.
Maybe you should read this here: http://www.electric-skateboard.builders/t/vesc-nunchuk-rf/588/82?u=hexakopter
Just because you mentioned the NRF24L01 chips. And I think vedders implementation should have prevent that, but because I still feel the pain I know that it wasn’t in my case. Still don’t know why.
I really like the project of a device like this in the DIY community but For now and until this remote is a reality it will be good to think about a DPDT switch for the following reasons.
1- ability to switch battery configuration 6S -12S ( beginner to advance)
2- 6S charging capability ( less money in charger and power supply )
3- emergency cutoff switch at your finger tips.
And all this with a device that cost $ 5.99 at the Home Depot.
@JTAG Also, I don’t know if it’s feasible, and wouldn’t necessarily need to be incorporated into the remote, but how hard would it be to add in capability to monitor and datalog current draw, voltage, watts, max/min values? Maybe as a standalone module or something? I’m planning on using a watt meter and a gopro (yi) camera to video log my setups, so I can figure out where problem areas/configurations might be, and also see if I can determine if one setup operates more efficiently than another.
