The electronic parts

There are a couple of parts necessary for the electronics of an electronic skateboard. But the good part is you can use standard RC car electronics. (or your can push it further with arduino blue tooth controllers and custom electronics if you’ve got experience in that field)

• A brushless motor (I’ll leave this to its own blog but the one thing to remember is you want a low kv motor less than 300 the lower the better)
• Electronic Speed Control (ESC) this tells the motor what to do
• Transmitter (thing you hold in your hand) and receiver (small little thing that connects to the speed controller)
• Batteries
• Battery charger (you need a special charger)
• Cable connectors (maybe an antispark so you don’t get freakout when connecting the batteries)

Transmitter and Receiver

Lets start with the easy stuff. Any RC controller will do. You’ll only be using the one channel to control the speed.  Hence a cheap hobbyking.com number will do. this one has rechargeable batteries  http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__31671__HobbyKing_HK_GT2B_3CH_2_4GHz_Transmitter_and_Receiver_w_Rechargable_Li_ion_Battery.html or

Electronic speed controller

You need a speed controller that can handle very high amps  (150amps). I blew up my first one which was this: HobbyKing Red Brick 125A ESC  and since moved up to a 150amp, 1/8 scale car esc from hobbyking. here. They don’t see to be selling it on hobbyking at the moment. It seems to be holding up well for the few people I know who use it.

Batteries

Most people are using LiPo batteries. They hold a tremendoes amount of power. The only draw back is they can be “explody” if not treated well. By that I mean they’re over charger not using a proper charger or you cut into the side of the battery casing. Do some googling about it but I think they’re pretty safe. The alternative is LiFePo4. When looking at batteries (easiest place to buy is hobbyking.com) you’ll see the following numbers. Here is what they mean:

• mAh = how long it will give up the power for.
• C = is how quickly it can give off the power.
• V = voltage. That’s pretty straight forward.

Now the choice comes up to you budget but what you’re looking for is 2 x  3 cell batteries (they run at 11.1volts) and wire them into series making 22.2 volts). 2 x 3 cells as opposed to 1 x 6 cell so you have enough clearance between the boattom of the board and the road the board has clearance.  Here is a nice video about wiring in series https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4KPGl1NMsg

Charger

Make sure you get a proper balance charger for your LiPo. Once again I’d try an appropriate charger from hobbyking.

Connectors

The ESC doesn’t come with connectors so your going to need to buy some appropraite connectors also. You’re going to need to wire the batteries in series so you’ll need a soldering iron and some more connectors.

Motor

To be continues