I can say after just getting my own board that pushing with the belt on does create some drag from the motor. I probably wouldn’t want to count on having to push the board but if you do I would probably remove the belt if possible. Also remember that the board will be heavier due to the electronics so that might make it more tiring to push and harder to stop.
Well, we did not come on a final conclusion on this, but the motors can overcharge your caps and then fry your vesc.
Just if I was going to ride it around though, right, not if I rolled it across my living room floor. It makes sense though.
On topic for this thread though, I end up kicking periodically just because I am in Germany and I prefer a kick start anyways. When my programmer arrives I am def going to flash ackmaniacs firmware and take advantage of cruise control. I was surprised that pushing on a one belt setup really didn’t have that much resistance.
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I never pushed my longboard with jacob’s hubs for long distance, just do it when I see the police, but pushing the board is just a little harder then a normal longboard. There is a little drag because of the magnets of the motors. When I’m spinning the wheel by hand it turns not as long as a wheel without motor and it stops after about 3 or 4 turns.
3-4? I get like 0.5
Well, maybe there is something else wrong with them? Or it is just a different batch.
These guys are using a helical gear system so you get the advantages of a geared board without the drag from belts
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Does it make a difference if you use Foc or BLDC? Same drag when board is on or off? I also cleaned and oiled my bearings a few days ago. And I have 91mm urethane on my hubs, that adds 50g rotating mass per wheel.
hub motors have WAY less drag than any belt setup, and push really easy. BUT they will always have a little more drag than regular skate wheels because of the magnets. I have wheels with LEDs in them that light up from a small magnet in the spacer and even those wheels have a noticeable amount of drag over a standard longboard wheel.
No, drag is drag.
Remember to have the board powered on when pushing the board! otherwise the VESC can get overloaded and get fried. If you simply power on the board when pushing the board, the power generated from the motors can flow through the VESC and into the battery. In that way you also get some juice back in the battery. Not a lot though…
Interesting. I have let my 1st gen Boosted Board get run down so low that it won’t even take a charge. The only way to reverse that was to push the board a 4 or 5 blocks to get a tiny bit of charge on it. Then when I plugged it in, the charge would work. Since the battery was so low, there was no way to turn it on when pushing. I wonder if they have some way of funneling that energy to the battery even with the power off.
That is a goos question! I have heard some people get toed behind a car to get some juice back in the battery in te boosted board. They must have some kind of “one way bypass” directly to the battery.
I am not aure how they do it
Here’s another test of our drive system against a hub motor inboard M1 to give you an idea of the resistance
The owner of the M1 was the one that pushed both boards. We did two tests, in both the Jed won using two different random people.
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Shouldn’t be any human-perceivable difference (long or short-term) in effort required to use the skateboard with or without the electronic’s weight difference.
The difference in mass of the electronics is pretty negligible compared to the mass of the typical rider and all other factors remaining the same (like wheel bearing resistance) those are the only active variables we’re dealing with once the belt is removed.
The short answer to your question, " I wonder if they have some way of funneling that energy to the battery even with the power off." is ‘yes’, they could. However, the charging vs. motor control electronic circuitry designs can vary significantly and even change whether or not something like you have would work on a given board. There can be major design differences even between two versions of the “same” skateboard (e.g. “Board” v1 and “Board” v2). There are SOME battery charge controller boards where the charge inputs are physically the same as the “power to the motor” outputs. Some circuit designs COULD use that direct connection if so desired. Other designs add additional motor control circuitry which isolates the motor from direct connection to the battery pack. Circuit designs could also physically/electrically disconnect the motor from the battery pack while the skateboard is turned “off”. It depends on how much cost the manufacturer wants to put into the product, and also what type of battery technology, the number of cells in the battery pack, battery charging and usage safety features desired, what kind of speed control is needed (e.g. if one wants to provide more than just motor “off” and “on”), if the system is to have regenerative braking, and other design factors.
Can it be as simple as over-tightening the axle nut? I’ve seen that make a difference just like the one you describe (0.5 vs. 3-4) on a given wheel. Of course, improperly installed bearings, worn bearings, or insufficiently lubricated bearings could also be a factor. (note: on a NON-drive wheel, I’ve read an account of a person claiming he went from “hand spun time” on a brand new wheel of from an initial 10 seconds to something like 3 minutes just by changing-out the manufacturer’s original bearing to a new bearing he bought online. It could have been the OEM bearing was simply improperly manufactured/installed, but taking the guy at his word bearing materials and design can clearly make a huge difference. I would think a change of that magnitude could be noticable on both non-drive and drive wheels to some degree.)
You do realize this thread is a year old right?
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