The little white wires running from one end of the board to the other in the picture below are wires from a magnetic deadman's switch that controls the contactor coil. A magnet on my foot closes the switch, thus activating the contactor...so when I fall off (not if), the contactor will open, and the board won't keep going.
Below are pics of the partially assembled board.
|It's starting to look like a longboard.|
|Hell yeah. Note: BWD is in the background|
While all of this was going on, I was balancing/charging my giant lipos. It turns out that one of the cells in one of the packs was much lower than the others. At first I thought it might be a bad cell, but the charger has been able to get it up from 3.4v to 3.94 at the time of writing this. I also learned that putting the charger on top of the power supplies is a bad idea (I know...duh...). I started smelling something awful about 15 minutes into charging and found the duct-tape that I used to hold the power supplies together in a block melting/burning...they got really freakin hot. Unfortunately, despite the separate power supplies, each individual charger maxes out at 50W (~2A for these packs), which implies that it is software limited and not power supply limited. I was hoping to get 5A out of them so I could charge the packs in under an hour...oh well.
|Compare the 2 motors' wiring. Also note the massive stack of risers.|
I really really REALLY hope that none of the electronics have decided to stop working. Debugging this system takes forever, and taking apart a motor is a whole day (and destructive) ordeal. We'll see soon enough (queue ominous background music).
Left to do:
1. Finish wiring (3 hours)
2. Design/Make Wii-nunchuck controller (15 hours?)
3. Test and program motor controllers (8 hours)
3.5. Fix electronics problems (I'm 99% sure something will go wrong...it always does)
4. Finish mounting motor controllers (45 minutes)
5. Test ride around a little inside (10 min)
6. Cut/Glue polyurethane tires on (24 hours)
7. Test drive
8. Install fans (5 hours)
9. Install lights (20 hours) (optional)
10. Waterproofing (4 hours + drying time)
Estimated work time left on project: ~80 hours (including lights)