Hoverboard motors and controllers.

[CarlDavey]

Hi, new member here. My son and myself were at Robots Live last weekend. It was an awesome event.
I built a featherweight from used hoverboard parts. Total build cost was less than £100.
The main components were all fitted inside a upvc pipe with an axe for a weapon.

I definitely have some improvements to make, but I was really impressed with the hoverboard wheels. The robot took quite a few hits. Next time I'll turn the current down in the controller and use a dedicated DCDC converter for the logic Electronics. I'll add a gyro controller of some sort too.

I was running a 12s lithium ion pack made from reclaimed cells. Control was with a Teensy 4.0 arduino board connected via UART Serial. I even get voltage, current and temperature telemetry back to the radio.

Has anyone looked at using these parts?

My electronics setup has enough ports to control 4 boards. I think I'm going to make an 8 wheel drive heavyweight with torque vectoring next.

For info, I used this firmware: https://github.com/EFeru/hoverboard-firmware-hack-FOC

[joebrown]

Hey Carl!

Met you briefly at RL (I'm one of the flamingo guys), loved the bot, great way to recycle old parts!

I've done similar for one of our featherweight house robots... it was a silly thing! https://www.facebook.com/JoesBots/vi...36052104070484

I've seen hoverboard wheels on a few heavyweights before but I believe they tend to need support from both sides to last (see deathroll on battlebots)

Also if you're interested we (BBB) run a dedicated featherweight competition in the south west twice a year called BEVs, next one is in April - https://bbb.gd/events

[Ocracoke]

Hey Carl, welcome to the forum!

From memory, I think at least one of the Middleweight robots in the making are using hoverboard wheels and motors and as Joe mentions, they would need support on both ends, presumably with a deadaxle but provided the shared weight and load across all the motors is good, I can't think of a technical reason why this wouldn't work. That being said, the gears in such a thing will need to be checked to see if they are plastic (Delrin or something). If they are, I doubt they'll stand up to a lot of force in MW or HW combat if not suitably protected and adjusted.

As far as controlling them, they are usually a brushless motor, I imagine with sensing. There are plenty of brushless ESCs out there that will handle those with a bit of wiring jiggery. I am trying to recall Ellis's (Magnetar, Pulsar) shop name where he has some of these ESCs but it isn't coming to me at the moment.