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Evolve's New Diablo Bamboo Is a 2-in-1 All-Terrain E-Board With a Kick You Won't Believe
(www.autoevolution.com)
this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2024
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Yawn.
Evolve's underperforming motorized planks would be funny if they weren't known for being deadly.
I'll stick to hobbywing and VESC based boards, thanks.
Wait, deadly?!
People have died riding evolve boards. Even more have been badly hurt, and then voiced their concerns online about the faulty design of the boards.
Evolve has consistently covered this issue up, and refused to engage with people trying to investigate it, actively denying there is a problem. They have gone as far as withholding affiliate rewards from brand ambassadors that ask questions in attempts to silence them.
Their boards can suddenly cut acceleration due to the design of the remote. They use a dual trigger control system which does not self-calibrate every time the controller is turned on the way the wheel controllers used by other brands do.
And because breaking input overrides accelerating input (something they advertise as a "safety" feature), it means that when the input calibration on the braking trigger gets out of whack, a tiny nudge or vibration can cause acceleration to instantly cut, and braking to occur instead. Even if the amount of breaking is only a small amount, suddenly cutting acceleration, is kinetically equivalent to suddenly full-braking when coasting.
When leaning forwards on a board during acceleration, having that happen unexpectedly puts your face in the pavement.
The design of wheel controllers used by other brands, use a single input axis specifically because then there is no way for the rider to be confused about which way they should be leaning to counteract the change in speed occurring, and no way for that to change without the rider very explicitly ceasing one input signal in order to input the other.
Thanks for letting us know. I've been considering an eboard but have serious concerns over the controls and lack of redundant braking.
I love the things. I was a regular on r/electricskateboarding.
For the latter concerns, I can assuade them somewhat. Eskates are dangerous, and though you can stay quite safe with a low-performance board that won't involve significant kinetic energy levels, I would not consider safety equipment optional with the class of board that evolve falls into. I personally wear a Fox Proframe as well as padded clothing by Lazy Rolling when riding my most powerful board.
I own four, saving up for my fifth, a FluxMotion AT2. The boards I currently own, in the order I bought them, are a Backfire G2T, Ownboard Bamboo, Exway Flex and Eovan GTS Pro. Each board I bought came with more power and range, finally culminating in the Eovan, my first and currently only board with VESC-based internals. It was the board with which I finally hit a level of performance that made me feel "alright, not gonna need more than this".
The other three are all hobbywing based systems, which I at this point find to be an extremely reliable ESC brand. Exway is their customer-facing board brand, and many other board-designers use Hobbywing internals. (Backfire, Linnpower)
The only real competitor is the VESC open source design standard. VESC is extremely DIY friendly to the point you can hook a board up to a PC and alter every control curve, amperage limit, RPM limit, etc. You can get telemetry displays, bluetooth modules for wireless config and metrics, all kinds of remotes, they can be daisy chained to drive any number of motors you might want...
New Hobbywing ESCs can have some basic settings altered with a user-fiendly phone app, and usually aren't configurable for use with anything but the motors for which they were set up at the factory.
Unless you get something extremely cheap with single-wheel drive, almost ALL boards will have a dual-motor setup. This means the braking IS redundant. Dual motors will also mean dual ESCs, one for each motor. It's theoretically possible for the control electronics of one "side" to fail while the other side continues to function.
But the only real point of hardware failure I've experienced during my tens of thousands of kilometers ridden, are the drive belts. A non-issue on hub-drive and gear-drive boards.
It is extremely unlikely for both belts to fail at the same time, and you will not even experience some huge jolt when it happens. I usually only notice it has happened because the board will start trying to turn a tiny bit when braking/accelerating. Assuming the second belt holds, the board will continue to function nearly normally, able to accelerate and brake with only one operating motor, though peak output will obviously become compromised.
I have never had a board suddenly turn off, I have never had a remote suddenly lose connection, and I have never had a board shoot off or suddenly brake without my intending it.
Should the remote suddenly turn off or lose the connection for some other reasons, both VESC and Hobbywing based boards are able to respond by smoothly transitioning from whatever state the board was in at the time of losing connection, to full braking. The board basically goes into a "no-input-being-received" state and will come to a stop in a way that doesn't jolt the rider.
Thumb wheel control remotes also calibrate every time they are turned on, if you touch the control wheel while one is turning on, it will complain and tell you to stop. Once you do, or if you didn't touch it, it will detect center, and then become ready for use. Pushing forward will accelerate the board, pulling back will slow it down. There is no way to try and do both at the same time, and "neutral" is determined by wherever the wheel gets pulled by the spring every single time the remote is turned on. It will never drift.
The one runaway scenario I feel a newbie should know about, is over-voltage shut-down. This occurs when braking so much that the battery regens and charges itself past full. In order to prevent the battery from catching fire, the ESC will in these cases stop braking, or turn off completely. Most boards will give you plenty of warning by vibrating the remote constantly when this begins to happen, with more than enough time to come to a complete stop instead of continuing to brake down a hill. And that is about the only way this can actually happen, and you would have to be doing it right after charging the board, too.
I've gotten the warning a couple times when heading out with a full board, when the first thing I do is start heading down a hill. But it's never gone past the warning, I just step off and walk down the hill, and as soon as I can, drain the battery a bit by riding on flat ground.
Thanks for the writeup! Any recommendations on a kit for something mellow? I'm just interested in something that can climb hills and brake reliably. I picked up an Omen bamboo drop through if that helps narrow down potential kits.
Well, both VESC and Hobbywing systems will let you turn it down. More power also means more braking. A bigger battery is able provide a bigger resistive load, which is required for stopping power. The regen braking on my Eovan is strong enough to lose traction on some surfaces.
So you'll prefer overspeccing a little.
I've not looked at kits, except the revel kit. Which seems to have disappeared. If you can find one, they're know to be great.
For a full DIY conversion I'd be finding and vetting each component individually.
Took a look around on what the DIY scene looks like right now.
With an existing board, I might grab a kit for the electronics from flipsky, and look at buildkitboards for their modular battery and enclosure system. Going that route, using VESC based systems, means you'd need to get comfortable with understanding and configuring the electronics using the VESCTool PC program, as well as wiring the various components together.
The other option is buying the relevant parts of a hobbywing-based production board from a brand like backfire, verreal or wowgo, and bolting them onto your board.
There's the "mellow" kit which looks similar to the revel kit, except it uses hub motors instead of direct-drive. That means you'd be relying on urethane sleeves which are really uncomfortable compared to full wheels, and potentially difficult to source replacements of, as you can't just use any wheel.
Not being able to use regular wheels is an automatic pass from me lol, thanks for the advice!
That's why the G2T ended up as my only hub-drive board. I didn't buy another.
Direct-drive and gear-drive also allow for the use of any wheel one might like, and don't consume belts.
Revel was kind of the ideal kit, everything just bolted on to the existing screw-holes, and the motors were direct-drive.
Ok, I have another question: What happens if you drop the controller, it dies, or otherwise malfunctions? Does the board just stop? Keep doing whatever it was doing?
When the controller dies or loses connection, most boards will slowly transition into full brakes, bring the board to a smooth stop. This is standard on Hobbywing, I think, but on VESC you need a remote with a receiver that supports connection loss being detected, which the VESC can then be programmed to react to.
As for dropping it, that's why you USE THE LANYARD.
The control wheel has to be held for the board to maintain speed or start braking, so when dropped, at first it will just stop doing whatever it was doing and begin coasting. Once you get out of range, same thing as any other disconnect, it starts braking on its own. The range can be kind of far, depending on the board, so this is really not something you want happening while going downhill. If you use the lanyard tho, it's not gonna happen.
I've had no malfunctions. And while I know this is how it works, I haven't had to rely on it even once.
Any experience with add-on braking systems? I was looking at putting one on my longboard as I learn the basics. Originally I thought my skateboarding skills would make longboarding a cinch but the differences are way more significant than I figured they'd be.
Like the cable diskbrakes you find on mountain boards? No.
I found it very easy to learn to skate on an electric board. I've never ridden anything non-electric.
I just slowly used the motors less and less to help in order to get the basics down. Just being able to hold down the brakes while stepping on made it a cinch to get started. And also being able to remotely halt the board rolling away when you bail.
There seem to be a variety of designs, some are just a lever with some rubber with a peg you step on and others are more elaborate. Footbraking seems to be a lot more punishing on my longboard compared to my skateboards so I was looking for an intermediary while I learn to slide.