I finished my PCB and did my CAD!
You can view it all on my repo and more pictures on the journal :)
Essentially I’m going to countersink M5 holes into the skateboard deck and 3D print spacers so I can put my PCB on it while velcroing a bunch of other components down to the main body of the deck (basically everything that isn’t on the PCB that I don’t want to be locked in placed). I also modeled a shield to go around the PCB with holes for the OLED, the motor wires, and the spark key slot
I finished my schematic!!!
Read the journal.md for a more in depth explanation. I basically chose all of my footprints for each part (most of them either screw terminal so I could connect it to the rest of the electrical systems easily) and wired everything in KiCAD again.
This is like my third rewire and I finally got it good bc I fixed a lot for stuff involving the positioning of the resistors. I also realized a lot of my modules that I needed required a lot more wires so I added those in quickly. I also made my own Arduino Nano and ESP32 schematics from two 15x1 connector schematics so I could ensure each pin was correctly labeled.
6/30/26 Devlog Update - 3 Hours
Wiring Diagram Redraw/Polishing/Revision
Ok so… I may have messed up the resistor values but I managed to fix them by looking at a lot of datasheets for MOFSET gates and documentation on how I should connnect an Arduino Nano to an ESP32 (you have to use them because arduino outputs 5v and esp32 only takes 3.3)
However, I fixed them and here is my final rewire (hopefully, you can see it in the image below), nothing too different from the old sheet but I’m quite happy
about how clean this one looks :)
A little embarrassed how long this took cause its my first time using Draw.io (I was also very distracted by the World Cup my family was watching in the background) but hopefully tommorow I’ll be finishing the circuit board.
Peace!
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Whoop, day one of working this is what I did yesterday on my skateboard.
8 HOURS (Using Journal.md)
So what is this project?
I wanted it to be a smart electric skateboard that used an ESP32 and
Arduino Nano to do the following features:
I wanted to do this project because I had a spare RC car motor and ESC lying around that I figured out how to use with a NiMH battery pack. I thought that if I tweaked the gear ratio enough I could get enough power out of a measly 9.6V battery to fully flesh out an electric skateboard…
Sadly I was wrong.In order to make a smart electric skateboard you first have to have an electric skateboard (duh). So I started out with the
deck.
I realized that I actually wanted to be able to bring this thing places so I chose a relatively small base deck which can just be upgraded to a better one need be. A $40 27 x 8 longboard deck. Nothing terribly remarkable but should have enough space for all my electronics. Next up, was the drive train kit, which is essentially the belt and pulley system that mounts a motor to the axle of the skateboard. I found a simple one on diyelectricskateboard.org (a little bit on the nose, you
think?) It comes with wheels, trucks, etc. etc.
You can see photos in my Journal.md btw (it’s basically this devlog but more thorough):
https://github.com/Fifthsol/Smart-Electric-Skateboard/blob/main/JOURNAL.md
As much as I’d love to buy the motor from the website I couldn’t find a good ESC-Motor combination for cheap, so I looked on flipsky and ended up finding a good motor ESC combo with the “Mini FSESC4.2 50A” VESC and
the “BLDC Belt Motor 6354 190KV” motor
I chose all of the other parts relatively quickly as a lot of them are just standard ESP32/Arduino components. This was stuff like the ESP32 kit, NEO6M GPS module, MPU-6050, SSD1306 OLED, on off switch, MicroSD module, buzzer, etc. etc.
Since the battery I chose is a 6S 22.2V 5000mAH lipo I had to use a voltage step down module and added a UBEC to make sure the voltage is properly regulated as it flows to the ESP32, Arduino Nano, and the headlights.
These headlights ended up also being a pain. I found a 7 inch set on Amazon that is usually used for cars, I thought wiring it would be easy turns out it isn’t because there isn’t a signal wire on it and only
voltage and ground.
This is where I introduce my excellently formatted wiring diagram below.
As you see I added a MOFSET gate pin to ensure that I could turn off and on the headlights. Additionally, I had to put a lot of effort in making sure everything shares a common ground and that the Arduino Nano
doesn’t fry the ESP32; the ESP32 accepts only 3.3V input from signal pins and the Nano outputs 5V. Same thing occured with the hall effect thumb trigger.
Tommorow, I plan on finalizing this wiring diagram in a software that isn’t google drawings so I can actually design the mounting board that will go on the skateboard.
THIS DEVLOG IS A CUT DOWN VERSION OF MY JOURNAL.MD ENTRY FOR YESTERDAY,
IF YOU WANT TO LEARN MORE PLEASE VISIT THE LINK TO IT
https://github.com/Fifthsol/Smart-Electric-Skateboard/blob/main/JOURNAL.md
https://fifthsol.github.io/blog/
Final Dev-Log Before Shipping!!
Black Hole Mode, Font Changes, Supernova, Placeholder Articles, etc
:))
https://fifthsol.github.io/blog/
I just realized I didn’t include a link in the last devlog lmfao.
Here it is! A lot of new features, especially with the stars which you can now drag ur cursor accross to move, there’s a button to reset them as well. It also link to my github and instagram now.
Changed the fonts to Cinzel Decorative for headings and title and DM Sans for everything else, no articles yet but… Enjoy!
added sun particles (get it?) to the hero page and a glassy effect to the nav bar as u scroll
i decided on a theme to be solar-punky at night
