John Dingley: 10 years building self-balancing ride on robots
Channel: Electromagnetic Field
Date: 2018-09-03

https://media.ccc.de/v/emf2018-366-10-years-building-self-balancing-ride-on-robots



The first self-balancing skateboard was made by Ben Smithers in Norfolk around 2007. This inspired me to build my own in 2008 and along the way I discovered how to program in C, Arduino's, IMU fusion algorithms, not realising this would be as hard as it turned out to be. A gyro was £160 back then, a 3 axis IMU is now about £5, how things have changed.

Since then I have built one and two wheeled boards, 2 wheeled wheelchair prototype and many others, documented on YT and Instructables, long before such gadgets came out from China, culminating in a 3000W hubmotor 1 wheeled motorcycle which I plan to bring to the camp and demonstrate. I test these on Pembrey and the famous Pendine Sands beaches in Wales, with video clips I can present.

Imposter credentials: I am a hospital doctor not an engineer. Electronic hobbyist. Until I started this sequence of machines I had only coded in BASIC aged 14 on my Sinclair ZX81 (built from a kit obviously).



John Dingley