Keeping the bike computer snug

A little bit more sand papering and the recess I made will be  a 1:1 fit for the bike computer!



Next step is to attach the wires to the PCB in order to connect to a separate box under the longboard. This box will house a board for mounting the battery, bike computer reset switch and the connection points for the magnet sensor.

Probably voiding my VoLo-E board guarantee!

Removing the bottom half off the bike computer casing means I can actually embedd the top half of the computer bike into the longboard by making a recess in the board ply to house the bike computer. This will mean that the bike computer will protrude from the surface by around 6mm.

All along I have been worried about the positioning of the bike computer and not wanting to reduce the strength of the board. So I positioned the recess at the top of the board away from any loading. The fact that I don't need to drill through all the plies should also be a positive thing in terms of keeping the board strength.

First, I placed the top half of the bike computer onto the top of board and drew round it in order to get the the shape for the recess perimeter. Then I arranged a  drill in my drill press so that it could not extend by more than 6mm into the board surface (I didn't want to go all the way through the board!). Then I drilled about 40 holes within the drawn out shape boundary. After that, I got a Stanley knife to cut out any remaining bits in-between the holes and used some sand paper to try clean it up a bit. Oh boy I must have definitely destroyed any sort of product guarantee I had from VoLo-E. The work in progress can be seen below:

Bike computer

Readers of this blog will know that I am slowly converting a cheap Halfords bike computer for use with my electric longboard.  The bike computer I bought  functions when it is docked in its cradle. Unfortunately when placed on top of the long board it sticks out more than 20mm from the longboard top surface. There is therefore a high risk that it gets knocked off when I am carrying the longboard on the train or I may even kick it off accidentally  when jumping off the skateboard.

Previously I had taken apart the bike computer with a view to see if I could reduce the height by removing the bottom half of the bike computer. I also wanted to do away with the docking rail. Well, by removing the bottom half its possible to reduce the total height to just 10mm. The plan is to make a recess in the skateboard to house the bike computer. However, I do have to put the battery somewhere else now. This will be accomplished by putting the battery and internal reset button in a separate box under the long board and connecting wires from the box to the PCB. The image below shows the disassembled bike computer. I have drawn a red circle around the bike computer part I will use.Other than the battery everything else in the image will be discarded.

Back on the skateboard in December !!!!

I had previously  thought  that  November would be my last month for skateboarding due to the weather. The weather was cold this afternoon but sunny and dry. So I charged up my skateboard  and  went skate boarding in the back streets. I didn't have  a particular destination to go, so  this was a  fun experience because it was without time limits. As was the case in the summer people were still stopping with prolonged gazes as I whizzed by. Funny, I would have thought electric skateboards are familiar sight to the public now.