I’m curious, what pressure sensitive pads did you use?
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@goldenHusky I’m also trying to build my own onewheel clone. Do you have the Arduino code that you used for your onewheel clone build? I’m a total noob when it comes to Arduino code so it would help a lot.
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@puuhapet I’m afraid, I don’t have it anymore. Some other people built their own onewheel aswell and put their code on github, use that as a starting point. Good luck!
Ok, thank’s anyway. I did a quick search in Github and found one partial code but nothing complete. Have to search more.
Just got a call from a local Kart store… “Just checking you’re only after the one tire?”. To be fair he already knew about the Onewheel, wished me luck on my new project 
There’s not much to it right now; I have a VESC (ESCape), esp32 dev board and 6DOF sensor sitting in a cupboard. Tire + rim are on its way.
Spent a bit of time doing some research; two repos of interest… https://github.com/schglmnn/VESC-OneWheel
It’d be nice to have a VESC with the motion sensor chip for this, and I just read the Unity will come with one. Obviously I don’t need a dual motor ESC 
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Always assumed Onewheel actually invented the single go kart wheel self balancing skateboard concept, but it turns out credit should go to Ben Smither back in 2007.
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Thats nuts if he came up with it and one wheel stole it and ran. Uness he is involved with them…
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Have you decided about the motor?
Good question.
Will be belt driven. Fairly certain the Onewheel’s motor is about 700w, and it probably weighs several kg. Hub options are rather limited, and I’d like to use something lighter and more powerful. Not thinking anything extreme, ideally something around a 6374 size.
With a 11in (280mm) outside diameter the motor will need to be pretty low KV; say 50-70. And even at that low KV it’ll still need high’ish (eg; 3:1) gearing. Aiming for a top theoretical speed of 40km/h as it’s faster than I’d ever expect to travel… reaching top speed on a self balancing board is not something you want to do.
So basically sensored 6374, 50-70kv, probably from APS as it seems to be the only source. The APS 80mm motors are tempting as some of them have extended axles both sides which would allow a bit more flexibility in pulley mounting.
There’s certainly some hub options. The one you linked is a little odd sized in terms of go kart wheels. You really need to find something with either a 5 or 6in rim diameter, and a width between 5 and 7in otherwise tires are going to be hard to find. Here’s a few options: 10 inch 10x6.00-5.5 wide tubeless tyre brushless gearless dc wheel hub motor 11 inch 350w-500w wide tire brushless hub motor
Hub would certainly make the build easier, but I think you’d get better performance and a lighter weight out of a smaller outrunner. As an added advantage you get more accurate motor position sensing due to the reduction (motor turns many times for one wheel revolution), but then a potential disadvantage is that the belt drive introduces backlash/slop a direct drive wouldn’t.
Hubs are probably safer than belts as well (belt snapping will not be fun at any speed).
And thanks for finding the correct link. I saw those before, couldn’t find them when I searched again.
I have one of those 10" hub motors that you linked. I’m also planning to build a clone onewheel. I have one spare VESC 4.12 that I’m planning to use. Good find on the blezalex Github page. I have few old quadcopter flight controllers laying around. Have to check if I can use those in this build. What are your plans to build the frame? I was thinking using U-shaped aluminium for the side rails and maybe 3D-printed parts for the boxes.
Nice. That one certainly looks like its been made with a Onewheel clone in mind. Is the hub diameter really 6in? The labelling on the pictured tire seems to be a bit off. Normally a tire with a 10x6-5.5 would indicate a 10in outside diameter, a width of 6in, and a hub diameter of 5.5in. I’m of the opinion the width and hub diam have been mixed up.
Not sure just yet, need to think about how much I want to invest into something that may not work. Cheap solution would be U-section or box section aluminium tubing. Some carbon tubing might be nice with some CNC’d attachments to mount the axle, etc.
There’s another option that almost starts to sound like cheating. Go with some aftermarket Onewheel rails, and maybe even get the OE foot+sensor pads and bumpers from Onewheel direct. Nice thing about this is your DIY would be compatible with a lot of the Onewheel accessories out there.
I took some measurements from the wheel. I could only measure the outside edge of the rim. I don’t know does this tell anything. Total width measurement is few mm bigger than the caliber max because I had to force the caliber around the tire.
- Hub diameter 150 mm
- Tyre thread width 132 mm
- Tyre total width 156 mm
Thanks for the suggestions. I haven’t finalized my design for the frame yet. First I want get the VESC and balance controller to work together.
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Thanks @puuhapet
Here’s the 5in kart wheel spec (source), haven’t been able to find similar for 6in wheels.
The corresponding hub diameter dimension you’ve measured at 150mm is 136.2mm for the 5in wheel, so obviously not a match. If we assume the 6in standard kart wheel adds an inch to this we get 161.6mm (136.2+25.4) which doesn’t match up with 150mm either. I guess the labelling on the tire is correct, and that it is actually a 5.5in tire. My only concern with this is that it may limit tire choice.
I was able to measure the inside diameter of the hub where the tyre bead sits. Its 139mm. So it’s closer to 5.5". Getting a spare tyre in going to be difficult and china might be the only option.
Yesterday I started playing around with Eclipse and attempting to build the WheelBoardMain firmware. I copied the git repo to Eclipse but I don’t know what to do next.
that is awesome. do you think those hoosier tires will fit on this hub?
Hi there! I am very curious about possibly making my one DIY one wheel. I was wondering if you’d think the wiring/coding aspects would be too difficult for someone with very limited experience?
I don’t believe so. Hoosier doesn’t make a tire for a 5.5in hub, in fact the tire that comes with the hub is the only 5.5in tire I’ve come across.
I think that sums up my level of experience when it comes to electronics/embedded development, and I’m looking at giving it a go. Even if it is a failure, I’m sure there’ll be much learnt along the way. There’s several DIY implementations out there that seem to work. Unfortunately there’s no real support community like what you’ll find here when it comes to debugging VESC issues for example. Would be nice to see this grow.