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I have emails talking with Future Motion support as early as 2017 when my Onewheel+ was nosediving randomly at medium/low speeds (ie. Idling back and forth at a

by scrose 3y ago

I have emails talking with Future Motion support as early as 2017 when my Onewheel+ was nosediving randomly at medium/low speeds (ie. Idling back and forth at a red light). I could never get them to acknowledge it was a defect. I put over 2,000 miles on the board, so I was no stranger to how it should ride. All of my close calls came from it just suddenly powering down on me and are why I lost enough trust in the board to get rid of it. If not for that defect, it would have been the best tool for commuting in the city. It could ride off curbs, over torn up roads, through grass, and best of all, I could actually bring it inside any building without needing to go through a freight elevator

cjrp 3y ago
Did the wheel lock-up, or was it more like a blip of power-off then back on again?
- scrose 3y ago
  The board would completely disengage and the nose would drop. The best I can explain the feeling is that it felt like I’d go from tapping the gas to pushing the clutch all the way down. There would be no ‘pushback’ from the board beforehand. Sometimes it’d happen even when starting from a standstill. From what I remember, the blue power light would be on, but it would take restarting the board for it to engage properly again.
8n4vidtmkvmk 3y ago
2 wheel scooters are pretty compact too, no? Not sure how good they are on various terrains.. maybe they can make the wheels a bit bigger
- jareklupinski 3y ago
  went down this rabbit hole recently and ended up getting a folding ebike once you start scaling up 2 wheel scooter wheels to become big enough to comfortably ride anywhere in a city that wasnt explicitly designed for scooter traffic (nyc for example), the weight of the whole scooter starts surpassing even lighter ebikes (60 lb+), without the benefit of lower costs or more transportability (few/none 500W+ scooters can be carried comfortably through a narrower nyc restaurant door) this one came closest https://inokim.shop/collections/inokim-scooters/products/inokim-ox https://inokim.shop/collections/inokim-scooters/products/ino... but after testing it out I couldn't see the upside over a smaller folding ebike
  - senkora 3y ago
    Any models of folding ebikes that you liked? I’m in the market for one.
    - sleepybrett 3y ago
      I have one but it's quite heavy and designed more around cargo, trips to the grocery store etc. I have used to it commute into town to go to the office a few times and it works ok for it, but if I started doing that every day I'd probably buy something more 'commutery'. I have a rad power bikes 'expand 5'.
      - masklinn 3y ago
        What is the commutery-ness issue? The tyres do look chonky which might be inefficient for long-ish distance, or is it a bit small for long rides? Or is the maintenance a bit much for a daily?
        sleepybrett 3y ago
        Yeah it's got wide tires (and they are pretty small in diameter as well) and it's a stepthrough with an awfully heavy frame. I might go with something like the radcity if I were going to commute daily. Currently that commute is only 6ish miles though and I'm still mostly WFH, so it's not as critical. Rad does consider it a commuter bike, I just consider it a tad non-optimal but not anything terrible. Great for neighborhood errands though. My neighborhood 'main drag' is great for a little shopping/eating but is about a mile and change away so it's certainly walkable but I wouldn't want to lug groceries a mile up a hill so the bike is perfect. Haven't touched my car all summer unless I was getting out of the city. It is a bit small. I think they rate it for people who are 5'10" max, which is my height to get full leg extension. While it does fold it is quite heavy so if you are thinking about a scenario where you drive the edge of the city and bike the rest of the way in just know that getting it in and out of a trunk is a bit of a wrestling match. Maintenance-wise, no big complaints in almost a year and a half. I had a flat tire and was able to find a replacement tube no problem at a local bike shop. I've had to replace the brake pads and frayed up the brake cable in the process so I replaced that too, did all the work myself cost me maybe ~$20 in parts. Considering swapping the brakes for some 'hybrid hydraulic brakes' aka cable pull hydraulics, those will run me a couple hundred bucks for the pair, the work seems easy enough if you've ever swung a wrench. Did some lubing of the chain... No battery issues, no controller issues. https://www.radpowerbikes.com/collections/electric-city-commuter-bikes/products/radexpand-electric-folding-bike?variant=39442977783904 https://www.radpowerbikes.com/collections/electric-city-comm...
- scrose 3y ago
  There are plenty of compact options for sure, but I haven’t found any as ‘hassle-free’, at least when I reach my final destination :) I also have a folding e-bike which has larger and wider wheels than a scooter, which is preferable in my opinion. The problem with scooters and e-bikes, even folding ones, are that a lot of buildings will not let you take them indoors. Or most will have you use a freight elevator, which is operated manually AND has set hours that it’s run. There’s also the difficulty of storing/locking them if you go out for dinner or some other event. Something as small as a Onewheel that you could pick up and walk with, and is small enough to store under a table, or take on a train without blocking anyone is a dream in this sort of environment. Edit: I should also note that I’m speaking from my very NYC perspective.
  - hackernewds 3y ago
    Are there other alternatives to One wheel that work? I also like the thick single wheel modality
    - masklinn 3y ago
      Electric longboard maybe?
      - Pxtl 3y ago
        That seems like the best option. Adding a motor to a longboard is just enhancing a known proven quantity. It won't have the maneuverability of a onewheel or the all-terrain ability, but longboards are definitely a proven vehicle for roadways so motorized ones seem fine. Maybe there's some variation of the kickscooter that can meet the portability and compactness of a onewheel. Something that focuses on the foldability of the old Razor scooters. But that still wouldn't be as convenient. Fundamentally, the onewheel seems like a personal-mobility answer to the V22 Osprey: a vehicle with amazing functionality and versatility in its happy path, but is fundamentally unsafe in failure because of the basic physics of the situation. edit: onewheel, not longboard, in the final paragraph.
    - mikepurvis 3y ago
vernon99 3y ago
I confirm this behavior and this is also the reason I vot rid of the board. Nosedives at red light are not fun at all when you are standing next to a road full of traffic.
- kzrdude 3y ago
  What is a nosedive in this context?
  - scrose 3y ago
    They’re probably talking about when you try to mount the board after waiting/dismounting at a red light, but the motor doesn’t actually engage and it just falls forward
    - bowsamic 3y ago
      That's not what they meant https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37717656 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37717656
      - scrose 3y ago
        You linked to what I wrote :) It seemed like vernon99 was talking about nosediving from a complete stop(trying to go from motor off -> motor engaged but the motor doesn’t engage), whereas in the post you linked to, I was talking about starting from having the motor engaged already at a low speed (ie <5mph slowly moving back and forth waiting for a light) and then the power would just drop out. Same result, but likely different causes.
        avianlyric 3y ago
        I read it as they’re stopped stationary at lights, balancing on the board (so both feet off the ground), and at some point the One Wheel just decides to turn the motor off. If I had to guess, it sounds like the motor hits some thermal limit and cuts out. Which would explain why it happens at red lights often, lots of high torque motor excursion performing small moves to maintain balance, but little to no airflow because the motor isn’t moving fast enough to pump air through itself.
permo-w 3y ago
why not just get some equivalent with two/four wheels then? I get the feeling the answer has something to do with aesthetics rather than practicality
- MivLives 3y ago
  Maneuverability. You can turn in place. The tire is massive compared to a skateboard wheel. It can run off road, it feels nice on road.
  - Tossrock 3y ago
    Electric unicycles can do all that and are better in every practical aspect, but don't have the cool-factor of standing sideways on a board.
  - asdff 3y ago
    You can turn in place on a skateboard too by kick turning.
  - Xenoamorphous 3y ago
    Stupid question, but how do you turn?
    - eknkc 3y ago
      You can forcefully pivot it if you wish to turn in place while stationary. Otherwise you lean on the side and accelerate, the wheel is huge and there is enough sidewall to lean on to. You can perform pretty sharp turns. I'd also do a back and forward move, like a 3 point turn but rapidly and within something like 20cm space.
- scrose 3y ago
  I can absolutely assure you that ‘aesthetics’ don’t play any role in any of my commuter options :) I also stand by this: The Onewheel was the most versatile commuter option I’ve ever used in NYC. If failsafes were added that didn’t rely on ‘maintain balance while skidding on your nose or tail at 15+mph in traffic if the power decides to randomly cut off’, I’d likely buy it again.
asdff 3y ago
This is why a regular unpowered popsicle skateboard with some big fat soft wheels (60mm 79a ish is good) is the king of urban commuting in my experience. I ride it over torn up asphault that would have stopped a hard wheeled skateboard in its tracks. I pick the occasional glass piece out of the wheel and its none worse for the wear. I can take it with me anywhere. On a crowded train I can put it in between my legs. The board is very easy to stash out of the way indoors. The board probably weighs 1/5th the one wheel and I never have to worry about charging it or very much maintenance. It also has its own skill progression with tricks that has been really fun and satisfying to get into. ollies are downright useful to learn. I have seen better skateboarders than myself ollie up ~1ft tall curbs commuting through town; I don't think any other micromobility device can take a 1ft curb.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  I think e-scooter like xiaomi ones works better for majority of population and is also foldable
  - asdff 3y ago
    They are fold able but certainly more clumsy when I see them on the train. Also a lot more expensive and yet another thing you gotta charge and eventually replace a battery for. Its also a 30lb hunk of metal still, not everyone can comfortably tote that up and down train station steps all day. Most people I see don't even fold their escooter on the train just hold the handle, roll it in and have the tail out and let people deal with stepping over it. Makes me think transit as we know it wouldn't even work if everyone got one of these things or an ebike and took up so much extra space as a result.
    - FrankoDelMar 3y ago
      > Makes me think transit as we know it wouldn't even work if everyone got one of these things or an ebike and took up so much extra space as a result. I’ve been wondered something like this too when I see people bring their scooters into a restaurant, the gym or other indoor spaces. I get that you don’t want it stolen but it would untenable if everyone did it.
mongrelion 3y ago
I ride electric unicycles and I have a question about these OneWheels: when you are rolling, the wheel self balances, right? And when you are reaching the power limitations of the board, does it let you know of this in any way? The EUC will either tiltback (the wheel will literally stop you from leaning even more, so you are forced to lean man) or it will beep very loudly for several seconds, before it finally cuts off either because you fried the board or because the wheel is protecting itself.
- eknkc 3y ago
  It has a tilt back feedback. However it is possible to miss it and there is not much buffer after you hit the feedback point. I believe they just released a new firmware along with this recall and they have added something new. Might be vibration or sound but I can't remember exactly what.
  - thinkmassive 3y ago
    Yes that’s correct, the firmware update is to provide haptic feedback by modulating the motor to cause vibration. It sounds like a great idea, hopefully it works well.
    - bredren 3y ago
      The idea of sound + vibration notice of porential power related shutoff was requested openly and repeatedly at least since 2019. If this is such an innovative and important feature, there is no reasonable way to explain why it took the company so long to release it. Here’s the announce copy from their email on the update: “Today we're releasing an innovative new safety feature called "Haptic Buzz". Haptic Buzz is an audible and tacti e alert that riders hear and feel when nearing the operational limits of the board. Haptic Buzz provides riders with additional feedback that is immediate and intuitive so they can ride with more confidence than ever.”
      - thinkmassive 3y ago
        Sounds like a great improvement. I just installed it on my GT, looking forward to trying it out. If you have more technical details I’m interested to understand how it works. In the distant past I started my career in a power electronics research lab, building motor drive systems among other things, so a deep dive into HapticBuzz would be amazing.
TaylorAlexander 3y ago
This is one of those situations where I think it makes loads of sense for the product to have open source software. I guess it would make clones easier but I hear there’s already third party open source code for onewheels so they can’t prevent it. But if the mainline code was open source, some engineer would spend three weeks chasing down these bugs and submitting patches and everyone would benefit. Instead, they ship buggy code and put users and their business at risk. The business world has this attitude that proprietary closed source systems should always be the default, and open source needs justification. And further the business types tend not to know very much about open source, so they stick to what they know. But I don’t think these assumptions really make a lot of sense, as open source would help so many issues we see today, even from the business’s perspective.
- thinkmassive 3y ago
  The VESC community is extraordinarily impressive. At the same time, I’m doubtful that software bugs in the proprietary code are related to the vast majority of these failures people describe. The only legitimate issues I’ve seen are caused by sensors (either the foot sensor itself, or improper mounting usually related to grip tape) or water damage. A Onewheel attempts to self balance. To accelerate, you lean the direction you want to go. As your speed increases, the board starts tilting the nose up to signal it’s reaching its limit. Powering the motor requires energy, and self-balancing requires additional energy beyond that, so a safe amount of headroom needs to be reserved to accommodate for variations in terrain and rider movements. When the noise starts tilting up, there’s nothing to stop the rider from leaning forward more, which also signals to accelerate. This is called “pushing through pushback” and it’s required to go more than ~16-18 mph. Imagine the extreme case where you quickly lift your rear foot off the board. Obviously it’s going to stop suddenly, and you’ll fly through the air and smash into the ground. Every nosedive is exactly this scenario, just slightly less extreme. Once I grasped this simple concept it became obvious that every fall was my own fault. This is why I recommend new riders practice balancing with the board powered off. If you can’t easily do that, you have no business pushing through pushback. The boards being “fixed” by this recall are getting a new feature that makes the board vibrate at high speeds. This is done by modulating the motor, it requires no new transducer. The only “failure” is of the rider being oblivious to the signal the board is sending. Source: own a V1, Plus, and GT; ridden thousands of miles on my own and other’s boards; ran a meetup and met a huge variety of rider types; once raced in the GoPro Games; crashed hundreds of times including the obligatory bone-breaking incident resulting in surgery tl;dr: Future Motion is anti-consumer, haptic feedback is overdue, but there’s nothing inherently wrong with the Onewheel. Every nosedive is ultimately due to rider error.
edanm 3y ago
Have you found a good alternative tool? I've been using the Segway mini for years and think it's amazing, it hits all those things you mentioned. Its only problem is that it's no longer sold, and mine is starting you show its age. My wheels and battery need changing, but I'm not sure if anyone can actually do that anymore. So I'd really like another option...
- Animats 3y ago
  The Segway, at least originally, had considerable redundancy in the control system. I think they had four gyros and four accelerometers arranged in a tetrahedron. If you have four set up that way, you can get out info for all three principal axes, plus an error value that indicates sensor trouble. So failure can be detected quickly. Does the one-wheel have that?
  - gnicholas 3y ago
    The original Segway had 5 gyros! [1] 1: https://science.howstuffworks.com/transport/engines-equipment/ginger.htm#:~:text=Sensors%3A%20The%20Segway%20uses%20five,included%20as%20a%20safety%20precaution https://science.howstuffworks.com/transport/engines-equipmen....
    - Animats 3y ago
      Yeah, Dean Kamen had enough engineering experience not to build a human-carrying vehicle one sensor failure from a faceplant.
Dwewlyo 3y ago
You still would ride something which can't work if a hal sensor fails or a battery or anything else. It's not like a bike or E-Bike. I have no clue how you look at this and don't think 'death trap's or 'stupid way of dying '
sneak 3y ago
> If not for that defect, it would have been the best tool for commuting in the city. Except for that part where you're going faster than the fastest sprinter, with a high center of gravity. Even with a helmet, and no explicit defect, these things are inherently extremely dangerous by their very design.
- 303uru 3y ago
  I ride my bike, a lot. And I got passed once or twice a week for about a year by a guy on one of these that I assume was modified because it would go at least 25-30mph. No helmet on and he’d pretty belligerently pass me and pedestrians with little margin. Then I didn’t see him anymore.
  - lstamour 3y ago
    Similarly, I used to see these a lot last year, but I've only seen one person near me riding a one-wheel recently. Sadly, he was riding it with what looked like his 3 year old daughter holding on to his knees for dear life. I wanted to say something, but I assumed they're just going "to the store" nearby. But still... hurting yourself is one thing, but riding an e-scooter or one-wheel with young children seems like quite another...
- thinkmassive 3y ago
  They can also be extremely fun! It’s unfortunate that so many people fail to recognize the inherent danger and choose to blame the device instead of their abilities. Anyone who can’t control their balance on the fulcrum of a kart tire — under their own muscle power — trying to go fast on one of these boards is outright reckless.
  - nomel 3y ago
    New things, that don’t have historic/cultural armor, can’t survive. For example, there were 450 bicycle deaths in 2020, unrelated to traffic.
    - 3y ago
JeremyNT 3y ago
I've got a Brompton folding bike and it's really a great way to move through a city. It's not as compact as your device, but it gets quite small when folded for storage, and there's a configuration where you fold it down except for the handlebars and can push it around like a little cart.
- mauvehaus 3y ago
  I can second that a Brompton is an awesome city bike. I had one in Boston, and besides the aforementioned utility, it got compliments from people from every possible demographic. They put a smile on damn near everyone's faces. Get a good pair of padded gloves though. The small, high pressure tires are a punishing ride over shitty pavement. I.e., the kind that's found everywhere in Boston.
gnicholas 3y ago
> why I lost enough trust in the board to get rid of it. If you sold it or gave it away, did you tell the new owner about this defect?

by scrose 3y ago

cjrp 3y ago

Did the wheel lock-up, or was it more like a blip of power-off then back on again?

scrose 3y ago
The board would completely disengage and the nose would drop. The best I can explain the feeling is that it felt like I’d go from tapping the gas to pushing the clutch all the way down. There would be no ‘pushback’ from the board beforehand. Sometimes it’d happen even when starting from a standstill. From what I remember, the blue power light would be on, but it would take restarting the board for it to engage properly again.

8n4vidtmkvmk 3y ago

2 wheel scooters are pretty compact too, no? Not sure how good they are on various terrains.. maybe they can make the wheels a bit bigger

jareklupinski 3y ago
went down this rabbit hole recently and ended up getting a folding ebike once you start scaling up 2 wheel scooter wheels to become big enough to comfortably ride anywhere in a city that wasnt explicitly designed for scooter traffic (nyc for example), the weight of the whole scooter starts surpassing even lighter ebikes (60 lb+), without the benefit of lower costs or more transportability (few/none 500W+ scooters can be carried comfortably through a narrower nyc restaurant door) this one came closest https://inokim.shop/collections/inokim-scooters/products/inokim-ox https://inokim.shop/collections/inokim-scooters/products/ino... but after testing it out I couldn't see the upside over a smaller folding ebike
- senkora 3y ago
  Any models of folding ebikes that you liked? I’m in the market for one.
  - sleepybrett 3y ago
    I have one but it's quite heavy and designed more around cargo, trips to the grocery store etc. I have used to it commute into town to go to the office a few times and it works ok for it, but if I started doing that every day I'd probably buy something more 'commutery'. I have a rad power bikes 'expand 5'.
    - masklinn 3y ago
      What is the commutery-ness issue? The tyres do look chonky which might be inefficient for long-ish distance, or is it a bit small for long rides? Or is the maintenance a bit much for a daily?
      - sleepybrett 3y ago
        Yeah it's got wide tires (and they are pretty small in diameter as well) and it's a stepthrough with an awfully heavy frame. I might go with something like the radcity if I were going to commute daily. Currently that commute is only 6ish miles though and I'm still mostly WFH, so it's not as critical. Rad does consider it a commuter bike, I just consider it a tad non-optimal but not anything terrible. Great for neighborhood errands though. My neighborhood 'main drag' is great for a little shopping/eating but is about a mile and change away so it's certainly walkable but I wouldn't want to lug groceries a mile up a hill so the bike is perfect. Haven't touched my car all summer unless I was getting out of the city. It is a bit small. I think they rate it for people who are 5'10" max, which is my height to get full leg extension. While it does fold it is quite heavy so if you are thinking about a scenario where you drive the edge of the city and bike the rest of the way in just know that getting it in and out of a trunk is a bit of a wrestling match. Maintenance-wise, no big complaints in almost a year and a half. I had a flat tire and was able to find a replacement tube no problem at a local bike shop. I've had to replace the brake pads and frayed up the brake cable in the process so I replaced that too, did all the work myself cost me maybe ~$20 in parts. Considering swapping the brakes for some 'hybrid hydraulic brakes' aka cable pull hydraulics, those will run me a couple hundred bucks for the pair, the work seems easy enough if you've ever swung a wrench. Did some lubing of the chain... No battery issues, no controller issues. https://www.radpowerbikes.com/collections/electric-city-commuter-bikes/products/radexpand-electric-folding-bike?variant=39442977783904 https://www.radpowerbikes.com/collections/electric-city-comm...
scrose 3y ago
There are plenty of compact options for sure, but I haven’t found any as ‘hassle-free’, at least when I reach my final destination :) I also have a folding e-bike which has larger and wider wheels than a scooter, which is preferable in my opinion. The problem with scooters and e-bikes, even folding ones, are that a lot of buildings will not let you take them indoors. Or most will have you use a freight elevator, which is operated manually AND has set hours that it’s run. There’s also the difficulty of storing/locking them if you go out for dinner or some other event. Something as small as a Onewheel that you could pick up and walk with, and is small enough to store under a table, or take on a train without blocking anyone is a dream in this sort of environment. Edit: I should also note that I’m speaking from my very NYC perspective.
- hackernewds 3y ago
  Are there other alternatives to One wheel that work? I also like the thick single wheel modality
  - masklinn 3y ago
    Electric longboard maybe?
    - Pxtl 3y ago
      That seems like the best option. Adding a motor to a longboard is just enhancing a known proven quantity. It won't have the maneuverability of a onewheel or the all-terrain ability, but longboards are definitely a proven vehicle for roadways so motorized ones seem fine. Maybe there's some variation of the kickscooter that can meet the portability and compactness of a onewheel. Something that focuses on the foldability of the old Razor scooters. But that still wouldn't be as convenient. Fundamentally, the onewheel seems like a personal-mobility answer to the V22 Osprey: a vehicle with amazing functionality and versatility in its happy path, but is fundamentally unsafe in failure because of the basic physics of the situation. edit: onewheel, not longboard, in the final paragraph.
  - mikepurvis 3y ago

vernon99 3y ago

I confirm this behavior and this is also the reason I vot rid of the board. Nosedives at red light are not fun at all when you are standing next to a road full of traffic.

kzrdude 3y ago
What is a nosedive in this context?
- scrose 3y ago
  They’re probably talking about when you try to mount the board after waiting/dismounting at a red light, but the motor doesn’t actually engage and it just falls forward
  - bowsamic 3y ago
    That's not what they meant https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37717656 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37717656
    - scrose 3y ago
      You linked to what I wrote :) It seemed like vernon99 was talking about nosediving from a complete stop(trying to go from motor off -> motor engaged but the motor doesn’t engage), whereas in the post you linked to, I was talking about starting from having the motor engaged already at a low speed (ie <5mph slowly moving back and forth waiting for a light) and then the power would just drop out. Same result, but likely different causes.
      - avianlyric 3y ago
        I read it as they’re stopped stationary at lights, balancing on the board (so both feet off the ground), and at some point the One Wheel just decides to turn the motor off. If I had to guess, it sounds like the motor hits some thermal limit and cuts out. Which would explain why it happens at red lights often, lots of high torque motor excursion performing small moves to maintain balance, but little to no airflow because the motor isn’t moving fast enough to pump air through itself.

permo-w 3y ago

why not just get some equivalent with two/four wheels then? I get the feeling the answer has something to do with aesthetics rather than practicality

MivLives 3y ago
Maneuverability. You can turn in place. The tire is massive compared to a skateboard wheel. It can run off road, it feels nice on road.
- Tossrock 3y ago
  Electric unicycles can do all that and are better in every practical aspect, but don't have the cool-factor of standing sideways on a board.
- asdff 3y ago
  You can turn in place on a skateboard too by kick turning.
- Xenoamorphous 3y ago
  Stupid question, but how do you turn?
  - eknkc 3y ago
    You can forcefully pivot it if you wish to turn in place while stationary. Otherwise you lean on the side and accelerate, the wheel is huge and there is enough sidewall to lean on to. You can perform pretty sharp turns. I'd also do a back and forward move, like a 3 point turn but rapidly and within something like 20cm space.
scrose 3y ago
I can absolutely assure you that ‘aesthetics’ don’t play any role in any of my commuter options :) I also stand by this: The Onewheel was the most versatile commuter option I’ve ever used in NYC. If failsafes were added that didn’t rely on ‘maintain balance while skidding on your nose or tail at 15+mph in traffic if the power decides to randomly cut off’, I’d likely buy it again.

asdff 3y ago

This is why a regular unpowered popsicle skateboard with some big fat soft wheels (60mm 79a ish is good) is the king of urban commuting in my experience. I ride it over torn up asphault that would have stopped a hard wheeled skateboard in its tracks. I pick the occasional glass piece out of the wheel and its none worse for the wear. I can take it with me anywhere. On a crowded train I can put it in between my legs. The board is very easy to stash out of the way indoors. The board probably weighs 1/5th the one wheel and I never have to worry about charging it or very much maintenance. It also has its own skill progression with tricks that has been really fun and satisfying to get into. ollies are downright useful to learn. I have seen better skateboarders than myself ollie up ~1ft tall curbs commuting through town; I don't think any other micromobility device can take a 1ft curb.

ClumsyPilot 3y ago
I think e-scooter like xiaomi ones works better for majority of population and is also foldable
- asdff 3y ago
  They are fold able but certainly more clumsy when I see them on the train. Also a lot more expensive and yet another thing you gotta charge and eventually replace a battery for. Its also a 30lb hunk of metal still, not everyone can comfortably tote that up and down train station steps all day. Most people I see don't even fold their escooter on the train just hold the handle, roll it in and have the tail out and let people deal with stepping over it. Makes me think transit as we know it wouldn't even work if everyone got one of these things or an ebike and took up so much extra space as a result.
  - FrankoDelMar 3y ago
    > Makes me think transit as we know it wouldn't even work if everyone got one of these things or an ebike and took up so much extra space as a result. I’ve been wondered something like this too when I see people bring their scooters into a restaurant, the gym or other indoor spaces. I get that you don’t want it stolen but it would untenable if everyone did it.

mongrelion 3y ago

I ride electric unicycles and I have a question about these OneWheels: when you are rolling, the wheel self balances, right? And when you are reaching the power limitations of the board, does it let you know of this in any way? The EUC will either tiltback (the wheel will literally stop you from leaning even more, so you are forced to lean man) or it will beep very loudly for several seconds, before it finally cuts off either because you fried the board or because the wheel is protecting itself.

eknkc 3y ago
It has a tilt back feedback. However it is possible to miss it and there is not much buffer after you hit the feedback point. I believe they just released a new firmware along with this recall and they have added something new. Might be vibration or sound but I can't remember exactly what.
- thinkmassive 3y ago
  Yes that’s correct, the firmware update is to provide haptic feedback by modulating the motor to cause vibration. It sounds like a great idea, hopefully it works well.
  - bredren 3y ago
    The idea of sound + vibration notice of porential power related shutoff was requested openly and repeatedly at least since 2019. If this is such an innovative and important feature, there is no reasonable way to explain why it took the company so long to release it. Here’s the announce copy from their email on the update: “Today we're releasing an innovative new safety feature called "Haptic Buzz". Haptic Buzz is an audible and tacti e alert that riders hear and feel when nearing the operational limits of the board. Haptic Buzz provides riders with additional feedback that is immediate and intuitive so they can ride with more confidence than ever.”
    - thinkmassive 3y ago
      Sounds like a great improvement. I just installed it on my GT, looking forward to trying it out. If you have more technical details I’m interested to understand how it works. In the distant past I started my career in a power electronics research lab, building motor drive systems among other things, so a deep dive into HapticBuzz would be amazing.

TaylorAlexander 3y ago

This is one of those situations where I think it makes loads of sense for the product to have open source software. I guess it would make clones easier but I hear there’s already third party open source code for onewheels so they can’t prevent it. But if the mainline code was open source, some engineer would spend three weeks chasing down these bugs and submitting patches and everyone would benefit. Instead, they ship buggy code and put users and their business at risk. The business world has this attitude that proprietary closed source systems should always be the default, and open source needs justification. And further the business types tend not to know very much about open source, so they stick to what they know. But I don’t think these assumptions really make a lot of sense, as open source would help so many issues we see today, even from the business’s perspective.

thinkmassive 3y ago
The VESC community is extraordinarily impressive. At the same time, I’m doubtful that software bugs in the proprietary code are related to the vast majority of these failures people describe. The only legitimate issues I’ve seen are caused by sensors (either the foot sensor itself, or improper mounting usually related to grip tape) or water damage. A Onewheel attempts to self balance. To accelerate, you lean the direction you want to go. As your speed increases, the board starts tilting the nose up to signal it’s reaching its limit. Powering the motor requires energy, and self-balancing requires additional energy beyond that, so a safe amount of headroom needs to be reserved to accommodate for variations in terrain and rider movements. When the noise starts tilting up, there’s nothing to stop the rider from leaning forward more, which also signals to accelerate. This is called “pushing through pushback” and it’s required to go more than ~16-18 mph. Imagine the extreme case where you quickly lift your rear foot off the board. Obviously it’s going to stop suddenly, and you’ll fly through the air and smash into the ground. Every nosedive is exactly this scenario, just slightly less extreme. Once I grasped this simple concept it became obvious that every fall was my own fault. This is why I recommend new riders practice balancing with the board powered off. If you can’t easily do that, you have no business pushing through pushback. The boards being “fixed” by this recall are getting a new feature that makes the board vibrate at high speeds. This is done by modulating the motor, it requires no new transducer. The only “failure” is of the rider being oblivious to the signal the board is sending. Source: own a V1, Plus, and GT; ridden thousands of miles on my own and other’s boards; ran a meetup and met a huge variety of rider types; once raced in the GoPro Games; crashed hundreds of times including the obligatory bone-breaking incident resulting in surgery tl;dr: Future Motion is anti-consumer, haptic feedback is overdue, but there’s nothing inherently wrong with the Onewheel. Every nosedive is ultimately due to rider error.

edanm 3y ago

Have you found a good alternative tool? I've been using the Segway mini for years and think it's amazing, it hits all those things you mentioned. Its only problem is that it's no longer sold, and mine is starting you show its age. My wheels and battery need changing, but I'm not sure if anyone can actually do that anymore. So I'd really like another option...

Animats 3y ago
The Segway, at least originally, had considerable redundancy in the control system. I think they had four gyros and four accelerometers arranged in a tetrahedron. If you have four set up that way, you can get out info for all three principal axes, plus an error value that indicates sensor trouble. So failure can be detected quickly. Does the one-wheel have that?
- gnicholas 3y ago
  The original Segway had 5 gyros! [1] 1: https://science.howstuffworks.com/transport/engines-equipment/ginger.htm#:~:text=Sensors%3A%20The%20Segway%20uses%20five,included%20as%20a%20safety%20precaution https://science.howstuffworks.com/transport/engines-equipmen....
  - Animats 3y ago
    Yeah, Dean Kamen had enough engineering experience not to build a human-carrying vehicle one sensor failure from a faceplant.

Dwewlyo 3y ago

You still would ride something which can't work if a hal sensor fails or a battery or anything else. It's not like a bike or E-Bike. I have no clue how you look at this and don't think 'death trap's or 'stupid way of dying '

sneak 3y ago

> If not for that defect, it would have been the best tool for commuting in the city. Except for that part where you're going faster than the fastest sprinter, with a high center of gravity. Even with a helmet, and no explicit defect, these things are inherently extremely dangerous by their very design.

303uru 3y ago
I ride my bike, a lot. And I got passed once or twice a week for about a year by a guy on one of these that I assume was modified because it would go at least 25-30mph. No helmet on and he’d pretty belligerently pass me and pedestrians with little margin. Then I didn’t see him anymore.
- lstamour 3y ago
  Similarly, I used to see these a lot last year, but I've only seen one person near me riding a one-wheel recently. Sadly, he was riding it with what looked like his 3 year old daughter holding on to his knees for dear life. I wanted to say something, but I assumed they're just going "to the store" nearby. But still... hurting yourself is one thing, but riding an e-scooter or one-wheel with young children seems like quite another...
thinkmassive 3y ago
They can also be extremely fun! It’s unfortunate that so many people fail to recognize the inherent danger and choose to blame the device instead of their abilities. Anyone who can’t control their balance on the fulcrum of a kart tire — under their own muscle power — trying to go fast on one of these boards is outright reckless.
- nomel 3y ago
  New things, that don’t have historic/cultural armor, can’t survive. For example, there were 450 bicycle deaths in 2020, unrelated to traffic.
  - 3y ago

JeremyNT 3y ago

I've got a Brompton folding bike and it's really a great way to move through a city. It's not as compact as your device, but it gets quite small when folded for storage, and there's a configuration where you fold it down except for the handlebars and can push it around like a little cart.

mauvehaus 3y ago
I can second that a Brompton is an awesome city bike. I had one in Boston, and besides the aforementioned utility, it got compliments from people from every possible demographic. They put a smile on damn near everyone's faces. Get a good pair of padded gloves though. The small, high pressure tires are a punishing ride over shitty pavement. I.e., the kind that's found everywhere in Boston.

gnicholas 3y ago

> why I lost enough trust in the board to get rid of it. If you sold it or gave it away, did you tell the new owner about this defect?