If i made a $750 board would anyone pre-order it?

[lox897]

A step up converter would probably take up too much space. 9V alkaline should do for now.

[Okami]

yeh if you can live with 9v alkaline terrible capacity, go for it I usually hate them for this reason but for testing and not that high demand of power, it might be ok!

[lox897]

Might be putting a few in parallel. Will see how it goes!

[michichopf]

Well true. Also it would consume alot of time. The 5 boards are no problem in my opinion. Could easily get “rid” of them.

So basically it would end along the lines of :esk8 forum part list, sourced by members, with an installment guide. I mean if the value is great I see no point of it not workingt out. Most builds use the same/similar motors. Battery wise 25r/30q cells are more frequent than ever. The thing that mayby got lost on me is who runs a business off that? Or did we completely go from LHB buildung boards for a great price, to essentially a “group buy price” for a complete parts list?

[Okami]

mh im not sure where LHB stands now… but I think he was okay and liked the idea about organising ‘budget build’’ group buy or something, so there is less work on his hands.

Yeh, batteries might be the biggest and most intensive part of the build.

Kit idea is nice, actually a few people have already mentioned it.

I dunno, we would also need to make some sort of ‘poll’ to decide what range / power / voltage and what remotes to use for the builds… but then again we would need the ‘paying parties’ here, who could ‘dictate’ what would they like to use and for how much money.

We could, of course, make a few batches of a design we have choosen (like 25r / 30q cells) for this distance and that power and then look at how it goes (especially if you know you can easily sell a few boards just right to your friends or someone nearby)

–

Ok, to organise it in a more ‘simpler terms’, here is the rough setup:

Super budget build

Lipo batteries (6s?) B6 50W charger Car Esc ? (maybe better Vesc for brakes…) Motor mount welded? Clone flywheels Mini remote

Cons: Slow charging, possibly limited speed and power, fixed trucks, hard wheels Pros: Cheap, working good enough for not advanced builds

---

Medium Grade build:

Lipo or Li-ion 100-150W charger Vesc Caliber II trucks + adjustable mount Mini remote or 3d printed sparkle / buffalo / mad monkey / wolf remote Same or Abec wheels

Cons: More expensive but better performance Pros: More extras

Advanced build: Dual motor Possibly with high power/ high range (18650 cells recommended) Open choice for trucks Dual Vesc or Vesc -X (FocBox now ) Good wheels Vesc Oled remote + telemetry

Cons: Harder to build / complect Pros: Got everything one can imagine

–

Areas of ‘hardship’:

• Truck choice - mounting of motor plate, motor plate’s choice

• Programming vesc - acquiring Vesc, setting it up

• Battery building - Cell sourcing, cell spotwelding, Soldering balance and main wires, balance / charge port installation, additional Bms / monitoring circuits, Battery status indicator hookup and installation

• Enclosure building - Making / ordering the box, drilling holes, fitting components, gluing components

• Testing procedure - Remote connected with vesc, vesc working reliably, battery connections good, battery charging normally etc

---

I would say there is a lot of human effort involved if we were to make custom 18650 batteries and then… selling them officially would be on question mark as that is not probably going to be a certified workshop whatsoever but for ‘forum use’’ this might be okay, if end users know who built it and the quality and work is good.

So, at beginning to make things easier, it would probably be wise to cut all the areas where human effort and work is required.

As about motor controllers choice, then I think we need to stick with vesc to make it reliable and not cause unnecessary accidents to 1st timers because of faulty car esc brakes.

Then again, vescs need to be configured and made somewhat bulletproof, so they dont fail easily.

–

2nd opinion - someone has to develop a seperate module for car escs to modulate the brake signal… maybe then we can save up to 40-50 eur by not going the vesc route at the beginning, since car escs work reasonably well as long as brakes are not concerned in high detail

[longhairedboy]

originally i thought i was on to a way to bring a sub $800 board to market. I thought i had found some decent parts that would fit the bill but afte crunching the numbers more and being inundated with everything from advice to warnings to flat out “you really don’t want to do that” by other people who have been in this business longer than I have and know what’s realy going on, I have decided not to try to build this board.

However… for this open source board cause I’m willing to donate free web hosting and pay for domain registration, and possibly some parts if I can figure out a way to not burn myself while doing it.

I’ve already registered a few domains for use by the community for various things in a defensive measure against malign squatters.

I own the esk8.build domain and i think if somebody wanted to take it over and build something there for this project, i’d be willing to hand over the sFTP creds to it.

I’m terrible at organizing and planning, however, so i can’t take a leadership role in this. It deserves better project management than i would be able to give. But i would be willing to host it, promote it, and do write ups on it on my blog occasionally. It needs to be independant of my brand so that it doesn’t look like i’m dictating what’s happening, which i will not be doing.

[Okami]

@longhairedboy Cool, thanks for the support!

Yeh, I think it all comes to the cost, if this matter is more carefully looked upon, peps like us who live either in US or EU cannot really bring down the wage costs either unless these are some super easy simple things to work on and which might not require lots of time or concentration to do (and which are not boring also)

So yeh, I think this is why we cannot go with car escs at all, since there are quite a few problems that might happen but then again, vesc might not be no different from config perspective but at least it wont have terrible or dangerous brakes to start with and power output can be easily modulated for the users needs.

–

@longhairedboy writing blog posts n such sounds like a very nice idea! Though, we still need to manage a ‘team’ for this … and it is hard to say now whenever this is going to move in the right direction or not,… maybe a new thread about this wouldnt bite, as not everyone is looking in this thread to find out about ‘open source’’ esk8 idea.

I will wait till @michichopf chops in about this one… and then maybe create a new topic, since he seems to be the one who is also digging this idea and see that it might actually work and happen.

–

So yes, at beginning we would need:

Mechanical part installer (trucks, motor, wiring)

Controller Settings specialist (more vesc related) - (Programming, setting up vesc, checking for faults/errors in config)

Enclosure maker / builder (getting right dimensions, fitting components etc)

Will leave BMS / spotwelding part out of this now, it takes too much resources I think and at first it might as well be outsourced or lipos might be used to bring the cost and time spent on it down.

---

Then comes the 'management / organization ''part:

. Product development / Finance - (Managing sources / parts / costs / money)

Marketing / Customer service - (Informing people / marketing / answering to questions )

Logistics - (Shipping out boards and parts )

[nske]

Don’t be cheap, send Mikkeller

[michichopf]

Hey. I completely agree with everything you said. And yes I am intrested in such an idea as this. I am a sucker for team projects.

I think that building a team who can work together in this for a few months is the biggest issue. Getting Decks, caliber 2 trucks, motor mounts etc. for cheap should be alot simpler. Especially with the decks and trucks where we can tag along a huge buy from a longboard dealership or a group buy. Battery packs will definetly be a headache.

But I think we can keep speculating forever. What we need is people willing to follow up on those ideas and check if they are possible and calculate cost for the first 5-10 prototypes. Also I think bringing as much attention as possible to this is the right way. So we should open a new Thread I think.

Mayby its a little early to get hyped up, but lets do this!

[SirDiff]

This looks like a nice idea. Too bad LHB isn’t able to to deliver it, we need something in that price range except the youneec ego You should put up a new thread to discuss it!

[Okami]

Thanks for the ideas! Honestly, there have been a few people who have been interested in '‘KITS’

This way we could ‘modify’'the level of ‘īnvolvement’'they want to make an electric skateboard…

For example, there are people who have some mechanical skills, but lack electronics skills:

• We offer, ready made esc / battery package.

Then, there are people who lack mechanical skills or cannot access tools:

• We offer ready made truck + mount combination and other parts already installed.

These are the 2 most viable categories im seeing now but there might be a bit more of them.

–

Maybe, if we ‘differentiate’’ the product assembly this way, then it might be possible to drive the cost down or dont sell ‘time’ which the end user might do himself.

Some ‘works’’ repair just 2-3h, but when multiplied by 5x (for 5x boards, for example), it comes down to 10-15h of man hours.

I hope everyone gets my idea onto how this might follow also.

–

@michichopf Well, if it does not happen this way im pretty sure some more people will group up in real life and just launch a kickstarted… lets hope they have enough knowledge and willingness to offer a good quality, reliable board but still decently cheap (affordable)!

===

I couldnt really start anything since im a bit far from the ‘centers’ of active eskating.

For europe, this might be a wider region - Uk, France, Germany or maybe Netherlands.

While For Usa, it is probably West and East coast.

Not sure about Asia, as they have plenty of products themselves and not a lot of users of our forum at least, are from there.

–

What else to add… in the end I think it will come to finances and the interested parties…

Heck, if I had money for 2 prototype boards I would probably build them straight away…

The only problem with me is im more inclined in mountainboards but wouldnt mind getting involved in a small commuter build anyways and if we develop a ‘box-kit’’ then it wouldnt even matter as much how small or long is the deck.

–

To be honest, I heard IKEA in a similar way cut the costs down by making the end user assemble his furniture with given instructions…

Im pretty sure a lot of other companies do that now but for example I think it works quite okay (IKEA way).

[lox897]

Over the next few days I’ll compile a list of manufacturers for various things. This will be on this post so i’ll start a layout now:

Motors: Shanghai Maytech Electronics Co Ltd Dongguan Freerchobby Model Co Ltd

Trucks: (Caliber Clone) Shenzhen ACA Boards Sports Limited New Creative Sports Goods Co skatetruck.com

Wheels (Clone)

Batteries:

Decks:

Mounts (Machining): Shenzhen JLF Technology Limited

Enclosures would have to be made by us as manufacturers usually have a high MOQ for them.

Belts & Pulleys: Chengdu Leno Machinery Co Ltd

[SirDiff]

Someone please open a new thread, I’m really interested in this and have some ideas

[Okami]

How should we call the new thread?

Build your esk8 in 3days?

Partly open source, partly forum member esk8 build project

Electronic Diy Kit vs Mechanical Diy Kit? Which you gonna choose?

–

Ok jokes aside… but I think we should focus on these 3 and see what happens…

[Halpy.nyc]

pls do count me in

[Skunk]

[rojitor]

Come on dude. Two years? Really? That’s unrealistic. 3 years later at best…

[legend27]

Please sign me up too

[longhairedboy]

Good news everyone! I have made zero progress on this! Isn’t that exciting?

Actually I am working on this in the low priority zone, I’m trying to come up with a 12S single drive on Akashas but i need an enclosure for it. I may have to resort to sending it to our friend in peru once i get it ironed out.

So i’m thinking a more premium last mile mall grabbing single drive: 12S3P 30Q pack, maytech Super Foc, flipsky remote, 6374 on 12mm belt, 16/32 ratio on Ahmyo Akashas all on a landyachts Dingy.

Not for $750 though, i’m going to try and do it for just under $1000 if at all possible, hopefully right around $900

A $750 board would be essentially impossible unless i used ebay parts and I’m not doing that.

Still working on the prototype and then i can add up the final cost of parts then check into volume discounts. It’s basically going to take me forever to get this happening but its happening.

It would look something like this, except 3P not 4P and not that motor and not that motor mount, but definitely that deck and those trucks and wheels.

Long Haired Boy