Another Thrown Off the Evolve Board Thread

I posted quickly from my phone. Now that I am on a full keyboard, here is more detail. Writing this down while still fresh in my memory.

I was riding along in ECO mode and was coming to a slightly gradient. I decided to bump up to FAST and press button. I am looking at my remote, and the mode did not change. While coasting, i release throttle. Nothing. Hmm, that's interesting, so I try again. After a few seconds, I push button again and release throttle while coasting. Same thing, no mode change. Maybe 2 seconds later, i am still coasting and looking at the remote when all of a sudden the board accelerates full, and i get thrown off.

When I got up, the first thing I did was look at the remote. Sure enough, it is now in GT mode! WTH?! It seems like the mode changes were buffered up and applied after 10 seconds or so of delay all at once.

One thing I cant exactly recall is if the throttle was still fully down. I suspect it was, since I was still in ECO mode. Whatever, this type of glitch should never happen. One more example of not being able to trust the remote or board or whatever. I have never had connection issues. Never had to repair or anything of the sort. Thus, i was a bit complacent, and let my guard down.

Lessons:

1. ANY sign of a glitch or weirdness, stop the board and get off. Do not diagnose while on the board. Also be cautious if a glitch does occur and you have a guided missle on your hands.

2. If you think your board is fine and will never happen to you, that is what I thought till it happens. It's not a question of IF but WHEN.

3. I hope Evolve can take this as constructive criticism. Allow the board some delay/time to build power. The beauty of the VESC's is allowing users to tweak all the parameters so you have beautiful control harmony. We don't have beautiful control harmony on this board.

 

Good to keep in mind.

 

You're lucky you didn't injure yourself like I did. Evolve still has my board so I hope they're doing proper RMA analysis on this thing and throwing an RF analyzer on it as well as inducing RF interference. If I get this board back and its still dangerous, I'm sending it right back and demanding a refund. When you spend $2k+ dollars on something you'd expect that they would have done their homework and not released a product before it was properly tested and ready. And they should not have covered the entire radio/antenna fully with carbon fiber like they did, that's asking for trouble and was done without doing any research of the materials they're using and where the electronics and antennas are going to be housed.

Some words of advice about riding the GT:

-ALWAYS wear a helmet. Even for a short ride, this board is out of control and can go bonkers on you at any moment.

-I highly warn riders to NOT wear a backpack while on the GT. Due to the GT taking off and throwing me on the ground it ripped my arm out of its socket, I'm still in pain and don't know if I'm ever going to heal back to where I was before the GT incident.

-Do not ride this board and take pics with a selfie stick, camera, and don't mess with your phone when riding.... you need to be ready and have all hands on deck when the GT goes crazy without warning.

-Be very aware of your environment, use caution when around cars, intersections red lights, etc.

-Be aware of others on the road, this board can be a run-away board at any moment which can do serious injury to a bystander. And if someone does get hurt, they'll be going after you for damages and injury. So keep that in mind.

 

You bet I injured myself. At my age, 44, any blindsided fall is going to hurt like hell.

They should rename the product the "Karate Sweep" board, because that is what it will do to you!


Also, just like those hoverboard videos of people having nasty nasty falls, i wonder when those videos will come out for the Evolve board. I am sure it is just a matter of time.

The funny thing is that I have another eboard by a different manufacturer, that I can give away to some kid. However, even for free, I cannot give the Evolve board to anyone, in good conscience. I think it would be extremely negligent for me to do so, given how dangerous i feel it is to not only the rider but the general public. Now that is bad.

 

Are you still riding or is the GT confined to the naughty corner permanently.... has anyone had a response from evolve on these issues, I have seen lots of posts but unsure if there had been an official response as yet.

 

I agree, I wouldn't trust anyone to ride the GT other than the owner who identifies the known risks. I feel sorry for those who bought GTs and don't know this issue can arise anytime and how seriously it is.

Exactly, the Karma Sweep is the same feeling but worse. When it happens to you on the GT its as if you have a blindfold on for that you don't know something so devastating can happen so quick without warning.

I seriously feel Evolve needs to be proactive here, to contact all owners of the GT and inform them of this defect. Then state if you would like the board to be looked into, to send it back for diagnostics and / or repair. At least it shows they're not ignoring the issue and shows that they're trying to protect the customer and remedy the situation. But from what I see, its as if they're denying its happening. I think the numbers are worse than what we see here actually of those who are affected. I believe some cough it up to be how the board is to operate with a few quirks. However no Electric Skateboard should operate like this, even if its not tossing you off is still on the verge of sketchiness in how choppy and distant the user's input is transferred to the wheels.

I think Evolve won't do a thing until lawyers start seeing what people are writing, then contact the owners and convince them to sue for damages and injury/suffering or some newbie who does not have any tolerance for this mayhem.

 

I have noticed that sometime it takes a couple of trigger release after a mode change before the board seems to step up

 

Unfortunately, i will probably just keep it, but needless to say my enthusiasm has been beaten out of me. One day, i may just do the DIY route, now that I have a better idea of what i want in an eboard.

I have ridden another user's DIY board with a VESC controller and similar 10S or 12S battery pack and dual hub motors. Just as much power as the Evolve board or more. I was worried at first how it would handle. Even with a cheap RC car trigger controller, it worked beautifully. The power came on smoothly and the braking action came on smoothly. No modes to worry about. Just a single mode. I rode his board a few miles without worry.

I like every other part of the Bamboo board except for 2 changes: 1) softer 97mm wheels 2) more importantly, the VESC controller. Maybe one day there will be a VESC retrofit for the board. I am game.

It seems like some others noticed the mode change lag. I would caution everyone to be wary when changing modes. Be on your toes or else you may soon be on your butt.

 

I wish our motor controller's / riser cards had PPM (3 pin) inputs like the VESC controllers do - that way we could use any RC controller we wanted too - ppm has been around a long long time (its a servo control protocol) - the modulation (FM, PCM, DSM, DSMX etc etc) is between the transmitter and the receiver (ppm is from receiver to servo) - the thing is we need transceivers on both ends to get the telemetry data back to the remote (speed, battery - etc etc)

and the nRF24L01 boards are unfortunately soldering and directly integrated into both ends - so I don't see an easy way to swap these out and go with a different RF - like you say JC2ef maybe someone could figure out a way to wire up dual VESC to replace the Evolve motor controller - but what about all the money we've spent in the mean time - shouldn't have to resort to that - we bought "off the shelf" not DIY.

 

After my bad Evolve experience, I'm going the DIY route. And for buying an off the shelf board that's around $2k is should have been right/correct out of the box, which I agree with Julian 100%. I could see issues like this coming from a $250-$700 board but for $2k, that's some serious cash to shell out. Sad thing is it seems like those $250-$700 boards may be a bit safer and more sound than the GT! I'm also not pleased with the way Evolve is handling my issue in terms of debugging and what I feel they're taking the issue lightly from defect that has injured people. And on top of that to try and ask for myself, the customer to pay return shipping. Come on now. Granted after I barked back at them they paid the shipping, but that should not have happened at all, to ask the customer to fork over shipping a defective product that's unsafe back for testing and diagnostics.

With the DIY, I have enough technical information on how to build a good ride. My #1 priority will be making it 100% safe without any damn drop-outs or having the board do something stupid on its own as what the GT did in my case. You also have full control over the throttle and braking curves as others have discussed. And it will be a whole lot cheaper, and if I spent $2k on it, a whole lot better than the GT.

 

The funny thing is that you can buy parts from Evolve, which is great. Here's a partial parts list for something similar.

$165 - I really like their double knuckle trucks. Trucks x2 $80 + $85 = $165 GT Truck Assembly
$110 - Might as well upgrade to the ABEC 11 97mm wheels and bearings while we are ordering parts from Evolve. Abec 11 Flywheels (97mm 75a)
$150 - Longboard deck $100 to $200 Longboard Decks - MuirSkate.com
$300 - Dual Motor kit Dual Motor Mechanical Kit
$400 - Let's upgrade to 10S4P. I believe this is 33% more AH or range than Evolve's Bamboo GT battery pack. EPOWER Pack 10S4P 10ah 360wh
$200 - VESC x2 VESC BLDC Speed Controller
$60 - Controller TorqueBoards 2.4Ghz Mini Remote Controller
======
$1385 total so far already roughly.

You would still need a battery enclosure of some sort. I believe DIY sells them but didnt see them on the website. Anyway, something like this would arguably be an upgraded GT board.

 

Another source for double kingpin trucks, don't need to get them from Evolve:



Gullwing Sidewinder II 10" Rasta Longboard Trucks (2 Trucks) | Boards on Nord


...and as low as $26 a pop:



Sector 9 Gullwing Sidewinder 9.0 Skateboard Truck

 

I've never had this issue with my Bamboo GT board yet and hope I don't. I have 4 other electric boards makes which all suffer from a gremlin in one form or another but you do learn how to deal with them. I agree that more serious issues should be checked and sorted quickly especially if they have so much power and speed as a GT!

 

My 1st GT was the bamboo, and I noticed it didn't seem to want to change speeds while moving, so I just start in GT and stay there. After I got used to the board, I never need to use the slower modes. The Evolve site says you get max range in GT, using 30-50% steady throttle, so range isn't even a reason to use the slower modes. To me, they are there for beginners to learn. My manual indicates that you can shift modes while moving, so I'm not sure about what's going on there. I have gotten a jolt or cut-out on my carbon, I believe when the battery gets low enough to drop into eco, and was advised to re-pair the board to the remote. I have not tested the CGT since I paired the remote, but will report back here if it happens again. I wasn't thrown, but could have been. These aren't toys. They are dangerous, and Evolve does issue a warning about power & brake loss. To be as safe as possible, I'd say don't change modes with moving, charge the board when it gets to ~50% power, and learn to control speed without the brakes, just like on a non-powered board. I can say I prefer the wider stance the longer CGT affords over the BGT, as it seems easier to counter forward/back speed changes.

 

The original Bamboo GT didn't allow you to change speeds while moving it was upgraded in the recent firmware to allow this while moving. However To be safe I always select the speed before I start off which is usually fast or GT depending on the ride.

 

That's wrong, not the first time I've seen them state incorrect things. Slow mode would be the best range, you would get tired from the limited top speed. Next would be Eco. GT is not the best for range, reason being is that you'll throttle on hard upon acceleration which eats up amps. Using more amps to accelerate eats up your range. Yes, they're correct about keeping the throttle down 30-50% but wrong in the GT part due to the amps consumed when accelerating. Does it make that much of a difference, not that much but they should be correct or at least explain their reasoning.

 

Just got in from a night ride. Tested riding in "fast" instead of "GT". Definitely doesn't pull as hard. I did experience the cut out when the board auto dropped to "eco". Same as before the prescribed re-pair. It's like a quick tap on the brakes, except you're not expecting it. Pretty exciting. Checked the remote right after, and it read 32% / 9 miles. In GT, I was getting ~ 9 miles, but it seemed like the board auto-dropped to eco sooner. After stopping at 9.1 miles, the battery reading had come up to 52%. I'd have to run it down further in "fast" for an idea on the increased range vs "GT". I was 212lbs naked yesterday, so I'm close the the 220lb weight limit with gear.