Entering the world of mechatronics and programming

With all the hardware designed and ordered i shifted my attention to the "hacking" of the acquired hoverboard. When still in the defining phase of the project i acquired a DENVER 6.5" Hoverboard from "marktplaats.nl". 

At first i had my fun getting to grips with using this toy in the suggested way. If you are in your 40's it's a difficult skill to master, especially getting up an driving of or stopping and stepping down. 

I Got my Github pages ready, and read up on making "variant hovercar".  I ordered some addition electronic components from conrad. Also Got a ST-programmer shipped from china.

I wanted to use 2 analog potentiometers (same as from a Playstation controller (joystick)) to control throttle and brake. In order to build this safe i had to use a couple of pull down resistors and to program i needed to add the terminals to program th ST-32 processor.

So out came the soldering iron and solder. Time to sharpen my skills, as an engineer in the semicon i really wanted to shine in this area.

My trustworthy but very hot friend 

The "proto-type" control board with the throttle and brake pot-meters 

The attached programmer connector

The initial programming, went surprisingly well.

Am i that skilled or was i in luck? To be completely honest i wasn't, after power up i moved the potis in order to calibrate the ADC-inputs. I remember looking at the potmeters and (briefly) enjoying the the "lights" inside the potmeters. After which i realized it was the potmeters burning out.😭
I hooked them directly to 15V instead of the ground. 

Learned an important lesson: I must read the Wiki with care. I said very clearly not to thrust the the color coding of the wires. But to check the pin out of the boards.  

I swapped the potmeters and corrected my error, and had moderate success!

 

Although the video show this working, i only had control over the throttle and never got the ADC-inputs calibrated correctly. I led to the conclusion that i not only burned out the potmeters the first time but also the analog to digital converters from the hoverboard main board. This stung big time, i unable to repair this. My solution was to buy a new set of boards from China. Again the bad luck continued. I received the boards but with a chip for which no hack was released.

So lurked on the facebook marketplace and finally found a RiDD 8.5" hoverboard which was broken in half. Got a deal with that one and it had the much needed single mainboard. 

But this was getting expensive and i didn't thrust my skills on programming anymore. So i had looked at my bank account and gave up on the hacked hoverboard idea for now. 

This meant i swallowed my pride and bought 2, 350W BLDC controllers and a hall effect throttle from Aliexpress.com. The initial mockup worked fine! 

Please excuse my witty comments in this video on my modest cable routing

Now i had control over both wheels and their speeds. The controllers use the hall-sensors from the wheel motors, resulting in a controlled speed based on the throttle input from the thumb throttle.

I wired it in such a way that after power - on  both motors are on full-brake. The driver has to pull-in the switch lever in order to make it drive. 

As it's intended for small children i added a voltage splitter in between the throttle and the controllers. basically limiting the speed to 50% of it's capability. 

All in all it wasn't half bad what i came up-with now i ditched the programming it self . I now have a self propelling motor unit waiting for a frame. This is next up.