The actual board is large but that isn’t what you would put in there. You would buy the ic they put in the arduinos and you’d make your own circuit that would fit in there. If you dont know electronics id stop now.
mod it? no. You’d have to design your own custom replacement board. However, it sure looks like there’s lots of space so could you fit a custom Arduino-based board in there? Yes.
But again, this is a job for someone who really knows electronics.
Well good news is the mechanical parts that give the controller its “feel” are separate from the pcb, so you could take everything out and put a custom one in! From the picture I see a buzzer, battery, and the BR LE4(Bluetooth thing).
May be worth looking into reprogramming the chip as you only need to buy a little more hardware, but the programming would be C++ without a whole lot of support
Or find an Arduino as it’s noob friendly if you’re not too experienced in electronics, salvage some parts like the battery and buzzer
Just the one thing that’s cool is the boosted board remote uses a hall sensor for the trigger so no pot making it actually really simple to use the same mech.
I did some packet sniffing with the remote and board and I could get the vesc to work with it, it’s the pairing that is the problem.
Hey, sorry for the late reply. So you got it to sorta work I guess? Do you think it’s viable to use? Or should I just get something like an Enertion remote or GT2B?
If I had one I would do it, just use an arduino pro mini with a btle module…
I am currently working on a DIY solution and I pretty much liked the form factor boosted (and stary) offer. Thank you for the pictures of the inside of the boosted remote, it provides me with some inspiration for designing my own case.
The groundwork for the schematic is done (charging, battery protection, usb connection and microcontroller IOs) - I am currently reevaluating the choice of micro controller (currently esp8266) and communication (esp8266 onboard wifi with wpa2).
I am not sure how current boosted remotes handle their communication (and safeguarding it) - but with any homebrew solution I would be careful picking some modules for your own safety. (See @DougM link to the “hacked boosted board”)
Most “consumer” available bluetooth or other communication modules do not offer encryption for the communication and it would be easily intercepted and manipulated. Hence I am considering to use wifi , even though the wifi band is conquested in most cities. On the other hand, chips like the esp8266 have the wifi protocol stack embedded and during my testing seemed to be pretty efficient dealing with interference. (Still have to test some more) - Good thing is, that besides the physical layer, the inbuild tcp stack of the esp8266 provides a reliable network layer, which again helps to improve reliability of cummincation.
Another option to consider for your home project would be some microcontroller (avr / arduino) with RFM69HCW modules. They use either the 433 Mhz or 868/926 ISM Band - less conquested and also offer AES128bit encryption - while not as strong as wpa2 - for everyday usage it should be sufficient. The downside of this module is however, you need a “large” Antenna to be fit into your casing
Anyhow - if anyone would be interesting working together on a DIY remote, send me a message. Even if is just to bounce off some ideas and thoughts. I am also looking for someone helping with the casing part for the remote - I am more an electronics guy and haven`t done much with 3d printing yet
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Are you making this to sell? or as a one-off?
i do not trust wifi as a communication method.
How the hell does the thumb wheel function?
@DougM 'd like to publish it as open source. Depending on the state of the design and the interest at some point a group buy for cheaper parts could be possible. Or if someone could provide contacts for low quantity production somewhere in asia we could arrange a small group buy for that - but that’s a couple of weeks/months down the road when working prototypes have been built.
@boards Well the thing is, bluetooth and wifi share the same frequency band(s) (2.4 GHZ range) - so both will have to deal with interference and congestions in these frequency bands. If you compare the bluetooth stack against the wifi stack, the wifi stack provides a far more robust protocol (imho). Additionally consider wifi’s wpa2 security mechanism - which is again more robust then current bluetooth implementations. AFAIK wifi`s specifiaction also allow for more power (200mv vs 100mw of bluetooth). Anyhow - as I said - both will be affected by 2.4 ghz congestion in cities. To avoid that issue it would be best to switch to a different frequency band. Which requires different design considerations (i.e. antenna design in small spaces).
@Pantologist It`s a simple hall effect sensor - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall_effect_sensor
Edit: I just wonder why they decided to use two magnets - one should be sufficient for detecting the movement (magnet moves closer to sensor, or moves away) - might help with magnetic interference though
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Thanks. I was pretty confused… don’t the Winning and mini remote use potentiometers or something for the thumb control?
I am not sure about these - but you can use both (potentiometer and hall sensor) for that matter. Most joysticks in gamepads (i.e. the nun chuck) use potentiometers. (example. But in the end it does not matter - what you want to have is a way to measure the effect a physical interaction creates. So here it is either the changing resistance in a potentiometer, or the change of magnetic field with the hall sensor - the change is always in relation to a point you define as neutral.
Yes, they do.