Instructions: Compiling VESC's BLDC Tool on openSUSE

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RideTheIon

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If you're an openSUSE user and itching to configure your VESC, you'll find this post useful.

Compiling bldc-tool on openSUSE 13.X / enterprise SUSE 12 is fairly straight forward, once you get the Qt5 environment setup.
The biggest trip-up is that openSUSE's qmake only produces Qt4 makefiles.
Adding the option flag will only get you the error “Unknown option -qt=qt5”.
OpenSUSE has a separate qmake for Qt5 that is named qmake-qt5.
If you only install the Qt5 development packages below, your system won't even have the wrong qmake-program installed.

Code: 
## Compile BLDC-tool

# Add yourself to the dialout group to access the USB port of the ESC without being root
sudo usermod -G dialout $USER

# Do the rest as root
su -

# Uninstall modemmanager 
zypper remove ModemManager

# Install dependencies
zypper install patterns-openSUSE-devel_qt5 libqt5-creator libqt5-qtserialport-devel libudev-dev

# Install git
zypper install git-core

# Get source and compile
cd /usr/src/
mkdir BLDC
cd BLDC
git clone https://github.com/vedderb/bldc-tool.git bldc-tool
cd bldc-tool
qmake-qt5
make

# Check binary and dependencies
readelf -h BLDC_Tool
ldd -d BLDC_Tool

# Install
cp -p ./BLDC_Tool /usr/bin/

# Leave su root
exit
To run the tool, open a terminal as the non-privileged user and run the command “BLDC_Tool”.
 
Thanks for posting! I didn't knot that suse had a different version of qmake, good to know.

I should really make a forum dedicated to the VESC some time. The community is growing all the time and I think when the FOC implementation starts to mature even more people will be interested.
 
No need to make a forum, all infrastructure is already there on GitHub. You can write nice Wiki documentation there (and other can also contribute). For problem solving there is "Issues" section. Discussions are good here on endless-sphere. Or do you mean create endless-sphere specific section called "VESC"? That would be nice, I guess.
 
Seeing as VESC can be used in E-skate/mountainboard, E-bikes, rc-cars, ect, it would be best if VESC had its own forum or section.
Most of the information about hooking up and configuring VESC is generic for all uses.

In a perfect world, people would write their answers to the new forum in a wiki compatible way.
Adding a little bit of general info and background. That way it would be easy for someone to copy-paste the answer directly to the github wiki or FAQ without rewriting the answer :idea:
 
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