Maybe you could work with Jens from E-toxx, he gets hubs anodised in both green and orange so that would be a nice match.
1 Like
There haven’t been any changes to the electronics. It’s still the v1.1 and it expects 3.3V input. It’s very important that you don’t accidentally connect it to 5V as explained and stressed in the cable setup instructions.
The change in the v1.1 was to address the frequent restarts that occurred while connecting to the WiFi. It seems the problem has been eliminated by the change. I haven’t heard anyone complaining about it in quite a while. So I don’t think there’s anything else that needs fixing now.
Of course it would be nice to have the hardware designed such that you can’t accidentally destroy it if you setup your UART table incorrectly. This will definitely be something to keep in mind for the next generation of the DAVEGA hardware. No immediate plans for that one though. For now, you guys just need to be careful when setting up your cable.
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I certainly hope so. The plan is to always have stock henceforth. Of course things don’t always go as planned so I can’t guarantee anything but I’ll do my best not to keep people waiting.
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The new red housings (on the right) side by side with the old red. I’m thinking this might have been a step back. Anyone likes the new one better?
- old red was better
- new red is better
0 voters
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I think the “new red” reminds of the Unity orange and I heard some people dislike them because of Enertion reasons. 
But great to see your shop is live now. 
6 Likes
On the positive note, this highly increases the chances that DAVEGA will always be in stock… at least for one color option. 
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I mean you can always paint it… so yeah 
Its not that big of a deal I think.
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Oil slick housing when?
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omg YES
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DAVEGA X installer for v4.00
As some of you might have noticed, we’ve been testing a new firmware version for the DAVEGA. This is a completely new concept. There will no longer be two parts – “bootloader” and “firmware” – each with a different version. There will only be a single firmware version henceforth.
The bad news is that you will no longer be able to have multiple firmware versions installed at the same time. I don’t think this is a big deal.
The good news, however, is that you will be able to do ALL firmware updates over the WiFi. No more fiddling with the USB port when you need to get the bootloader upgraded. This actually is quite a big deal. Plus, you can still select between various firmware versions. If you don’t like the latest update, no problem. Just downgrade back. The only difference is that now the firmware always needs to be downloaded from the server so switching takes longer than before. It’s just about a minute though.
What else is new?
Check the CHANGELOG for the complete list of changes.
A few things I would like to highlight:
RX/TX negotiation. If you now swap the RX/TX wires (whether that’s by accident or on purpose because you don’t want the wires to cross), it will work just fine. The next batch of PCBs will have the pins labeled RX/TX, RX/TX, instead of RX, TX.
No more memory errors. I haven’t seen a single memory error since updating to v4. I believe this is finally fixed.
Processing data from all VESCs on CAN. Before, DAVEGA would only get the data from the single VESC it’s directly connected to and interpolate the values for the unseen VESCs. Now it sees all VESCs on CAN so the calculations are more accurate. Starting from v4.04 you can also view some values per VESC:
VESC compatibility restricted to v3.48-v5.02. Obviously, this isn’t something I’m presenting as an improvement. It’s just important to know. This was a design decision that made implementing the CAN-forwarded communication a whole lot easier. I don’t see any strong reasons for preferring the Ackmaniac’s firmware, the Unity legacy firmware, or the pre-v3.48 standard firmware over the standard v5.01. I’m open to discussion though and I don’t rule out the possibility to re-enable the support for these firmware version should there be demand for it.
How do I upgrade?
See the upgrade instructions here: Upgrade to v4.00 - DAVEGA
There’s a special installer, similar to the DAVEGA X Tool but more user-friendly. You just download and run the executable. It will identify your device ID and download all required data from the davega.eu server. You just respond to simple yes/no questions.
The installer is currently only available for Mac OS. I’m still working on the Windows version. It should be available by Monday-ish.
Here’s what the upgrade looks like:
$ ./davegax-v4-installer
davegax-v4-installer v1.0
This will install the firmware version 4.00 on your DAVEGA X.
Before you proceed, it's recommended that you create an online backup:
Menu > Update & Backup > Backup > backup config & data
Make sure you have the CP2102 drivers installed and connect your DAVEGA to the USB port.
You will also need internet connection.
Ready? [y/n]: y
Auto-detecting DAVEGA X port...
2 serial ports found.
Trying /dev/cu.SLAB_USBtoUART ...
Connecting.......
Success!
Port detected successfully!
Getting the device ID...
Connecting....
Device ID: ********
Getting the license key for your device...
Verifying the license key...
Looks good!
Exporting data to /Users/xpomikal/PycharmProjects/davega_x/davegax-v4-installer/dist/backup.dfs...
Getting the list of files...
Exporting file: /data/config.json
Exporting file: /data/odometer1.json
Exporting file: /data/odometer2.json
Exporting file: /data/orientation
Export successful!
Fetching the firmware file...
Downloaded successfully.
Upgrading to v4....
esptool.py v3.0
Serial port /dev/cu.SLAB_USBtoUART
Connecting.......
Chip is ESP32-D0WDQ6 (revision 1)
Features: WiFi, BT, Dual Core, 240MHz, VRef calibration in efuse, Coding Scheme None
Crystal is 40MHz
MAC: ********
Uploading stub...
Running stub...
Stub running...
Changing baud rate to 460800
Changed.
Configuring flash size...
Compressed 1564064 bytes to 986115...
Wrote 1564064 bytes (986115 compressed) at 0x00001000 in 23.8 seconds (effective 525.1 kbit/s)...
Hash of data verified.
Leaving...
Hard resetting via RTS pin...
Upgrade successful!
Installing the license key...
Failed to enter raw REPL mode.
Retrying...
Creating file: /license
License key installed!
Restoring backup...
Creating directory: /data
Creating file: /data/config.json
Creating file: /data/odometer1.json
Creating file: /data/odometer2.json
Creating file: /data/orientation
Backup restored!
All done successfully! Yay!
Press enter to continue...
16 Likes
PayPal rant. So, PayPal is kind of expensive. They charge me around 5.5% on transaction fees on average. 5.5% may not seem a lot at first sight. Think about this though:
Say that you’re a merchant operating with a 30% margin. You get stuff for 100 EUR and re-sell at 130 EUR. But of course you have to ship it. Say the shipping cost is 15 EUR and you’re not adding any margin on top of it. And you’re a VAT payer so you need to add the 21% VAT. At the end, you charge your customer (130 + 15) * 1.21 = 174.45 EUR.
You made 30 EUR on the sale. Or did you? Well, here’s the thing, the 5.5% that PayPal charges you is not calculated from the 30 EUR you have made (or more specifically, you wish you have made). It’s calculated from what you have charged. So it’s 174.45 * 0.055 = 9.65 EUR. So it has basically eaten a third of your earnings. In my country, that would be two times more than the income tax.
So yeah, 5.5% is quite a big deal, especially for some. Of course, this was just an example. I’m not trying to imply this is my situation. Just making the point that 5.5% is by far not what you could call negligible.
Now, my plan for the new e-shop was to accept credit card and PayPal payments and charge the transaction fee to the customer. That’s simply because I like to be transparent about things. I don’t want to pretend that it doesn’t matter how you pay. I currently get charged 2.3% for a card payments (it should converge to around 1.5% pretty quickly; fee is getting lower with more sales) and 5.5% for PayPal. It just seems fair to charge the customer less if they pay with the cheaper payment method.
Well, guess what. PayPal forbids you to do that. You’ll find this in their license agreement:
Of course they don’t want you to do that. They don’t want people to realize how much more expensive they actually are compared to other payment methods.
This is just ridiculous. And of course, you can’t not accept PayPal because for some reason everybody wants to pay by PayPal. People are just used to it or some may not have other options. So if you drop PayPal from your accepted payment method you loose a ton of sales.
Anyway, I’m increasing all my e-shop prices by 5.5%. If you can pay by a credit card, I invite you to do it. 4% discount will be applied at checkout upon selecting the credit card payment method.
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I think it’s a good workaround! Hope discount does not qualify as “handling fee” 
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It doesn’t seem to violate the clause to me though, of course, it’s an obvious way of going around it. I guess if they decide to ban you because of that, there’s not much you can do, so I’m slightly worried but only slightly.
BTW, funny thing. Before discovering the PayPal “no surcharge” rule, I was looking for a WooCommerce plug-in that adds a transaction fee based on a selected payment method. I looked for “payment method fee” and strangely, I was finding a lot of plug-ins named “payment method discount” or alike. I was a bit puzzled by that. Why would anyone want to offer a discount for a payment method instead of simply charging the transaction fee to the customer? I may have know why now. Plus, this brings some reassurance that going the discount way is actually OK.
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It’s not a paypal surcharge, it’s a mastercard/visa appreciation discount 
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Paypal is cancer from the point of seller. Another problem is that if buyer opens dispute, paypal favors the buyer even if it’s clear they buyer is making stuff up just to get money back for nothing. If paypal desides for full refund with no return, in your example 174.45 EUR, it can hurt the seller a lot, seller would lose initial 100 EUR + time. So with the calculated profit 20.35 EUR, the seller would have to sell 5 additional items to cover the losses and have zero profit.
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I haven’t had any PayPal claims against me yet. I’ve been lucky that most of my customers have been really nice people and in case of any problem we’ve been able to sort it out like adults. One guy in Australia was pretty incredible. He purchased 4 units shipped with the Czech Post. The package got missing and we’ve been chasing it down for 5 long months until it was finally found and delivered. He never got mad about it and just kept re-assuring me that it’s none of my fault when I apologized. This was the worst shipping issue I have had so far. So lucky that it has happened with someone so chill.
I only got threatened by a PayPal claim once when a package to the US got delayed just a few days beyond the 3 weeks that I declare as a typical delivery time. That was weird. Fortunately it arrived the other day.
Still, the PayPal fees are absurd. Also the exchange rates are bad. Plus, if I accept a payment in USD, they don’t allow me to transfer it to my USD account so that I could have it converted with a better rate. The only way to get the money out of PayPal is to convert to CZK first (using PayPal exchange rate) and transfer the CZK. I like PayPal as a service. It does its job pretty well. The fees and some of the rules/restrictions are really hostile though.
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Have you thought of offering direct bank transfer as a payment method?
Just leave your IBAN number and let people pay with the order id as a reference.
With transferwise/revolut, its super easy and fees including currency conversion is like 2% max.
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I have considered it and I decided the management overhead is not worth saving the 1.5% processing fee for a credit card transaction.
If Czech Republic had Euro, I would be open to SEPA as a payment method. Since we don’t have Euro though, I would have to keep prices in both CZK and EUR (SEPA can only be done in EUR) and that’s nothing but trouble.
1 Like
If I was to get another one off you through the forum, I’d pay f&f, no fees whatsoever, you’ve earned your trust 
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