The past few weeks has been demoralizing for me in my quest to redo my eboard build before going back to school. The past few times the VESCs I have soldered work, but encountered the DRV8302 error. Every time I try to replace the DRV8302, one solder trace lifts off from the board forcing me to solder a new one. Most recently, I have encountered the openocd error trying to upload the firmware to the VESC and have asked Vedder for help. My first stm32f4discovery board had the MCU flashed with the VESC firmware when I did not remove the CN3 jumpers. I thought this was a problem, but was not the root cause of the openocd error. I have gone on STM's website forum for help in looking for an answer. What I found is the openocd error can be cause by a hardware, USB drivers issue, or relabeling the SWD ports as GPIO on the Discovery board. I decided to get another stm32f4discovery board in case the first one I have is bricked but highly unlikely. I have eliminate probable sources of the error relating to the USB driver as I am able to connect to the Discovery MCU when writing the openocd script. This leaves me to believe the real root of the cause of the openocd is hardware related to the something on the VESC I have soldered. The voltage regulators do work as I have set up a systematic process to ensure one component is not mixed match with another during the placing of SMD parts on the VESC before hot air soldering. At this point after having 3 VESC I have soldered not work while reusing some of the old components from previous sudo-failed boards and from a financial perspective, Im just going to cut my loss and get a fully working/tested one.