THE HOVERBOARD
My son got a hoverboard a few Christmases ago as a present. He used it all the time for the first few years, but lately not so much.
So I ask him if I could buy it from him so that I could use the parts to attempt to build a hydroelectric generator.
STARTING OUT
The first thing I did was remove the battery, mainly for safety sake because it is a lithium ion battery. Upon removal I discovered that it is a 2500 mAh, 36 volt battery. That is a pretty powerful battery for a small as it is! I will be keeping this for future use.
DIVING DEEPER
After removing a few screws from the bottom side of the hoverboard, I had to remove the rubber pads that you put your feet on when you ride. Doing that exposed a bunch more screws to remove.
Once they were removed the outer housing easily came apart and exposed the inside of the hoverboard.
The circuit board in the picture is what controls the wheel...and it was at this point that I realized something pretty neat....the battery is of course a DC battery, but the wheel motors that drive the board had three power wires going to them. This means the motors are NOT DC motors. They are AC motors and i think they may be three phase motors!!!
Once the circuit board was removed and i could look at it, it appeared that the battery feeds the 36 volts DC to the circuit board and the board converts it to AC electric and puts that voltage to the wheels.... I think.😁😁
After removing the wheel/motor assembly I was also able to pry off the rubber that makes the wheel. This will make the wheel lighter and hopefully soon easier when it's in place as a hydroelectric generator.
RESEARCH TIME
This is as far as I can go for now, because I don't know much about actually making this motor make electricity. I'll have to do a bunch of research online to figure out how to make it work. If anybody has any idea, or has done this before please leave a comment and maybe you can help me out.🤞🤞
NEW LIGHTS AT THE CABIN
Just a real quick update to mark when we got our outside lights installed. Katie LOVES them and that's all that matters to me. So I am in love with them too!!!
*Don't worry, that's not a ninja attacking the cabin...it's Evan playing like a ninja.😂🤣
Interested to see if you can get this hydro project to work.
I've discovered that the motors are indeed 3 phase, and 36 volts. I also discovered that to turn it into DC current that I can feed a charge controller, I needed a bridge rectifier (like our of a car alternator.) But, the circuit boards are used(partially) to convert the 36V DC battery voltage to the three phase AC. So I wondered if they would do the opposite when the motors were spun....AND THEY DO! Spinning by hand I get easily get 18V DC out of the board! So I'm off to get a bicycle wheel and figure out how to make the paddle wheels and get it to spin the motor. Thank you so much for for all your support my friend! Your votes and interaction are both greatly appreciated!!!🤗
Sounds like you will get it working 👍
Very interesting, I look forward to future updates on this.
Hey friend! There's a little bit of an update in the other comment under this blog. Great hearing from you! I'm going to try a test run tonight with the charge controller by spinning it with my hand. We send our love! And thanks for all your support and love!🤗