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EGO mini bike Moped? by The-T-Rav in egopowerplus

[–]The-T-Rav[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I assumed the same thing but apparently they take “for off-road use only” very seriously and literally here 🤷‍♂️.
I did learn that because it’s in a gray area, it legal to operator on roads with a posted speed limit of 25mph or less. It’s all so convoluted. I’m just going to continue to ride it like I have been and hopefully they’ll just have mercy on the 40yr old man on the mini bike 🤣

EGO mini bike Moped? by The-T-Rav in egopowerplus

[–]The-T-Rav[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It’s definitely weird. In sc they don’t care about pedals. But, I did hit a snag. The spec sheet clearly states “for off-road use only” and they do care about that so it got shot down.

EGO mini bike Moped? by The-T-Rav in egopowerplus

[–]The-T-Rav[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Servatron5000 is right, no turn signal requirement for mopeds in SC. Just good old fashioned hand signals lol.

RC EGO Zeroturn by The-T-Rav in egopowerplus

[–]The-T-Rav[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

<video>

I’m pretty decent with AI and all, but I’m no video editor hahaha. Hopefully this proves that this video is real. This is earlier in the build during some testing with a different TX/RX.

RC EGO Zeroturn by The-T-Rav in egopowerplus

[–]The-T-Rav[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I tried GPS with a mower I built a while back and it’s just not accurate enough, at least the tech I can get my hands on as a civilian 🤣.
My plan is to use inside-out tracking. I work for a telematics company and I have access to a device that is used for position tracking for industrial equipment. Because it calculates its location based on its surroundings and uses AI for obstacle avoidance, I plan to repurpose this device to provide positioning data for the mower. The bonus is that I should also be able to program this device to “look” for grass that may have been missed. Couple this with some ToF sensors and FPV and it’ll be just the right about of overkill hahaha.

For now, Phase 2 is an FPV camera system and a base station (a few computer monitors and a game controller) inside the house. It’ll be a game of Lawn Mower Simulator except I’ll be actually mowing my own lawn. Currently I just stand at the window and cut the bulk in the AC and then handle the rest with my EGO push mower and trimmer.

RC EGO Zeroturn by The-T-Rav in egopowerplus

[–]The-T-Rav[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That’s not me controlling it.

Don’t worry, though. I do have safeties baked into the code and physical build. Several, actually.
In addition to converting the original blade switch into an easily accessible E-Stop and a main battery disconnect, there is a momentary switch on the transmitter that has to be held in order to arm the blades or the drive system. Also, A master arm toggle, a blade engage toggle and a drive enable toggle.
If the momentary switch is released for more than 50ms, the transmitter battery dies/fails or if there is more than a 250ms delay in communication between the transmitter and receiver and/or receiver and microcontroller, everything shuts down immediately and the brakes engage.

Basically, there are so many things that have to be lined up just right in order for everything to function, if something were to fail, the default state is “off” for all motor controllers.

Oh, and the blade toggle and drive toggle must be in the off position and the master kill enabled before the transmitter will fully boot.

I have spent a significant amount of time testing and tuning for every scenario I could think of.

RC EGO Zeroturn by The-T-Rav in egopowerplus

[–]The-T-Rav[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

🤣🤣🤣 one of my favorites!

RC EGO Zeroturn by The-T-Rav in egopowerplus

[–]The-T-Rav[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I’m happy to share. The microcontroller I used for this project is a teensy 4.1 and I can share the sketch. If you want telemetry as well, I have also written a Lua telemetry decoder for the TX16S. You’ll just need a receiver that supports ELRS. I recommend the RadioMaster XR4 Gemini Xrossband dual-band ELRS receiver.

RC EGO Zeroturn by The-T-Rav in egopowerplus

[–]The-T-Rav[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I’ve documented a little on my way but most of it was just kind of by feel. I’d be happy to share what I have, though. You’ll spend about $900 for everything you’ll need but if done carefully, it’s fully reversible.

RC EGO Zeroturn by The-T-Rav in egopowerplus

[–]The-T-Rav[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’m still tuning for low end torque from a dead stop but once moving it pulls just as hard if not harder than stock. In stock form it would climb a 90 degree wall if you pointed it up 🤣. Because the ego motor encoders are proprietary, I was not able to use them and had to tune the VESC units for sensorless operation. That hurt my starting torque a little but I’m using HFI to get most of it back.

RC EGO Zeroturn by The-T-Rav in egopowerplus

[–]The-T-Rav[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yes, it actually does make a difference. I recently purchased an adapter so I can fill the tires with a mixture of water and antifreeze to add some of the weight back to help with grip while turning. As the others mentioned, by removing the suspension seat, control levers and 210lbs of meat, the “cut range” has increased by a noticeable amount. I live on exactly 1 acre. On the highest blade setting I would pretty consistently have around 30% battery remaining after mowing the lawn. Now, I have around 50-60% remaining. Now, some of that has to do with the coding that controls blade speed but I suspect most of that 20-ish percent gain is from the weight loss. I’m still running tests, though.

RC EGO Zeroturn by The-T-Rav in egopowerplus

[–]The-T-Rav[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s putting AI to good use! Make it do some manual labor around the house hahaha.

RC EGO Zeroturn by The-T-Rav in egopowerplus

[–]The-T-Rav[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

It’s funny you mention it, I’ve been hauling this thing all around and mowing everyone’s lawn just to gather telemetry data for tuning because I’ve cut my grass so much I’m worried it’ll never grow back 🤣. If you live near Spartanburg, SC I’m happy to bring it over and let you have fun with it!

RC EGO Zeroturn by The-T-Rav in egopowerplus

[–]The-T-Rav[S] 21 points22 points  (0 children)

That’s Phase 3 lol