It’s looking much better now. I’m still going to leave it alone for some time, I need to prep the board and the vESC mount…
That is looking good, i set my first balance on a pack to .01 delta and then after a few cycles set it to .025v delta. It takes longer to get the smaller delta but let’s me see exactly what I’ve got going on and i take my good multimeter and check to confirm the voltages. You can calibrate in the bms from there but if it’s close I don’t worry about it and my readings have always been close enough.
I’ve been switching it to .025 delta after a few cycles because I don’t see any need to be better matched with how im riding and charging (sitting in the middle 85% of my capacity usually). Seems to be working fine so far. I charge to 4.17 then it balances and settles to about 4.15ish, I live at the top of a hill so i keep head room so i can break hard on the downhill heading to the trails around me and usually get home with 15-20% minimum… also because hills
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While taking a break from watching the pack balance, I’m tinkering with the board.
We have to extend a bit the channels for the leads connecting the pack to the vESC and make new holes for new threaded inserts for the battery box. The vESC will be mounted to the original boosted ESC backing plate so that’s going to be quite neat.
Oh yeah, and I fixed the logo 
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Slow progress. Sometimes I think I enjoy the whole process more than reaching the end.
Loopkey day!
I wanted to keep things as modular as possible so this is how we’re going to connect it. The reason is the XT90 connector part is going to be glued in the box and I’d like the pack removable.
Found a nice piece of solid copper bar:
For now I’m going with a bunch of layers of conformal coating. Will probably print a little case for it or something:
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As much as I wasn’t looking forward to this part, time to pack the …pack.
Again, in hindsight, I would’ve designed the enclosure with significant differences but at least for now this will work. It fits but space is quite tight. Better lead management would’ve also helped but we’re not going to worry about that for now.
To be honest, I’m going to be surprised if all this works but for now the BMS is not complaining.
I wanted to connect the vESC for initial setup but I can’t find the right bullet connectors to match the ones already on the vESC leads. Might have to take those off or just solder the motor wires. We’ll see.
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I’m just now reading the last 12 days of build post and progress. Awesome btw.
didnt know u had a sunnko and questionable nickel.
My little Ted talk in DMs with esk8 hot takes is what I’d tell myself if I had a Time Machine. Sorry if it felt too on the nose. coincidence, didn’t realize you were
Literally doing those things and posting here about it.
Maybe not total coincidence. the esk8 struggle bus has a semi-regular route. Most of us have to buy a ticket to shoulder short City to get to Dead P-group province.
Anyways, this should have been a DM. I saw ur pack render, sent enough slotted nickel, fishpaper, G10 to skip the bus and take an uber.
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Noo, it’s not a sunnko, it’s a cheap amazon welder/power bank thing. It works well, but nothing more than 0.1 really. I will get a kweld eventually.
Thank you again for all the tips and parts! Very much appreciated.
We’re getting close to wheels spinning but I need a bit of help with this remote connection. It’s a flipsky vx1 pro, it came with a bunch of wires and a simple diagram. I’m usually good at figuring these out but I want to make sure I don’t make some connection which might break the receiver.
This is what we have, how should I connect the receiver? Could I just use the PWM pins from one side of the vESC or I need to connect everything the chart says?
If I need to connect every pin from the chart, where to they go? I mean 5v, “-”, rx and tx are clear but what about that rightmost pin from the receiver, do I really need a separate wire to go to the main battery positive lead? What about the PPM pin? I don’t see a PPM pin on the vESC.
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Ppm is pwm but spelled wrong so that’s easy. I do believe the v does go to the voltage input but that is only because I have seen the blue single conductor soldered to flipsky escs in the past and have never had a vx1 remote before
I have touched a lot or remotes but haven’t used this one. Someone who has would better than me.
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You are using a good remote. No cap.
Sending a message only intended for 2024 @cucu.
That remote u used to spin wheels last summer is a good. display can be helpful. Now that you have a metr, you don’t really need it.
If you’re getting the diy bug again now that this build is done, check the ‘mini remote’ (specific name to search for on forums). most recent link I’ve used to purchase:
https://a.co/d/9gw1A6y
Only 24$, reliable, well known here, uses AA batteries out of the box, easy lithium conversion, interals are compact, no reported RF interference, or fail safe accidents reported.
con: it looks and feels stupid. But you can disguise it as anything.
New in box, always with a tiny screw driver:
Strange places it’s been inside of:
A boosted with its guts.
“Nano” is not equivalent or better than “mini”. There is a history. Do not touch these remotes. You will regret.
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Thanks for the tips! Receiver wiring should be clear now, just to get some time to work on it.
One more question here, the receiver has a tiny U.FL connector but not antenna was supplied with the remote. Does this mean there’s no need for one, that PCB zig zag wiring is an antenna?
I have some spare 2.4Ghz antennas but I’m not sure I need to.
wheels spinning !!!
Well, we’re not celebrating just yet. Two issues:
-
Looks like it won’t detect the hall sensors. I’d rather not set it up sensorless.
Would there be a point in changing the order of the yellow, blue, green wires? -
Also, when selecting the motor type before auto detection, I selected the small outrunner (~200g). I think these are right in the middle between the “small” and “medium”. There’s a scary prompt that if I choose too large there, it’ll kill the motors. Should I risk it and try with “medium”?
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So the remote works too. Just connected it for a quick check and just going through the input wizard it seems to work fine. Throttle and break do what they are supposed to…
On the other hand, looking at the motors tabs, there are soooo many setting here which I have no idea how to configure. I’m also still not happy about it not detecting the motor sensors. The main thing I liked about boosted board was how smooth it was on a slow startup. I don’t know yet what options I have, I haven’t found yet anyone else successfully using original boosted motors with another vESC so I don’t even know if the sensors are supposed to be regular hall sensors or something proprietary.
I did also read about something called HFI, which apparently would help get smoother spin-up of sensorless motors but, I read that I’d need a temp sensor at least so I don’t know if it would be of any help without one. Also I have no idea how I would even start configuring it…
Need more research. Anyone with any experience on these, please feel free to chime in.
I also wouldn’t be completely against just getting a set of new motors, if I can use the same mount and same 14T pulley. Otherwise there’s too many things to change at once…
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Congrats!
Sensored start up will feel like boosted start up with no tinkering.
Sensor less can do the same, but it takes tuning.
It’s really easy to break sensor wire extenders, mix up the extender wiring order.
Hall sensors can also break. I’m off tomorrow, if you set up a motor detection run, I can go through what some of the options do. Before or after sunset by an hour.
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Progress! We’re very very close to finally riding this thing.
I’ve been figuring vesc tool out over the past couple days. One of the more complicated tasks was explaining to my wife why I need to keep making all that noise with those motors. I wasn’t sure what I was doing so explaining it was a bit more difficult 
Anyway, I think we’re good with most of the settings and we can move on to actual ride testing. I’ve started putting the board together, at this point I only need to mount the vESC and tidy up the wiring.
These are the main settings we ended up on. Please anyone feel free to chime in if anything looks very wrong.
Current settings are quite low, should be safe, we’ll see:
The vESC won’t detect the original boosted motor sensors but I was expecting this. We’re going sensorless and after a lot of trial and error, HFI seems to help get the smoothest startup. Default voltage settings for now. On the bench, these seem to work fine:
Input settings are not too clear for me. I don’t know what I should set under control type. I left “Current no reverse” for now because if I just set “current”, it feels like it immediately reverses if I pull back the control thing and I’d rather not get thrown off the board when I try to brake. What’s the norm here? How do I configure smooth braking?
These are the general input settings. I don’t know if I should change anything:
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I do not know vesc tool well enough but i do know “slow abs current limit” set to true. “Fault stop time” needs to be set to 80ms. And duty cycle limit start needs to be about 85%
Everything else is greek and/or magic
Getting real close. Have I said I really want to be done with this project already and just go ride the thing?
I ended up mounting the vESC to the original boosted esc plate. I did have to cut parts of the inside of the boosted cover but it mostly fits the DV6. I say mostly because it’s not pretty as I had to add some spacers and the motor wires do stick out on the sides. Not going to worry about this for now. If it works fine, I may just draw up a new enclosure for it. Probably won’t though…
All that’s left is to mount the battery and off we go. Speaking of the battery, this is also not too pretty… I had to put it new threaded inserts and I only had way too large ones. They’re solid but I could’ve done a much neater job here.
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It’s done! This whole thing too me way longer than I had anticipated but to be fair, I didn’t have too much time to work on it lately.
Everything seems fine, we have enough clearance, even if I try to bounce my 200lb awesomess on it, it won’t bottom out. Too late now but we’ll go for a ride tomorrow.
One issue still remains which I don’t know how to solve just yet… there’s no way to tell how much charge there is left in the pack. The Flipsky VX1 Pro remote does have that extra wire which when connected to the main pack positive lead should show how much is left, but it’s set only for LiIo, there’s no LiFePo4 option for it and even with the pack fully charged, it shows only one light…
Open for suggestions on this one.
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Your LLT BMS can tell you how much charge is left, if nothing else… awesome you’re finally done! Eager to see how it performs.
Right, I should’ve mentioned that, I can check the battery with the phone app but that’s not ideal while riding. Until I find a constant monitoring solution, this is what I’ll have to do… stop from time to time and check the app.
Can’t wait to do some range testing but likely it won’t be tomorrow. Beer and friends planned for most of the day
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