E-skate board
Electric Skateboard Project
2019 Post-Summer Project
Just before my internship at Tesla, I had planned a project where I would be converting my normal skateboard to an electric skateboard. This needed a lot of planning and for the project to have been successful, the skateboard had to be half the price of a Boosted Board and have similar specifications specs.
The price of a boosted board I wanted to match up with is $1599, before tax. Meaning I had a budget of less than, $800. So, I set my limit at $731.
Due to my experience with creative and challenging projects like my DRONE Project and my RC car project, the research part of this project was not hard.
I had one major Factor in mind. SAFETY.
This meant I would not be programming the speed controller. Sucks,... Yeah, I know. I wanted to be the one that program how much acceleration and reacceleration I wanted with respect to the displacement of my throttle. This would have been very similar to, and actually way simpler than, programming a drone. But, any bug in my code, during testing could have had major consequences like me falling due to the motor stopping due to an error. This was not a risk, I was willing to take because I had school, an internship and my Life at Stake.
That being said, buying an already programmed ESC was immensely cheaper.
The pre-programmed controller had the following for a price of $130:
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one controller
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one remote
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two ESC already attached
If I made a controller myself, I would have had to get all of those separately and that would cost $270
My plan was to create a double bold drive motor skateboard. With this in mind, I created a BOM with the size and rating of Motors I wanted as well as battery capacity and Voltage. I also already had a skate board so I decided to now but a new one. Bellow is my BOM of the essentials:
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1 x Longboard Skateboard - $65
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1 x Dual Belt Motor ESC - $120
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1 x Dual Belt Drive 5055 Motor Kit - $199.99
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1 x Skateboard Hardware Set - 1.25" - $1.99
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1 x 1/8" Rubber Riser Pads - $1.99
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1 x ESC Enclosure - $39.99
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2 x Turnigy 5000mAh 5S 20C Lipo Pack - $119.98
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only battery
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1 x 4AWG Soft Silicone Wire Switch - $9.99
TOTAL: $645
Perfect! If you notice there are two chargers, this was because one of them came without a good adapter and I did not return it. That being said, the price came out exactly as I expected/hoped.
I ordered the parts in November 2018 and they all came in on December 2018 just before my internship. There was not going to enough time to assemble tho board so I proposed that project until after my internship.
Soon after my 7-8 Month-long internship ended, I came back to Houston and I started working on this board. During my time at Tesla, I realized that in order for this skateboard to become a practical means of transportation in school, I needed it to be easily charged and ready to go but this is not the case. The LI-PO batteries where singular and I would have had to take the batteries out every time I wanted to charge it.
That is when I decided to invest in a bigger battery, that would allow me to plug in the whole board to charge without taking it out.
The part below is the battery I got.
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1 x Battery Enclosure - $34.99
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1 x 10s3p Complete Battery Solution - $284.99
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9000mAh
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324Wh
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Samsung 30q cells
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42V Charger
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Built-In BMS (Battery Management System)
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This battery was way better than the other one and lasted longer. But it increased my price total project price to $1,019.
If I wanted to calculate my overall singular cost of the successful skateboard with only the 10s3p battery, the price came down to $707
Which is also very perfect. It just means that parts not used would be allocated to my next project.
With all the financial part done let's go into functionality.
I am still working on the documentation of this. I would release it as soon as I am done. But for the meanwhile take a look at videos of the skateboard in action! I hoped you liked the first half of the write-up as well as the videos.
Thanks,
Tobenna Wes.