Hello there,
any chance you still have some of these spare V0.9 boards ? I’m struggling to achieve a project due to the IC shortage…
Thanks anyway 
Hello have someone here
Will you let someone go?
I’m from china,I had diy a FOCer but now I take some problem
when I try setup motor,DRV always fault: FETLC_OC
Have some people know this board how ues CANbus,I connect with VESC TOOL but just find one device
I finally soldered and flashed my 0.9 Cheap FOCer 2. Uploaded the bootloader and firmware.
Vesc Tool indicates that SW is version 5.1. Yet the Tool indicated that Input Wizard cannot be used with software this “old”.
What do I do?
Get a slightly older version of vesc tool?
I recently replaced the Keda 6364 motors on my mountain-board with some generic brushless 6374 motors from Ebay. I also went from 6S to 10S. The Keda motors did a pretty darn good job climbing hills running 6S, so I figured the thing would be unstopable with the bigger motors at 10S. But I was surprised to find the new setup did worse on hills. The motors would go into their stuttering mode on hills that I was climbing with the Keda motors on 6S. So I tried the new motors on 6S, 8S, and 10S. In all cases, they did not do as well as the Kedas.
What was more surprising is that the stuttering seemed to happen at about the same place whether I ran 6S, 8S, or 10S. I really thought the higher voltage would make a significant difference.
Now I assume the stuttering is the result of the commutation getting out of sync when the motor is too loaded. One thing I’m wondering is whether running encoders, rather than Hall sensors, would eliminate the stuttering problem. I would kind of think if the controller never had to calculate when to change commutation, but instead simply responded to the encoders, this shouldn’t happen (assuming the encoder resolution is high enough that you don’t need fancy algorithms to find the switch-over points).
Is this a reasonable assumption? Has anyone here tried encoders? Are there any downsides to running encoders vs. Hall sensors? Thanks!
Hi. Again a stupid question, probably. Where do I find v1.0 gerber files (for JLCPCB) ? Do I have to generate them by myself from Kicad? Is it “recommended” to use v1.0, or isn’t it tested properly yet? Thank You.
All the version 1.0 stuff is here…
And the Gerbers can be found in the source directory.
My recollection is that…
- V1.0 is the best thing going currently.
- It’s not as much improved over v0.9 as Shaman had hoped. It sounds like there may be further improvements.
- I think there’s a relatively simple way now to upgrade the v0.9 to a v1.0; but why not just go with the v1.0?
Separately, I think there’s some question as to whether JLCPCB and the sister company currently have all the parts we want. Keep in mind that any part we buy through them gets soldered in place for free.
Please let us know what you find with respect to parts. I might be in for building another one or two. The price per board comes down quite a lot if you do a lot of 10.
if you have 0.9 unit indeed you can (and should) upgrade to 1.0.
More info here, hardware itself:
Firmware:
the ‘‘here’’ button is the link
Cheers
I have some cheap foccers in my sales thread, all proceeds goes back to Shaman as these we’re beta units. 125 eur/each. You cant even buy components to a full vesc6 for that price atm.
Opening Kicad project in the Developer Branch (v1.0) I noticed there are additional PNP Transistors in front of the Mosfets (compared to v0.9).
Does anyone know the reason why these were added ?
Do I need those Transistors or can they be omitted ?
In addition neither the transistors nor the Schottky Diodes appear in the BOM.
Yes they were added as an attempt to have a stronger pull down on the gate to help prevent parasitic self turnon. They ended up not working well and I recommend omitting them.
It’s about time to update and refresh the Cheap FOCer. Stay tuned for an update here soon
Work on updating the CFOC2 is happening
New Features and Improvements So Far:
- 16S safe operation
- Estimated 120A motor operation
- USB-C connector
- Phase filters
- DRVless design
- Further improvements to electrical stability from lessons learned in my more powerful designs
Features being worked on:
- Easy Bluetooth module addon
- Invertible On/Off logic. Can be Normally On or Normally Off by configuration of a jumper
- Ebike-friendly additions (connector for raw battery voltage, pigtail adapters for common ebike connectors, etc)
The intent is to refresh this so that it can actually be made by DIYers again in this chip shortage. I also intend to actually make these things with full heatsink/enclosure and sell them at the most affordable price that I possibly can. There’s not a hard ETA right now.
What other features would guys might want? It will be hard to squeeze anything else in but I can try. Also, what the hell do I call it? CFOC2 v1.1? Is this worthy of being CFOC3?
yes
Yup IMO DRVless alone would be appropriate for CFOC3, and especially combined with higher voltage allowance
Also do the phase filters make it compatible with Vedder’s Advanced Senseless Startup or is that a Trampa proprietary feature? I’m a bit out of the loop but does HFI work if not ASS? Basically trying to think of stuff that may be possible with firmware work rather than extra hardware, a BEC would be nice but I don’t necessarily know if adding step down hardware is worth the bom cost