Small Battery from Hoverboard

[saneagle]

Hoverboards are all over Ebay - both new and used. I bought a couple of not working used ones for about £20 each. They have some useful parts in them. They both had good 36v batteries in. One of them was virtually brand new. It failed because of a dry solder joint in one of the controller's.

Last night, I was walking to the Balti house, when I saw a smashed up hoverboard. Luckily, it was still there when I came back, so I carried it home. Today, I dismantled it to show you which parts are in them and what you can do with them. This is what I found:

 

[saneagle]

There are two small DD motors in the wheels. they can probably do about 200w max each. The black boxes at each end contain the motor controllers that are operated by two optical switches each - one for forwards and one for backwards. I can't see any method of speed control other than tapping the switches. The 36v 2Ah battery is in the other black box. The rest of the wires are for flashing LEDs and a sound buzzer thing.

The motors are perfect for wind generators. With a 500x500mm Savonius type rotor, they would make about 100w each in a fair breeze. The clamp makes for easy installation. The picture below show all the main components:

 

[saneagle]

In this picture is a controller. The power side is the same as an ebike one, but the only inputs it has is the two opticak switches. In the second picture, you can see the two plastic blades that interrupt to beam mounted to rubber diaphragm springs. It also shows the axle clamp.

 

[Nealh]

When do we see the d8veh mk1 wind turbine then ?

 

[saneagle]

Finally, the battery, which looks to be extremely safe with no wires. One of the strips was broken at the top left, which is weird because there's no stress on it. It didn't look blown - just broken. Note the water ingress label on it. There was signs of water ingress that might have happened before or after it was ababdoned. The case isn't waterproof, so water ingress could possibly cause a problem, but only if the whole thing was immersed.

Haldf or the 200mAh cells were good. It could easily be re-celled with higher capacity cells to make a very convenient lightwight lowish power ebike battery. Maybe two in parallel for more power and range.

 

[saneagle]

When do we see the d8veh mk1 wind turbine then ?

That would be impossible now. It would have to be mk2.

 

[saneagle]

One more point. If you wanted to make a normal HAWT, the pivot in the middle would make a very good bearing for the turning with wind direction. It has a lug to restrict motion that can easily be filed down. There's a harden steel pivot shaft, bronze thrust washers and a bronze bearing in one hald. Weirdly, the axle is able to rotate in the half without a bearing, so it would need to be glued or pinned on that side for longest life.