Evolve Suggestion Fiberglass replacement battery cover for Carbon GT

Many of us who own Carbon GTs have experienced frequent Bluetooth remote drop outs while riding and choppy as well as unresponsiveness and over-responsiveness from the remote to the motor controller, which makes riding unpredictable and dangerous. It is known that Carbon Fiber is an RF shield which reduces radio transmission signal strength. Other boards like Enertion Raptor had also made a fully enclosed Carbon fiber deck and housed the bluetooth antenna inside. Connectivity issues were seen. The carbon fiber battery cover was replaced with a fiberglass one which eliminated the remote dropouts. Some users on the Evolve forum have gone to replacing the Carbon Fiber battery cover on their GT with a wood one, they noted improved remote connectivity and no-more dropouts.

A suggestion would be to replace the top battery cover on the carbon GT with a fiberglass one and offer ones available as a replacement to existing customers.

 

Im no RF engineer but if the deck is shielding how about running the receiver end to a truck bolt a tack weld or drill a hole through the bolt and wrap the wire to it.. or even to the truck... essentially making the bolt/truck into an antenna.

 

Like the idea of a wood cover .... but also think the extended antenna is a damn fine idea too.

 

Although the idea of using the axles as an antenna for the BT is a good one, its not practical or economical. The BT antenna is integrated into the PCB board and running a longer antenna than needed can actually detune the signal. The fiberglass top is the most cost effective, plus since its covered in grip tape, you can't tell the difference.

 

At the end of the day we all want the potential problem of dropouts fixed, no need to poopoo others ideas.. a 6inch piece of wire be would be way more cost effective as an alternative than creating a fibreglass top plate & could be run placed very practically....Longer antenna cables do get signal attenuation/drop however six inches is negligible and signal reception through the trucks/deck bolts would easily counter any loss & increase signal dectection.

 

Its a good idea, and having ideas share with others is great. But they have to also be evaluated. Its just unrealistic from a production stand point. I work with BT consumer related products, tuning, and testing and working with engineers to get it right. Its my career. You can't just slap a piece of wire on it and call it done thinking that will improve things. And yes, we've done that here where I work, adding a 2" antenna added to the existing PCB antenna to test and see how things change and improve or even in some cases get worse. But its usually a test, just to prove that more tuning on the existing antenna needs to be done to get it correct. BT antennas are are on the PCB board and can be tuned *correctly* as long as the design your putting it in is acting like a lead box. Putting a wire outside of the CF body is not the right way of fixing the issue, but a band-aid. Its also not scalable for Evolve from a mass production point of view. A fiberglass cover is the most cost effective way of fixing it, granted, they need to check a large sample of completed boards and do a before/after comparison to ensure things did get better. Anytime you have to make another PCB / hardware change costs lots of $$$ to do. You want to avoid that. Changing the material out of a battery cover is simple, cheap, easy and should resolve the issue.