Monday, November 9, 2015

Long Range Electric Longboarding

I bought a Boosted Board back in August of this year while living in New York City. It was an awesome purchase. It is fun to ride and I could often beat the subway to my destination on shorter trips. I have since moved to Silicon Valley and find the range to be lacking slightly. The board gets approximately 7 miles of range out of the box and my office is 10 miles from home.

My Boosted Board shortly after purchase.
I added 288Wh of high-discharge lithium-ion batteries to the 99Wh of batteries that came with the board. I was inspired by the Portable Electric Vehicle Youtube Channel.  During the first test ride I was able to ride more than 13 miles before stopping. The fuel gauge on the remote showed more than 20% of battery remaining.

My Boosted Board after the battery upgrade :]
During this process I also designed a custom lighting system based on WS2812 LEDs and an Arduino Mini Pro.

These LEDs are bright!