Can I use my Boosted Board controller and replace the electronics inside for my DIY build?

ESK8 Electronics
#1

Long time lurker.

I sold my Boosted Board so I can pursue the DIY life, as I wanted to have my own touch and look and MORE Range, I can’t stress how bad the range on BB was… So I’ve got wood to make my own deck and already bought all my parts, just need an enclosure and remote. I still have a Boosted Board remote, and thought, why not just use that? Could I crack it open and replace it with other electronics so it works with my build?

I already bought a VESC and a motor from Enertion, and I’m gonna be using 18650 batteries. It’s gonna be a single motor build.

#2

Anything is possible.

1 Like
#3

Aha, indeed. On a more serious note, do you actually know how or know of anyone who’s done it or has knowledge in doing so?

#4

I don’t know of anyone who has done it, but I am fairly confident that it can be done, you just need the right stuff. I would gut the entire thing and just use the case, the knob and the trigger. and then use my own PCB or arduino.

#5

That’s what I was thinking. I love how it feels and use whole wheel thingy system, so I’d love to maintain that comfort. I’ll probably keep the casing the trigger system and put new electronics in.

#6

No, it’s pretty hard.

#7

you could maybe use a remote from torque boards and modify it so, that it would fit the case… but if you would buy such a remote it would not make a lot of sense to modify it…

#8

it looks like it’s been reverse engineered:

so could you use the remote as-is and build a BT+Arduino receiver that decodes and converts to VESC compatible commands?

Admittedly not easy, but maybe easier than designing/fitting a custom board in the housing.

#9

They added aes encryption after that article so good luck. If you could rip out the hardaware receiver too you may get it to work but the whole thing is a longshot

#10

You could use the battery and sliding mechanism with another mcu, like the arduino so you can have the same “feel” of controller. Trying to reverse engineer the prebuilt commands is possible but harder than the former.

#11

Oliver is on the right track. If you stuck an arduino in rhe controller it’d be really easy. I’ve controlled my board with an arduino before its like 3 lines of code, just google control servo with arduino, you have to use the pulsein command and an equivalent to write since our boards use pulse widths as the control mechanism.

#12

If you posted pictures of the internal parts of the controller here, I’m sure myself and others could point you in the right direction

#13

May be wrong, but I wasn’t aware they had updated the bluetooth hack… Spoke with them a couple weeks ago and they stated that there were more issues than they originally thought and therefore never released the software version 2.0, still in dev.

#14

I don’t have the remote with me but a quick google search yielded some good results:

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#15

That’s a nice big circuit board - it goes under the battery, so presumably there’s space on the other side as well.

if you did a double-sided repro of that it would be pretty easy to fit everything you want on there. It would take some time but really is just a BT and an integrated arduino of some sort. And a LiPo charge chip.

#16

So, I’ve never done anything like this. What would be the action here? Take out the board, replace it with other components? Or add to the board?

#17

Yes, take out the board, replace it with another board that has a processor that you can program, a BT chip, a LiIo charge chip and the proper connections to the thumbwheel and some kind of power switch and any other features the handheld has that you want to replicate.

If you’re not skilled in electronics you’re going to need to find someone who is.

#18

@DougM and everyone else who read this thread, I finally got to open my remote and got some pictures of the board, the housing, and all the parts. So here they are. What do you guys think, is it possible to mod this with the Arduino?

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2 Likes
#19

It doesnt matter what is inside. We were saying replace their electronics with an arduino.

#20

Will it fit? I Googled it, but saw it’s kinda large, could you link me to a tiny one? Cheers.