Not sure about hidden, but i let my friend try my board a couple days ago, I got dual hub motors and a winning remote. he rode it with no power till he was confident enough, then I let him use power and told him to only go very slow, He was happy going slow, tried accelerating. The board essentially backflipped him off, and he landed badly, fracturing his leg in 2 places and dislocating his ankle. He’ll need phisio for a month and may have to cancel university courses because he cannot travel to and from the house to the street because of stairs. soo i guess the acceleration curve can be dangerous? He’s in good spirits, he even told the hospital it was a regular skateboard to avoid us getting a bad name I’ve been able to ride it no problem, but I am aware of the sudden bursts of acceleration that the remote works with and how far I can push the trigger before I get a step up in power.
This is where it would be very good to have a beginner mode built into either the remote or the control board. I added this to my control board, but I’ve never used it since I have the luxury of having my first build around, which is a very stable rev limited underpowered board.
Also, when I put kids on the board I (put a helmet on them and) keep the controller. You need to practice this a little bit because you don’t get the acceleration feedback directly.
Hey @devin as a non electrical/programming type person I am a little concerned about these issues as I’ll be putting my wife on a build. Yes she can longboard and we will wear safety gear, but it would be good to avoid these sudden changes in acceleration deceleration. I’ve basically followed @jacobbloy awesome directional videos, but my question is, is this enough? For a noob like me it would be invaluable to have various screen shots of settings for beginner intermediate and advanced. I’m also aqutely aware I don’t want to push workload into anyone, is there a way I could do this? Once my parts have arrived and I have a rolling build?
Sorry to hear about your friend, that really sucks 
Hopefully he had some previous experience skating or longboarding to know the risks? Personally, I have certain friends who I silently refuse to let ride my boards as some are more injury prone than others.
For my friends that have tried my board that don’t skate, I control the board at first. Let them concentration on bracing themselves for acceleration and deceleration without having to worry about the sensitivity of the remote. I never thought of doing it that way until one of my friends told me he wanted me to control the board.
There’s another issue here that might be of note. I have built 5 boards to date and 4 of them are drop decks with aluminum extrusion and risers on each end (this is the first prototype):
And then because I wanted something small and light that I could keep in the car I built this one:
honestly, this board scares the shit out of me. It’s unstable, the wheels are underneath your feet instead of in front of your feet and I will never ride it - I’ll recycle it into a smaller lighter drop deck. (note that 2 of my drop decks have regular skate wheels and 2 have the 4" rubber tires)
So my takeaway is that the fundamental design of skateboards isn’t conducive to safe riding. That a longer board where the rider’s feet are much closer to the ground and the front wheels are at least 5 inches in front of the front foot is a much more safe stable design.
And of course the longer the wheelbase the more stable the board is - I kept making them longer and longer until I started bottoming out on road features, then I had to shorten them up again. The sweet spot seems to be a 24" deck with the axle line somewhere between 6 and 9 inches past the edge of the deck front and back.
If you’re in the Seattle area I invite you to meet up and give these boards a run against standard boards and see the difference.
You’re basically describing the intended use of the deck. A short wheel base cruiser shouldn’t be given the ability to fly around at 25mph. A downhill-style deck will be inherently more stable at speed. One thing I keep noticing in peoples’ builds are the use of large risers which for me can take a stable deck and make it very uncomfortable to ride.
Taller boards are less stable. The addition of a quarter inch to risers has a dramatic effect once you are braking at speed.
Not as much as the distance between trucks… That has a more drastic effect on ride than height … Adding risers has a minimal effect
Edit: I should know…I’m on my 8th build. Deck sizes from 55 to 28 inches…and everything in between
same thing happened to me on my seccond day, went abit crazy on the brakes, only ended up having a grazed elbow and a saw hand
It would be nice if we could add a paragraph to the beginning builder’s sticky topic about this - the faster you want to go the lower and longer your deck should be.
Yeah, maybe something that contains more info about deck selection in general than just what’s required to support electrical components. Although you can easily find info like that elsewhere.