Light Assist Season 2

I assume you’ve just shut the switch on the vesc permanently then?

Just the battery and the control box :sweat_smile:

Here is a 4 minute section of pump and motoring, end of battery so being trigger happy and pump lazy

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Hi! I also have 3d printed Alu blades and I gave them a really good Sand with 600 grind and then 1000 until they are shiny.
Last week with rough surface blades, as soon as I hit the watersurface the thrust was gone and the air hold onto the blade.
This time it was much better!
I will keep sanding them and maybe polish and report again.

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Good to hear!

Having a blast on my end with my original high pitch prop.
Today, did 1.5 battery, with 45 minutes on the fist battery. Had some signal issues that made me do a lot more starts than I would normally do, unsure about why, it was cutting out while on foil during toutch of the bottom of the board. My guess it both antenna were not aligned well, hopefully nothing more serious.

There was some mini swell, 20-30 cm max.

Also tested @Etiennebzh tow boogie, very nice and stable. Second video is yesterday boat wake hunting, good times.

Had some trouble when I tried to go parawing+assist+360 cam stick, ended up with the parawing wrapped around the motor. Luckily, only damage was some of the back line outer layer got damaged on the parawing, and the motor pod wire fairing lost a big chunk of the hydro fairing.

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The stoke. The consistency. You never disappoint Adam :rocket::rocket::muscle::metal:

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Just a little before and after sanding. I’m gonna invest more time into sanding with 1000grid and higher



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I’m so surprised that it makes the difference, but good to hear!

The base surface loiks very rough

I understand that slick surface solves the cavitation problem. That is so great!
But I am afraid that protecting aluminum will be required in the long term, which means anodized.

I only want the nice surface, its not important if the shine goes away. Other than that isn’t Aluminium rustproof?

No idea, how those printed blades will react.
It looks like you could get intracellular corrosion.

If it were pure, like 6061, you would have no issues in a reasonable timeframe.

I used a plain untreated 6061 fuselage for two years in seawater, without any signs of corrosion.

7th battery for the trip, the system starts acting up, with random start and issues and shutdown.

I had trouble staring it up, then could do half the battery in up/downinder in southsea beach plymouth.

I think it is linked to the same issue I had back this winter where I had overtemp issues and drying the unit solved that.

I soaked the system in fresh water and will try to apply some sealant over the seam area after drying overnight.

This is the start of season 3

After drying for a few days, light assist v2 is still dead :

now the remote does not connect anymore, despite the maytec RX light blinking, and the controller still gives mosfet over temp errors when using the vesc tool app to try to control it.

So in the meantime, working on the next iteration.

I don’t want to redo everything related to the battery for the 21700 version, as I have 3 fully fine batteries now. I may try to wire a 12S1P 21700 battery within the available space to get a feel for such system, with a longer battery, and very thin walls.

One thing that is always problematic for me is going from pump to assist, having to mount and unmount the pod on the mast.

So for me moving the pod out of the mast and onto the controller seems like an interesting option. It remove one step, one part to forget, and one failure /seal point (the exposed MR60)

Also interesting to see how the flite system is done, I wonder if it could get on foil on flat, influencers say yes with a big foil. Removing the danger from the prop would be a good goal, but probably a lot more work to get it working well enough.

Despite being careful and mindful of risks, I had a close call with the prop, so the jet is an appealing option.

I am at the highest possible position at the moment before my pod ends up in the curved part of the mast.

The prop works in semi submerged mode, it is actually hardly ever fully submerged.


To ease future system maintenance, I will try to design 3 separate compartments for the potting, and pot in RTK silicon this time to have future acces possible.

  • 1 part for the phase wire to motor connection. This is the most likely point that would need to be accessible, to swap a motor if needed. Maybe keep some sort of connector in this zone, but pot it in magic gel for easy access
  • 2 part for the RX
  • 3 Remaining area for CTRL

I feel like the heatsink connecting to the outside of the system is not needed for my use case, as long as I keep the heatsink on the controller. This may have been the failure point of my season 2 system, due to weak bond between epoxy and alu.

Regarding the seal of the “waterproof” XT90, it is worthless and broke quickly on all my batteries, so the better solution would be some sort of seal foam or TPU gasket, sealing both the XT90 and the balance plug.

That would allow to use a XT90-S with anti spark in the battery builds. Thick grease help a lot, but there is still heavy sparking when the batteries are being plugged in to the system.

such system is really fun and enables to ride a lot of spots with no other options to catch waves. It is also enabling to travel with a smaller board, and catch a quick session anytime you feel like it or have available time. in that regards, it is family friendly!

Saving another few minutes of setup, maintenance and preparation work all goes towards more actual time on the water without sacrificing family time, so that is worth working on the design.

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Back from the grave for one more round, won’t let if die until holidays are over;

chiseled the maytek RX out and used another RX with a DS-600 remote stolen from my dad’s pile of RC stuff :laughing:

Rebuilt the firmware to ignore temp sensors from mosfets, flashed by BT :grinning:

No more over temp errors

Hopefully I manage to get it all waterproof enough for a few rides.

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The stoke is real :love_you_gesture:

Super nice session with the undead assist, the struggle was sooo woth it!

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That looks like an awesome spot for foiling. I still really want to try it with waves soon.

I’ve had a few eFoil sessions so far, and it’s working really well. The weight doesn’t bother me if I’m just using it for eFoiling. I still need to try it with smaller foils.

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Working on the next iteration, the pod and controller could be 2 parts, with two M5 bolts to prevent snapping of a single part print. I am considering getting it printed in SLA nylon or CNC.

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Are you finding that the 3d print just isnt holding up?

Well I had porosity and water ingress into the print on the PA6 print, despite the epoxy hot coat.

I want to get higher reliability from the system, and thinking about possible failure points. Last topic is rigidity, I want to be sure I get the best rigidity possible, thus maybe extending the box to the mast plate width also.

FDM wont give you the best results. MJF or SLS would definitely be better. Have you found the rigidity to be an issue even if you do extend the box to mast plate width?