In the fall of 2019, my wife and I moved to the Chicago suburbs, over 800 miles away from anyone we knew. A few months later, after we were finally starting to feel settled in, the pandemic hit. We found ourselves in the same situation as most people: isolated, lonely, and bored. I was aware of onewheels at the time, but I had written them off as entirely too expensive. But one day in the spring of 2020, while we were walking around our neighborhood for the thousandth time…

Open-source is quickly moving from the future of onewheeling and into the present. Pro riders are beginning to adopt the VESC platform, which continues to evolve at a rapid pace. This year, we will see multiple open class races that will have no restrictions placed on the manufacturer of the boards that are ridden. The configurabilty, customization, and raw power are huge draw towards VESC, but because of it’s open-source and DIY nature, it remains inaccessible to many. There is currently a need for more clear documentation, so I’ve written this as a start-to-finish guide on how to get up and running on your own VESC based onewheel.

The floatwheel adv and adv pro were supposed to ship in February, but March has arrived and the devices are not in customers’ hands. Today, floatwheel released a production update on YouTube which explained the delays. Tony Lai, one of floatwheel’s founders, elaborated on issues with plastic part deformities and finishing. The company is also working to tighten up manufacturing tolerances on the adv’s hub motor.

On Wednesday, FlightFins took to social media to announce that Wheel Fun Stuff and FlightFins are joining forces. In the video post, Wheel Fun Stuff’s Kyle Hanson explained that they will be bringing more “epic content” and “brand new products”. In the comments of each post, people were asking on the ETA of the new GOAT off-road tire for Onewheel GT. FlightFins has confirmed that the tires are in production and should be shipping next month.

One realm that the VESC platform is seriously lacking in is user experience. Fortunately, we’ve got a bunch of passionate people constantly working to improve the open-source project. Recently, surfdado updated his Float Control app to version 1.5. The update brings with it the ability to set custom shaping profiles and easily switch in between them, something that I’ve sorely missed after switching to VESC from Future Motion’s Onewheel.

I love my VESC boards and because the open-source project is constantly evolving, there is a lot to report on. If you are new to VESC and the DIY scene, you probably have a lot of questions.

On Wednesday, Future Motion released the new High Kick Footpad for Pint and Pint X. This rear footpad is 5 mm wider than the stock option and has double the kick height. The footpad looks to be made of the same hard plastic as the stock footpads. It will set you back $90+shipping and is available on onewheel.com.