I couldn’t find this so I made a new post. Can anyone that has experience with setting up a 4wd with 2 separate battery or shit just setting up. I am terrible with Vesc tool I can barely understand what the hell I’m actually doing in there. I can’t seem to get my Vesc to communicate to the other but I do have it plugged in with a 2 prong cable in a 4 prong connection being the 2 middle connectors going to the cal and cah pins. I can take the usb and connect to each different Vesc and auto connect and motor setup but that’s it. I’m wondering if I’m overwhelmed and from what I have been able to out together it might. Be something simple as the Vesc needing to be powered on st the same exact time which idk how to make that happen without linking the batteries or possibly using a relay and buck converter some shit.
Holy fuck dude… please insulate those bullet connectors. You’re one unfortunate bump away from nuking your ESC’s
4wd with vesc is a pain in the ass. It’s going to depend on your ESC’s but basically you need to setup the switch correctly and connect can h and l. Also, if you plug or unplug one esc with the can cables connected, you are at risk of blowing up the can chips.
People here might be able to give you good advice if you share what ESC’s you’re using.
After insulating the phase wires… I recently built a 4WD board using 2 dual ESCs, specifically 2 Stormcore 60Ds, and boy was it a pain in the ass. Not sure how my experience will translate to yours, but hope this helps.
- Make sure both your ESCs have the same firmware version.
- The VESCs must be connected to each other CAN-H to CAN-H, and CAN-L to CAN-L (they were the middle 2 wires on my ESCs). I initially tried connecting all four wires (CAN-H, CAN-L, +5V and GND) because Stormcores are apparently designed to turn on together when only one is switched on when connected using all 4 wires. This sort of worked because switching one on did turn the other one, but this started some kind of electrical loop, and I could not turn either of them off. So I ended up going back to just 2 wire connection, and used two power switches, one switch per ESC to turn them on individually. They need to be individually turned on (doesn’t matter whether you turn them on together or one by one), but interestingly turning one of them off turns the other one off.
- If everything is wired correctly (and the ESCs are not damaged) and both ESCs are powered on, the VESC Tool should be able to detect all four ESCs (2x dual ESCs) over CAN bus. Then you should be able to run motor detection simultaneously.
- This is where it got really glitchy for me. The VESC tool did not have an issue detecting all four ESCs via CAN whichever Stormcore I connected to the computer, but was only able to actually run the motor detection when the front-driving Stormcore was connected. It would just give an error message and not run the motor detection when the rear-driving Stormcore was prompted to run the motor detection. Also confusing is that AFAIK there is no way to designate master and slave ESCs, just local (whichever one is plugged in by USB, and others by CAN). The VESC ID numbers of the four ESCs seemed to change depending on which VESC is directly connected by USB and others connected by CAN. So running motor detection may be a trial and error for you.
- Do your best to keep track of which VESC ID is which wheel though, since you will need that info when setting up input signal. I think VESC tool needs to know which ESC your remote receiver is connected (at least in PPM mode).
Edit: @Blasto Apparently I should have connected just 5V, CAN-H and CAN-L, not GND.
@shadowfax Is there a way to “test” whether my CAN chips are blown or intact using the VESC tool? I ask because my setup seems to be so glitchy running motor detection. Once I got past motor detection, all four motors run really well… Even substituted in a different Stormcore and the glitchy behavior continued. Oh, and my Megan (connected by UART to one of the Stormcores) randomly displays an error (cannot detect ESC) but I can just click out of the error and things seem to work fine. I would imagine Stormcores have very mature CAN communication protocol but things are so finicky. Is it just me?
This is pretty normal for vesc - especially with 4wd. I’m not sure if there is a way to check other than doing everything else correct and then seeing if stuff works. It’s just something to be aware of when connecting / disconnecting power. A lot of ESC’s have can protection but maker x ESC’s do not. Unity/Stormcore should be fine even if you disconnect power with the ESC’s connected over can.
Yeah… while you were replying I accessed the ESCs on my board using Bluetooth/iOS tool, and when accessing each ESC by inverse motor direction tool, it sometimes detects all four and sometimes only three. The glitchiness increases with Bluetooth connection compared to USB. But once the motor detection is done, the PPM signal correctly runs all four. So I guess this is the best I can pull off.
Sounds like normal vesc 4wd behavior tbh. If you’ve got ppm working for all 4 it sounds like you’re set. Just make sure all 4 motors spin up smoothly and work as you would expect.
If any of the motors spin up weird or go Kachunk kachunk as they spin up, make sure the ESC’s controlled by can all have control mode set to off. I’ve fried a motor by having a can controlled motor set to ppm.
I have been trying find stormcore for Purchase but I just I can’t. They’re always sold out. I have the flip ski 6.7 mini pro so I already had one and I just bought another one to have a set.
OK to do this I just select the one that’s not that does not say local right cause the local is the one that’s got the USB cord I think so every other single one I would check select it and then check to see that it doesn’t have the setting on? I updated all the firmware‘s but when I first started doing it, I forgot to actually swap the wire over and I did it over it and it just timed out so now I’m having problem where it’s saying that they all need to be on the same firmware and to make sure that they’re actually using the right baud rate and That the RX and TX pins are correct, but I’m not even sure what cable they’re talking about or or any of that also PPM I’m guessing that I can’t use the remote that I have because it’s uart flipsky? I also have the wand and was probably going to get a puck for this board I do have the PPM splitter, but I’m thinking that the vet the flip flip ski is not PPM it’s the Vx2 .
Well if manage to make the wires touch then I’ll return it to Amazon and buy another d100
Cold be hard to tell from a pic but it’s not working so it’s not moving also it’s mounted and they’re staggered, but could get windy never know
I have a sketch to see if this is what you mean as far as connections go bc as of rn I only have a cable from my location Vesc one to the same slot on the second Vesc.
I think you only need one cable between the two dual ESCs.
inside each dual they are internally connected to each other.
otherwise you’re turning the bus into a ring. which may cause other problems.
Stormcores are long discontinued as the manufacturer went out of business. You can’t get them new from retailers, need to scour the forums marketplace. However, you should be able to make Flipskys work.
I agree with @fessyfoo re: CAN connections. Each unit of dual ESC (VESC #1 and VESC #2) should contain internal CAN bus connection between one side and the other side. When you connect just use one unit of dual ESC to USB, it detects both sides, yes? So, you should just need to connect CAN between VESC #1 and VESC #2 on one side. Also agree that the way you drew on the diagram turning the CAN bus in to a ring, which I don’t think will work.
Well, I was hopeful that’s what you meant though because unfortunately, I already have it wired in the way you’re talking of and it’s not working or it’s not registering my best on Canp. It’s just the local and the slave for the one also when I try to do anything with canvas. It says it’s not supported on this build of Vesc Tool and I was just looking into some things posted about that so I don’t know if that’s possibly a problem I’m having to
I was semi successful printing an enclosure woohoo yeah it’s a real bitch. Dual battery 4wd I’m starting to tape my p groups now and I will put the larger capacity batteries in the rear. I was really like 8 batteries short for having the same on both packs but I don’t want to wait for shipping and I need to use these temus
