@JFB - I made myself a piece of shoulder armor for my leading shoulder out of D30, after I nosedived and broke that shoulder. Neat stuff.

The only thing I'd caution people to think about is that hard armor, worn externally, slides on pavement, thereby dispersing impact force two ways. D30 (or any armor underneath your clothes) won't slide. So my elbow and knee pads are just standard hard shells.

Obviously use and style matters, and if you want something that looks unobtrusive, you want it under your clothes. But it may help you slightly less there (not to mention the clothes may get shredded, unless they're built for slides like motorcycle gear is).

@goblinglider - my apologies, you are correct, there is an included integrated handle, there are colors available, and the Pro is an upgrade. He talks about it a minute or two from the end of this video: https://youtu.be/MU_XMXurimk

@goblinglider I don't think so. The site makes it look that way (and I think that's gonna bite FM in the butt), but I don't see any colored handle options, and the "base" handle pictured is also described as magnetic and looks exactly like the "pro" one to my eye. We'll see I suppose.

@skyman88 The fact that the handle is not included kind of sucks, TBH, since they removed the nose handle. So they are FORCING you to get a handle, if you want to ever easily carry the damn thing. The Pint's smaller and lighter, but 24 lbs. is still 24 lbs.

@Maverick - one other thing to remember (and maybe the sensors you will get are better than the ones I have dealt with) is that surface albedo can pretty easily "trick" them.

In addition to the lenses getting dirty, my Roomba also can get stymied by certain sharply-patterned carpets, like ones with alternating light and dark squares on them - it sees the border between a light square and a dark square as a potential "stair edge dropoff", because the light signal coming back to it from the dark square is weaker due to light absorption.

Or, think of the way an automatic toilet flush sensor in a public restroom can sometimes be fooled into failing to "see" you if you are wearing black clothing - same reason.

If the surface is dark, or dark underneath the tail sensor but not under the nose sensor, it may throw your calculations off in unpleasant ways. So this again kind of goes back to my initial "useful mostly on clean, paved surfaces" comment. Amend that to "and light and evenly-colored".

@mr-vince No idea how feasible sonar is, but anything that doesn't need a lens could be good.

Another thing to remember is that the undersides of people's boards take some abuse, and lenses not only can get dirty, they can crack (if you are dropping off curbs and such). Might be best to make the sensors real close to the wheel where they are probably safest from accidental impact.

I'm not trying to pooh-pooh the idea, I think it sounds awesome, it's just that my Roomba tells me if those sensors are not working you have a problem, and the LAST place you want to have a problem is on a board climbing up the side of a pipe. So keeping the sensors clean and protected and working needs to be a consideration, IMO. You might be able to enclose them in some sort of small protective cage/enclosure.

@Maverick Not an engineer, but this sounds cool. The only thing I'd warn about would be that offroaders might not want to use this, this would really be for people on clean, paved surfaces. If the IR laser distance sensors get their lenses dirty, the whole shebang craps out, and you don't want that happening midway down or up a hill.

(Source: My Roomba that occasionally gets these lenses dusty/dirty and erroneously thinks it's about to fall down a staircase).

@Wreckless I'm sure it's an artifact of factory testing. But that doesn't absolve FM of the responsibility to get it right before it ships. "Ghost miles" you didn't put on the board shorten your warranty. "Ghost miles" you didn't put on the board reduce your resale value.

@link31s - I'll be watching this with interest to see what response you get, but a point of clarity - the 2/28 app update was just a OW app update, not a firmware update (firmware is the software that's on-board the board itself).

I'm surprised to hear this could be happening, because in theory the OW app being updated should not be able to affect the board's performance at all (after all, you can ride the board without connecting to the app - that's because it's the firmware that actually "drives" the board, and the app is only used to interface with that to "see" it, and change certain adjustable parameters). But it sounds like you've experimentally validated your diagnosis. That's worrying.

Just FYI, the board behavior you are describing sounds very similar to a problem my friend has been having on his XR, pre-dating the 2/28 OW app update. He's getting ready to send his in for service, they suspect a bad cell.

Anyway, I appreciate you reporting this, and later today I'm going to try to go ride around and make sure my board still behaves same (I've ridden it once since the update but not past 50%).

One other complaint I'd like to make, is that the OW app did not give me any CHOICE but to update to the new app version on 2/28. I could not use the app unless I updated it (the update window could not be closed or opted-out of). I prefer not to make software updates right away for exactly this reason - I let the early adopters let me know if there's a problem, sometimes a software update is buggy and/or worse than the prior version.

Unless it's a critical safety/security update, it should never be forced on users, users should be able to opt-in or -out of updates.