10S custom skate ESC: testers wanted!

Vanarian said:
silviasol said:
They are fairly easy to replace you just need a hot air station and a good soldering iron with small tip. Quality solder and flux is best also.
Click to expand...

Do you mind linking some solder iron and flux you would recommend?

On another topic I was recently wondering : when 2 VESC are plugged together and you want to update the firmware, do both VESC update when you update the "master" or do you have to do both separately? On same topic I forgot, is update available through Bluetooth ?
Click to expand...

I use kingbo flux paste which is the most used flux in bga rework that I do, never tried other flux but this stuff is cheap and works very well. One $30 tub of it will last you for years. I use a hakko fx-951 soldering station with different tip sizes. These are really good soldering iron stations with alot of power but are about $150 to $200. You can get the non digital fx-888 for less which has the same power. For the vesc I use a small .5mm point tip for the small components and the two pinned chips and for the larger fets and caps I use a larger 4mm chisel tip. Works very well. There are many cheaper soldering stations available, just may not support certain tips. Haven't tried them but I assume the only difference will be how hot the very end of the tip will get on smaller tips or the quality of the tips. I go thru about 3 of the small ended tips a year just because they oxidize over time and will not wet solder at the very end.

chuttney1 said:
Cruzing Vedder's page because I ran into an "OpenOCD init Failed" issue with my stm32F4 discovery board to look for answer. Came across a comment made by "Alex" what I believe Inboard is planning to use Vedder's controller in their product.

Pic from their Facebook page.
Click to expand...

I hope they are donating or giving him credit of some sort. People these days just looking for an easy way out to make money!
 
I didn't see any credit to VESC, but they call it the M1 motor controller on their Facebook page. Still, from the picture it is clearly a VESC.
Here is a link to the Facebook post:
https://www.facebook.com/inboardskate/photos/a.1562564027347682.1073741829.1547191082218310/1617553908515360/?type=1&theater
Inboard said:
Tony, our newest electrical engineer on the team, diving right into some soldering on an M1 motor controller. Welcome to the team Tony! ‪#‎M1Progress‬ ‪#‎electricskateboard‬
Click to expand...

I posted a reply to ask why they call the VESC 'M1'.
 
erwincoumans said:
I didn't see any credit to VESC, but they call it the M1 motor controller on their Facebook page. Still, from the picture it is clearly a VESC.
Here is a link to the Facebook post:
https://www.facebook.com/inboardskate/photos/a.1562564027347682.1073741829.1547191082218310/1617553908515360/?type=1&theater
Inboard said:
Tony, our newest electrical engineer on the team, diving right into some soldering on an M1 motor controller. Welcome to the team Tony! ‪#‎M1Progress‬ ‪#‎electricskateboard‬
Click to expand...

I posted a reply to ask why they call the VESC 'M1'.
Click to expand...

I seriously want to troll Inboard for using Vedder's project, but I will sit on the sidelines to know if Inboards will give credit to Vedder before releasing their final board to the public. Most importantly, Vedder has the final say over how one can use his project.
 
How is this guy an electrical engineer also. The way he is soldering in the picture there is nothing he is doing to the board. All the components are on it, they had another company make it obviously. Also there is no electrical engineer needed, he is basically saying they are doing all the "electrical work", in real terms he is saying they doing all the work making the controller! Vedder did every single thing needed including the software they use to get it running and they are trying to take credit saying they did it! Outrage! These guys are deplorable. Just a bunch of thieves who were able to create their in wheel motor, made the molding for all the parts and leave the hard part of making a good controller to someone else then on top of that take the credit for it. M#$%$%##kers!
 
silviasol said:
How is this guy an electrical engineer also. The way he is soldering in the picture there is nothing he is doing to the board. All the components are on it, they had another company make it obviously. Also there is no electrical engineer needed, he is basically saying they are doing all the "electrical work", in real terms he is saying they doing all the work making the controller! Vedder did every single thing needed including the software they use to get it running and they are trying to take credit saying they did it! Outrage! These guys are deplorable. Just a bunch of thieves who were able to create their in wheel motor, made the molding for all the parts and leave the hard part of making a good controller to someone else then on top of that take the credit for it. M#$%$%##kers!
Click to expand...

Ditto...
 
There is a reply on my question:

Inboard said:
Good question Erwin. To speed up development and allow us to continually test and
improve our motor design, we use off the shelf components. This allows us to continue motor development while also designing our own custom electronics. This also allows us to continue development of other aspects of the design while the motor controller is being built. This is not the motor controller that will come in the production M1. In the photo above Tony is conducting a test of the custom sensors inside the motor with the help of an open source motor controller.
Click to expand...
 
erwincoumans said:
There is a reply on my question:

Inboard said:
Good question Erwin. To speed up development and allow us to continually test and
improve our motor design, we use off the shelf components. This allows us to continue motor development while also designing our own custom electronics. This also allows us to continue development of other aspects of the design while the motor controller is being built. This is not the motor controller that will come in the production M1. In the photo above Tony is conducting a test of the custom sensors inside the motor with the help of an open source motor controller.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

I rest my case with this response made.
 
The first time I saw that they used my controller was when I saw the photos, and I haven't heard from them before or after that. I assume that they are worried that they would have to pay me in some way for using my controller, but making money never was my goal with publishing it. What I would ask from their side is that if they make changes and/or improvements to it, these improvements should benefit the project and the community which is the whole point of free and open software and hardware. I'm OK if they don't pay me royalties, but I'm not OK if they make a closed product which is heavily based on my work and no one else can build upon the addition they did on my work. I understand that if they make it easy to copy their product (by making it open) they will have problems competing in the market, which is why I don't think that the market is compatible with sharing information. In general I don't think that I will be able to live on making open software and hardware and that I have to keep my normal job, but I can still have fun doing it in my spare time. Several nice and passionate people have told me that we will be able to live well on creating free and open hardware and software, but I don't believe it before I see it.

This is a bad example of experience that I gained with the VESC, however, I have also gotten so much positive feedback from you guys and many other people. I definitely feel that it was worth spending all the time on the VESC and publishing the work, and I will continue working on it in the future. The next major step in the development is FOC (or vector control or since wave control), and if everything goes the way I hope it does the first implementation of sine wave control should come with a firmware upgrade in a couple of months. Trapezoidal control with all the features there are now will still be available since some motors will work better with that and even be more efficient under certain circumstances, but it would be nice to have sine wave control on my longboard so that it runs a bit more quiet :)

(interesting how my reply ended with sine wave control :) )
 
chuttney1 said:
erwincoumans said:
I didn't see any credit to VESC, but they call it the M1 motor controller on their Facebook page. Still, from the picture it is clearly a VESC.
Click to expand...

I seriously want to troll Inboard for using Vedder's project, but I will sit on the sidelines to know if Inboards will give credit to Vedder before releasing their final board to the public. Most importantly, Vedder has the final say over how one can use his project.
Click to expand...

They won't do it, else they would already have publicly. After all they are using the VESC "for testing", if what they said was the truth they would already thank Ben for making this available. They should donate also you know.

Anyway Ben that's great news about sine wave!
 
vedder said:
The first time I saw that they used my controller was when I saw the photos, and I haven't heard from them before or after that. I assume that they are worried that they would have to pay me in some way for using my controller, but making money never was my goal with publishing it. What I would ask from their side is that if they make changes and/or improvements to it, these improvements should benefit the project and the community which is the whole point of free and open software and hardware. I'm OK if they don't pay me royalties, but I'm not OK if they make a closed product which is heavily based on my work and no one else can build upon the addition they did on my work. I understand that if they make it easy to copy their product (by making it open) they will have problems competing in the market, which is why I don't think that the market is compatible with sharing information. In general I don't think that I will be able to live on making open software and hardware and that I have to keep my normal job, but I can still have fun doing it in my spare time. Several nice and passionate people have told me that we will be able to live well on creating free and open hardware and software, but I don't believe it before I see it.

This is a bad example of experience that I gained with the VESC, however, I have also gotten so much positive feedback from you guys and many other people. I definitely feel that it was worth spending all the time on the VESC and publishing the work, and I will continue working on it in the future. The next major step in the development is FOC (or vector control or since wave control), and if everything goes the way I hope it does the first implementation of sine wave control should come with a firmware upgrade in a couple of months. Trapezoidal control with all the features there are now will still be available since some motors will work better with that and even be more efficient under certain circumstances, but it would be nice to have sine wave control on my longboard so that it runs a bit more quiet :)

(interesting how my reply ended with sine wave control :) )
Click to expand...

I just get extremely angry when people do that kind of thing seeing as how the past 6 years I have made many successful items myself and used to make a small fortune repairing laptops. Within months after people just copy and spam the heck out of my idea and fill the auction with lies about how their product or repair service is better basically saying should choose them over me, some of these people still have their auctions going after I have moved on to new things lol. This would cut my profits in half and there was nothing I could do about it. People are just vultures when it comes to money and the internet is just an easy way to get people to think whatever you say by lying. They say they are not using your controller and I do believe them for the most part seeing the amount of people working on it and how they are building their own remote using pcb software but I do not see any pictures of their controller.... Anyways if they are I am sure we will find out when it is released and someone cracks it open. Very excited for the new sine wave control. I have been using sensorless still even though I have sensored set up and ready to go, I just need to make a spare vesc when I do a long range test with it just in case so I don't get stranded. Sensorless is a bit noisier but I don't notice it when going max speed, 25mph. Would be nice to get it running quiet and still have the extra efficiency vs. sensored though.
 
I may be wrong, but the project is open sourced and can be used freely, even for commercial use (per CC BY-SA 4.0 license). The license states they need to give attribution to vedder... but I don't know if they are required to do so if they aren't releasing design information. If they take the design information and show everyone, they have to give attribution. If the information is private and only release the hardware then I don't know if they have too. I think the license is against the hardware information, not the hardware itself.

Example, vedder has essentially created a beautiful painting and licensed the painting. Inboard is creating the object in the painting and using that object. They are't copying the painting. Don't confuse hardware (patents are used for this) with software (licenses are used for this).

The software/firmware to run the VESC may be a different story if it uses the same license. Note: I don't see any license info on your software (I didnt' look very hard). Your site says "VESC Hardware by Benjamin Vedder is licensed under a..." so I'm not sure that statement carries over too the software.

I'm not an attorney (nor do I play one on tv) so I'm not sure... thats just how I read it. I do own a business and know that legal matters and licensing really should involve an attorney :p.

That said... it would be nice if they did give credit even if "technicalities" say they aren't required too.

Also: lets not make this thread a debate/rant about inboards use of the VESC. Lets try to keep it on the testing and development of the VESC. Please create a separate thread if needed. I'm not trying to be a pain, I just like things to be organized :).
---------------------

Some resources:
http://www.open-electronics.org/how-to-choose-your-open-source-hardware-license/
quote: “Note that copyright (on which most licenses are based) doesn’t apply to hardware itself, only to the design files for it – and, then, only to the elements which constitute “original works of authorship” (in U.S. law) and not the underlying functionality or ideas. Therefore, it’s not entirely clear exactly which legal protections are or aren’t afforded by the use of a copyright-based license for hardware design files – but they’re still important as a way of making clear the ways in which you want others to use your designs.”
 
that0n3guy said:
I may be wrong, but the project is open sourced and can be used freely, even for commercial use (per CC BY-SA 4.0 license). The license states they need to give attribution to vedder... but I don't know if they are required to do so if they aren't releasing design information. If they take the design information and show everyone, they have to give attribution. If the information is private and only release the hardware then I don't know if they have too. I think the license is against the hardware information, not the hardware itself.

Example, vedder has essentially created a beautiful painting and licensed the painting. Inboard is creating the object in the painting and using that object. They are't copying the painting. Don't confuse hardware (patents are used for this) with software (licenses are used for this).

The software/firmware to run the VESC may be a different story if it uses the same license. Note: I don't see any license info on your software (I didnt' look very hard). Your site says "VESC Hardware by Benjamin Vedder is licensed under a..." so I'm not sure that statement carries over too the software.

I'm not an attorney (nor do I play one on tv) so I'm not sure... thats just how I read it. I do own a business and know that legal matters and licensing really should involve an attorney :p.

That said... it would be nice if they did give credit even if "technicalities" say they aren't required too.


---------------------

Some resources:
http://www.open-electronics.org/how-to-choose-your-open-source-hardware-license/
quote: “Note that copyright (on which most licenses are based) doesn’t apply to hardware itself, only to the design files for it – and, then, only to the elements which constitute “original works of authorship” (in U.S. law) and not the underlying functionality or ideas. Therefore, it’s not entirely clear exactly which legal protections are or aren’t afforded by the use of a copyright-based license for hardware design files – but they’re still important as a way of making clear the ways in which you want others to use your designs.”
Click to expand...

The software is the important part and where I spent 99% of the effort. All source file have the GPLv3 license in their beginning:
https://github.com/vedderb/bldc/blob/master/commands.c
I should probably add a license file to github as well. The hardware is also important, but it only is a fraction of all the work I spent. I could design a new PCB in a couple of days now that I have the experience from the previous hardware versions.
 
vedder said:
The software is the important part and where I spent 99% of the effort. All source file have the GPLv3 license in their beginning:
https://github.com/vedderb/bldc/blob/master/commands.c
I should probably add a license file to github as well. The hardware is also important, but it only is a fraction of all the work I spent. I could design a new PCB in a couple of days now that I have the experience from the previous hardware versions.
Click to expand...

For GPLv3 then I have no idea. Googling looks like they can use it as long as they "make the source available" (this could mean you have request source access) if they distribute it. They probably won't be distributing the tool, just the firmware (already on the hardware) so they may only have to make the firmware source available...

Licensing things are tricky business that's for sure.

Personally, I think your best course of action is to run a simple PR campaign. Not a negative one, but a positive one. Blog posts that say "Inboard skateboards using VESC for their controller!" (use SEO keywords). Act excited that your open source project is being used in a commercial one (as it potentially means commercial development being injecting into the project). I'm sure a bunch of people would also post blog posts as well. Inboard isn't big at all and it would be easy to dominate the search engines with that info if someone were to search for inboard skateboards. It could make them feel the VESC community is very large and they may WANT to contribute... and you are giving yourself credit even if they wont :p.
 
that0n3guy said:
Blog posts that say "Inboard skateboards using VESC for their controller!"
Click to expand...

It would be more clear to post "Inboard skateboards uses VESC for testing, while developing their own custom M1 motor controller."
 
Hello Everyone!

I'm Theo from Inboard, I've been following this thread for a while and saw the comments since yesterday.

I can understand that some people feel frustrated that we used the VESC, but I wanted to make it very clear that this was only for the purpose of speeding up development. It allowed us to make some progress on the motor design while developing our own motor controller. This way we wouldn’t have to wait on this specific piece of hardware to be able to work on the other aspects of the design.

We did not change anything with the VESC software since these development efforts were directed toward our own controller. A while ago we talked about contacting Benjamin, using the software and publishing the code, but unfortunately we did not follow that route because our hardware ended up being very different and pretty specific to our motor needs.

Also, just for the story, I approached Benjamin Vedder in May of 2014 and introduced him to electric skateboards. At the time Inboard did not exist and Benjamin was making ESCs for RC cars and robotics applications. Unfortunately we were not able to work together because of the distance, but Benjamin started shifting his effort toward making his own electric skateboard and improving the VESC for that application. I respect him very much for going that route. He created an awesome product under an open source license that anybody can use. It allows companies like us to speed up development of technology (without stealing anything) and DIY makers to build their own skateboards with a motor controller that is reliable and works great.

I believe this helps in bringing electric skateboards to the masses and will eventually have as many people as possible enjoying the awesome feeling of gliding downhill (and uphill) forever!

Theo
 
Theocerbo said:
Hello Everyone!

I'm Theo from Inboard, I've been following this thread for a while and saw the comments since yesterday.

I can understand that some people feel frustrated that we used the VESC, but I wanted to make it very clear that this was only for the purpose of speeding up development. It allowed us to make some progress on the motor design while developing our own motor controller. This way we wouldn’t have to wait on this specific piece of hardware to be able to work on the other aspects of the design.

We did not change anything with the VESC software since these development efforts were directed toward our own controller. A while ago we talked about contacting Benjamin, using the software and publishing the code, but unfortunately we did not follow that route because our hardware ended up being very different and pretty specific to our motor needs.

Also, just for the story, I approached Benjamin Vedder in May of 2014 and introduced him to electric skateboards. At the time Inboard did not exist and Benjamin was making ESCs for RC cars and robotics applications. Unfortunately we were not able to work together because of the distance, but Benjamin started shifting his effort toward making his own electric skateboard and improving the VESC for that application. I respect him very much for going that route. He created an awesome product under an open source license that anybody can use. It allows companies like us to speed up development of technology (without stealing anything) and DIY makers to build their own skateboards with a motor controller that is reliable and works great.

I believe this helps in bringing electric skateboards to the masses and will eventually have as many people as possible enjoying the awesome feeling of gliding downhill (and uphill) forever!

Theo
Click to expand...

Thanks Theo! And great work on your Hub Motors can't wait to get one in hand.

;)
 
torqueboards said:
I'm also glad Ben decided to use his VESC for electric skateboards. Great idea :mrgreen: :mrgreen:
Click to expand...

didn't you have something to do with that? and austindaivd, creator of this post???
 
Theocerbo said:
Hello Everyone!

I'm Theo from Inboard, I've been following this thread for a while and saw the comments since yesterday.

I can understand that some people feel frustrated that we used the VESC, but I wanted to make it very clear that this was only for the purpose of speeding up development. It allowed us to make some progress on the motor design while developing our own motor controller. This way we wouldn’t have to wait on this specific piece of hardware to be able to work on the other aspects of the design.

We did not change anything with the VESC software since these development efforts were directed toward our own controller. A while ago we talked about contacting Benjamin, using the software and publishing the code, but unfortunately we did not follow that route because our hardware ended up being very different and pretty specific to our motor needs.

Also, just for the story, I approached Benjamin Vedder in May of 2014 and introduced him to electric skateboards. At the time Inboard did not exist and Benjamin was making ESCs for RC cars and robotics applications. Unfortunately we were not able to work together because of the distance, but Benjamin started shifting his effort toward making his own electric skateboard and improving the VESC for that application. I respect him very much for going that route. He created an awesome product under an open source license that anybody can use. It allows companies like us to speed up development of technology (without stealing anything) and DIY makers to build their own skateboards with a motor controller that is reliable and works great.

I believe this helps in bringing electric skateboards to the masses and will eventually have as many people as possible enjoying the awesome feeling of gliding downhill (and uphill) forever!

Theo
Click to expand...

Hi Theo,
I checked my mails and saw that you did contact me. This was a long time ago and I didn't see the connection to inboard then. I also saw that you sent another email about Inboard in October, but I didn't reply so I must have missed that. Sorry about that. I got so many emails around that time and was very busy, so I missed replying to many of them. Good luck with inboard and I hope that you have success with your controller. You can base it on my code if you'd like of course, as long as it stays open :)

When I first started using my controller for electric skateboards was when my friend made his bachelors thesis with an electric longboard and used my controller. I borrowed his electric longboard for a while and made lots of improvements to the design and software while using it. I then uploaded some videos about that to youtube and then torque and austin contacted me and sent me an electric longboard kit. After that, I have used it a lot and spent a lot of effort on making my controller work well with skateboards.
 
Hi everyone!

Yesterday after about 3-5 seconds with a constant load of 80 A on 12s batteries my VESC died. The temperatures weren't too high.
I can still power it up and connect to the PC, no Fault code is shown. Pushing the throttle results the ERPM to go up to around 300 and the graph shows a small current jump of 2-3A, but the motor remains completeley dead.
Is that a typical DRV8302 damage? Shouldn't there be a fault code?


Another thing is that when I was testing the VESC even if I set the motor current limit to 120A The realtime graph never showed more than 80A and it did not feel like it was more than 80A. Is there some type of limit I did not recognize yet? The limit was exactly 80A.

Best regards,
fasser
 
@fasser: is your VESC from the Enertion beta batch? If so, you are the second person here who says that these VESCs hold the current below the limits set in the BLDC tool. The reason may be that the shunts used in this batch have a resistance higher than the spec, and the VESC sees the current of 120A, even though the actual current is only 80A. That wold happen if the shunts have 1.5 times higher resistance.

At least that's the version that came up during the previous discussion.
 
pkondratyuk said:
@fasser: is your VESC from the Enertion beta batch? If so, you are the second person here who says that these VESCs hold the current below the limits set in the BLDC tool. The reason may be that the shunts used in this batch have a resistance higher than the spec, and the VESC sees the current of 120A, even though the actual current is only 80A. That wold happen if the shunts have 1.5 times higher resistance.

At least that's the version that came up during the previous discussion.
Click to expand...

No, I got my VESC from Vedders batch.

It shows me 80A on the real time graph, so I think the current seen by VESC is 80A.

I have another VESC from the Enertion Beta here, but before I use it I have to change the capacitors and burn the bootloader to it. I hope I can do that this week.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

T
Wireless Wii Nunchuck *TESTERS WANTED
14 15 16 17 18
Replies
440
Views
63,591
austindavid
A
B
DUAL E-MTB BUILD
2 3
Replies
68
Views
9,215
torqueboards
T
T
FREE Step By Step 6S Electric Longboard Build Guide
2
Replies
42
Views
54,698
torqueboards
T
D
How to build an Electric skateboard tutorial *free version*
2 3 4
Replies
82
Views
119,353
SirDuckington
S
Reid Welch
"Extreme MY1018" archival, closed out
Replies
11
Views
15,730
GIGATT
G
Back
Top