10S custom skate ESC: testers wanted!

The Current Enertion VESC order has been halted. We are discarding the v4.8 PCB and now producing v4.10

No extra charge to the customers.

All existing orders will be getting the latest v4.10.
 
onloop said:
The Current Enertion VESC order has been halted. We are discarding the v4.8 PCB and now producing v4.10

No extra charge to the customers.

All existing orders will be getting the latest v4.10.

Really!!! :shock: I thought they were ready to ship! that must have cost you a fortune. Best of luck on this, I hope for your sake it tests out OK by Vedder since he hasn't yet tested version 4.10
 
chaka said:
Really!!! :shock: I thought they were ready to ship! that must have cost you a fortune. Best of luck on this, I hope for your sake it tests out OK by Vedder since he hasn't yet tested version 4.10

YES, 4.8 should have been shipping now, but because of Vedder making many changes and some other delays assembly didn't happen on schedule, so as it turns out sometimes manufacturing delays are a good thing!... So I have been able to make a decision to scrap the v4.8 PCB, manufacture the v4.10 PCB instead... This puts us further behind schedule and comes at a financial cost but shit happens. I don't think many people will be complaining.... FREE UPGRADE :)

So shipping of assembled VESC v4.10 should happen mid to late OCTOBER
 
chaka said:
I hear you, that's life on the bleeding edge! I have a stack of 4.8 PCB's sitting in front of me now, I assembled a number of them and they work great. Should have version 4.10 by next week from the PCB fabricator I'll let you now how they turn out.

Hey Guys, I just soldered one VESC 4.7 but sadly it doesn't work. I can flash the firmware, but the motor will not spin... So I need a new one. Chaka I just want you to ask, when do you think your PCBs are soldered?
 
PeterAufAbwegen said:
chaka said:
I hear you, that's life on the bleeding edge! I have a stack of 4.8 PCB's sitting in front of me now, I assembled a number of them and they work great. Should have version 4.10 by next week from the PCB fabricator I'll let you now how they turn out.

Hey Guys, I just soldered one VESC 4.7 but sadly it doesn't work. I can flash the firmware, but the motor will not spin... So I need a new one. Chaka I just want you to ask, when do you think your PCBs are soldered?

Based on previous orders it should be no later than this coming Friday. All but one have been spoken for already but I am placing another order from the fabricator on Monday.
 
PeterAufAbwegen said:
chaka said:
I hear you, that's life on the bleeding edge! I have a stack of 4.8 PCB's sitting in front of me now, I assembled a number of them and they work great. Should have version 4.10 by next week from the PCB fabricator I'll let you now how they turn out.

Hey Guys, I just soldered one VESC 4.7 but sadly it doesn't work. I can flash the firmware, but the motor will not spin... So I need a new one. Chaka I just want you to ask, when do you think your PCBs are soldered?


Peter, I do VESC repairs quite frequently and see this all to common.

Sounds like you need to resolder the DRV a bit better and clean up the legs of the pins from any bridged connections.
 
Hey Benjamin,

Would like to say you are the master of motor control, these VESCs are amazing! Cant wait to see how they go with FOC.
Will the older revision PCBs (V2.8) be able to run FOC?

Also just wondering if there would be any issues if I were to swap the FETs for the AUIRFS8409-7P ?

I have a 149kv hub motor e-board and so it runs on pretty low voltage - 6S lipo. When going up hills the FETs get hot pretty quickly.
I'm thinking if I change the FETs for some lower on-resistance ones the VESCs would stay cool for longer. With my setup I don't need the 60V breakdown voltage of the current FETs - 40V would be heaps.
On the other hand this proposed FET has a higher total gate charge so the switching times would be slightly longer for the same gate driver setup and therefore higher switching loss..
Assuming the gate driver chip isn't running at its limit, I could change the gate resistors for a lower resistance..?
 
From the datasheet, the DRV8302 Gate driver supports up to 200kHz switching frequency with Qg(TOT)=25nC or total 30mA gate drive average current.
The auirfs8409-7p has 305nC total gate charge at Id=100A and Vds=20V (so a little more for a charged 6s). vs 236nC for IRFS7530 at Vds=30V.
From Vedder's Blog: "the DRV8302 cannot supply enough power do drive more gate capacitance at high switching frequency. These (=IRFS7530) FETs are the limit of what it can handle".
So I guess you can't use auirfs8409, unless you reduce switching frequency or get rid of DRV8032...
How many amps are you using in the motor to get the FETs hot ?
 
Hello, I purchased a VESC from Jacob quite a long time ago (1st beta run), and have lots of trouble with it, I'm at a loss what to do! Basically when I connect the VESC to my computer, I am able to get BLDC-tool to "connect" to the VESC, but a few seconds later, it says "no firmware read response".

So far I have replaced the 8x 1uf caps, sent the VESC to vedder to re-upload the firmware (should be 1.13 now), installed ubuntu virtualbox on my com, but still can't get the VESC to work! Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you very much!
 
@simpes, you should use rEFInd to install Ubuntu on Mac or use the OSX version of the BLDC Tool. The error you're seeing might be related to virtual box not recognizing the port correctly. You'll find the OSX version here:
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0Bym9XrdeViekfkRETmRndENkcVpySW5sWjIzOWdrLThCY01HY3BPOXpqYVRHUlQxS0R5ZlU&usp=sharing

Edit: the newest FW1.14 is contained in the "mw_config_&_FW.zip". And if you're using windows it's also there too :)
 
@elkick, thanks for helping, but I don't think its a problem with virtualbox, because i get the exact same problem when running the windows version of BLDC tool. (Windows 8 on both my laptop and desktop, both I encounter the same problem)
 
Did Vedder say that 4.10 was final an confirmed resolved the one issue (why he went from 4.8-4.10)? I'd like to get a couple boards as i have an itch to see if i can do it without completely burning down my shop... (small fires are ok). hehehe

was just waiting on the "yes this is the new hardware version 4.10 to build on" from Vedder. I saw on Github all the gerbers are 4.10 and even did a x-compare w/ 4.8 BOM - looks like all parts listed are identical.
 
sl33py said:
Did Vedder say that 4.10 was final an confirmed resolved the one issue (why he went from 4.8-4.10)? I'd like to get a couple boards as i have an itch to see if i can do it without completely burning down my shop... (small fires are ok). hehehe

was just waiting on the "yes this is the new hardware version 4.10 to build on" from Vedder. I saw on Github all the gerbers are 4.10 and even did a x-compare w/ 4.8 BOM - looks like all parts listed are identical.

From reading little snippets, I think 4.10 involve better copper trace routing in the VESC that takes it to the stage of FOC motor control.
 
chuttney1 said:
sl33py said:
Did Vedder say that 4.10 was final an confirmed resolved the one issue (why he went from 4.8-4.10)? I'd like to get a couple boards as i have an itch to see if i can do it without completely burning down my shop... (small fires are ok). hehehe

was just waiting on the "yes this is the new hardware version 4.10 to build on" from Vedder. I saw on Github all the gerbers are 4.10 and even did a x-compare w/ 4.8 BOM - looks like all parts listed are identical.

From reading little snippets, I think 4.10 involve better copper trace routing in the VESC that takes it to the stage of FOC motor control.

So if it's ready for consumption i think i'm going to order a couple boards and try my hand and soldering SMD!

Vedder - any caution or reason why we shouldn't go with this 4.10 version? I see Onloop is in production using 4.10, so i'm guessing they are ready for mass consumption?
 
4.10 Boards have yet to be delivered to a lot of us. Onloop has done those of us that have ordered through that a solid and given us 4.10 instead of 4.8 so when a lot of us that ordered get our boards, then we will be able to really test them out. "mass production" isnt a direct statement of this boards readiness IMHO as the ideology to Vedder's years of work is "build the best". Right now a barrier to entry is the need for Linux/OSX so while there are some who are testing in the hardware side of things, there are others who are testing on the software side of things. Hopefully removing the need for Linux/OSX and allowing for on the go adjustments will be implemented.

TLDR; Vedder's goal is to make "the best esc", so mass production is really focused towards beta testing currently while bugs/errors are worked out. That being said, shes ready to roll!!!
 
I just ordered parts to build a couple V4.10 boards. Ordered 10 PCB's from Smart-Prototyping and enough parts to build 2 boards. ill post an update when I get the boards assembled (personal SMD workstation at home, awww yeah). If the boards work I might also build out the other 8 VESC's that I have boards for. Decided to do something different and get blue solder mask to change things up.
 
Regarding 4.10: I think they are fine, but I have _not_ tested them myself since my boards haven't arrived yet. I think I will get 10 pieces some time this week, but I'm not sure.

I haven't talked much with onloop at all about him selling VESCs, I only talk with Jacob occasionally who talks with onloop about him selling VESCs. What I told Jacob is the same: I think they are fine, but I haven't tested them myself. I have tested 4.8 and confirmed that they work better than 4.7 and I can't see why 4.10 wouldn't, but I haven't confirmed it.

The changes from 4.8 to 4.10 are:
* The current shunt traces are moved again in an attempt to get less offset.
* A hardware SPI port is routed to the comm header to support high speed communication for e.g. precise robotics applications.

I'm quite sure that the shunt traces won't cause any issues, but the spi port forced me to move some ADC pins and other pins around. This means that the firmware is not compatible between the boards as before (e.g. the 4.7 fw mostly works on 4.8 an vice versa). It could also cause issues with the ADC configuration since not all combinations of inputs, ADCs and configurations are possible, but I don't think this will be an issue. The analog sampling on the VESC is quite complicated because all three ADCs are used in both regular and injected mode simultaneously synchronized to two different timers to sample currents and voltages at two different places in the PWM cycle. DMA is also used heavily.

Hello, I purchased a VESC from Jacob quite a long time ago (1st beta run), and have lots of trouble with it, I'm at a loss what to do! Basically when I connect the VESC to my computer, I am able to get BLDC-tool to "connect" to the VESC, but a few seconds later, it says "no firmware read response".

So far I have replaced the 8x 1uf caps, sent the VESC to vedder to re-upload the firmware (should be 1.13 now), installed ubuntu virtualbox on my com, but still can't get the VESC to work! Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you very much!
Sorry for the late reply. Have you used the correct serial port? When I had your VESC I tested it with BLDC Tool and the connection was fine. Sometimes you have to use e.g. /dev/ttyACM3 instead of 0 in case you have something like usb modems. Running a virtual machine can also cause problems and many people have had issues with that. I cannot help much since I only run linux on my computers and virtual machines behave differently with different host OSes. The windows and osx versions of bldc tool are also difficult to test for me. I've had USB cables that don't work for the VESC but do work for other devices for some reason, so you can also try a different USB cable.
 
Great to see such rapid progress Benjamin! Looking forward to seeing your results of VESC 4.10 with the 1717 buggy. Would be cool to see some datalogs of it too, comparing the different versions.

Meanwhile, what's the main difference between FW 1.12 and 1.14 for running with the VESC 4.7? 1.14 is still compatible with 4.7, no? Haven't been playing with it for a long time, but still wondering what could have caused my VESC freeze-ups. If I have some more time, I'll see if I can reproduce those with the latest firmwares.
 
hi guys, need some advice from some experts, when using the esc higher voltage is good as less heat more efficient, what about for breaking?
if i had my hub motor setup that has a very low roll resistance and only used the hub motors for breaking no acceleration why i still need to have a high cell count like 10s instead only use 2-3s, from pushing i really wouldn't be going very fast maybe down hill ill go 30km/h. my concern is that the motor will generate more V then my battery back, maybe i will need to add some caps.

why would i want to do this? i love longboarding down hill but because of a knee injury and 3 recon's (from an electric longboard malfunction) I'm not confident in foot breaking at high speed, i can't squat low enough to slide.

if it works i could design a very small hub motor that is light weight.
 
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