Prologue

In Late 2024 when Future Motion first announced the Pint S model, I was on the edge of my seat. The idea of a souped-up Pint was the dream Onewheel configuration for me – enough power to make city riding feel zippy, but in a small enough package to not be inconvenient to carry inside coffee shops, climbing gyms, grocery stores, etc. The announcement rolled, and among the few upgrades (as well as the sick blacked-out design) the powertrain was... not mentioned. It turns out the new board would still be running the same battery pack that was present in the Pint X, and was simply getting a firmware update to squeeze out a little more power.

If squeezing out a little more power from a Pint X sounds familiar, perhaps you read my post The Pint X Project from a full year prior to this announcement, where I did exactly that.

I knew that after years of riding and racing increasingly powerful boards, a 15s battery powertrain wasn't going to cut it anymore. And if you want a Onewheel out of the box that packs a punch, you are limited to the GT S-series line, or branching off into the world of VESC.

At this point, I had built half a dozen VESC boards, and my engineer-brain wasn’t letting go of my North Star, a true Pint S that lives up to the name. But I didn’t see a way to make it work with the stock battery box volume – there was simply too little room to put the number of 21700 cells necessary to make a board with both the minimum range and power I wanted.

The unlock came when TFL finally released B.A.N.G. bumpers for the Pint. Years in the making, these bumpers allowed for an ever-so-slightly deeper battery cavity. Suddenly, I realized there was enough elbow room to do what I had been imagining this whole time, so I got to work.

The name had come to me in a song months prior: The Quality Pint S

Project Goals

Goal 1: Replicable

The Quality Pint S must be as simple as possible to replicate, with clearly defined build steps and as little custom-rigging along the way as possible. Lean on the pre-existing engineering work of the Pint platform and make surgical improvements where necessary. All pre-existing parts should remain compatible where possible, whether it be the front stock enclosure with the waterproof power button, drop top fenders, or a maghandle.

The ride-feel of the Pint S platform should be preserved, but refined. Using a larger tire or choosing a 5” motor has advantages, but they change the balance and form factor of the board significantly enough that riders are better off just building on a different platform. In short, what the Pint does, it does best.

Goal 2: Seamless

The Quality Pint S should fit seamlessly into the Onewheel ecosystem. If you are at a friend’s house or on a group ride and forgot your charger, you should be able to borrow your friend’s charger without worrying whether the plug/voltage will match. A pet peeve of mine with VESC: there is no standard to the chargers or voltages that boards are running. While variable output chargers are starting to become more common, there are still half a dozen common charge ports, and who knows how the one you have was pinned. Want to borrow your friend’s charger? Too bad!

This goal introduces a couple of constraints right off the bat. First, the board must have either an 18s (75.6V) or 27s (113.4V) battery system. Secondly, to use stock chargers, it must make use of a Future Motion stock charge port for either the GT or GT S-series line. Neither of these charge ports was designed for the Pint frame, and they are significantly different in diameter. The choice was clear here between these two – the Quality Pint S needed to be worthy of the S-series title, so I would need to find a way to cram 113.4V into the Pint S frame.

Being compatible with stock chargers has another less-obvious advantage in that they are easy to buy! While not the cheapest nor the fastest on the market, they are always in stock, and there’s a healthy secondhand market to boot.

One major compatibility concession was made in the name of safety: I converted the Pint S motor to a Superflux plug, which has much larger contact pins than the stock connector. I don’t know the specifics on what the stock connector is rated for, but since there will be nearly double the voltage and significantly more amps flowing to the motor, I didn’t want to find out the hard way if it wasn’t up to the task. I’ve seen multiple GT S-series connectors fried over the years, and the Pint S connector is noticeably smaller.

Goal 3: Quality

The Quality Pint S should be built to last, whether you want to shred trails, trick at the skatepark, or commute through the city. All new electronics should be able to fit in the stock metal front enclosure, which has a good water-resistant track record and is easy to acquire. A fully custom CNC aluminum front enclosure can cost hundreds of USD – it makes more sense to make use of what is already there.

Component choice should be limited to only those with a great track record in the VESC community:

• Ennoid Mk8 ESC
  • Powerful, compact, and reliable high-voltage ESC
• 27s battery built by a reliable builder
  • Ideally, this battery should be built in a rigid frame to eliminate weld joint stress from the constant vibration and banging around these boards experience. I designed the Mood Frame specifically for this project.
• A custom-designed battery enclosure to fit the 27s battery
• XLite V4 BMS (though as you’ll read in the build guide, I now recommend the VFBMS instead)
• A dedicated high-voltage fuse for safety
  • High-voltage boards with powerful ESCs require fuses. In the event a MOSFET blows or a short occurs in the enclosure, unlimited power will be drawn from the battery pack. This event is a huge fire hazard.
  • Fun fact: the VESC community discovered the necessity for fuses in my living room, at least in part, when my Dirtsurferz 2025 board went up in smoke. Fortunately, I was at home (nearly not so!) and able to disconnect things before anything burst into flames.

Last but not least, lights. Surprisingly, getting working and jank-free lights working on VESC is quite difficult. A Quality Pint S should have lights that work intuitively.

Onewheels and VESCs, a category I like to call hoverboards (yes, I am aware that’s been trademarked by a company that makes things that are distinctly NOT hoverboards!) are comprised nearly entirely of single points of failure. This demands rigor from every step in the engineering and building process, as any mistake can cause an unexpected drop of the rider. You must stand on the quality of your work and trust it to hold you up. This is the aspect of building in this space that continually engages me. So if you build a board for yourself, and especially if you build it for someone else, keep the stakes in mind and let them motivate you to do excellent work!

Building in Public

This is the first major project of mine where I built in public from the first stages. You can read the entire build guide in this VESC-ify Discord project thread.

Unsurprisingly, this project turned out vastly better than I could have ever done in a vacuum. Still, as my first major “build in public” non-software project, I was surprised by just how many people participated in the build thread, provided advice and their own anecdotal experiences, and even collaborated on materials and CNC/SLS machine time to breathe life into the final result.