Hello! First post here. Just bought two of these for a DIY scooter with a hub motor. I’ve actually followed the VESC project for many years. Stumbled upon it in maybe 2016 just as 32bit processors were beginning to appear on RC ESCs… Im an electrician/electronics tech; for a hobby I’ve been into electric RC aircraft for a long time, was active when brushless motors/controllers hit the scene which basically coincided with the intro of lipos/lion for power. It’s been interesting watching the motor/controllers evolve to personal mobility.
Im going to crack one open tomorrow, take some good pics and give you my opinion on the build quality. Hopefully, I will have time to install and test tomorrow as well.
hi, i have this ESC and tested it already with an aftermarket Xiaomi M365 Motor on 16s. lipo battery. It works quite good is my impression so far. The motor has some crazy torque after it reaches about 20kmh. The initial torque is not good, but I guess i have to play with the throttle settings because throttle is based on current. I really consider pairing this ESC with Bafang BBSHD Motor in the future, maybe it will turn out to be amazing match.
Hey sounds like a good plan! A couple of us have some initial pics in another thread below, and I’m curious to see if there’s much unit to unit variance so if anything looks different on yours that’d be very interesting. Mine are currently sealed up with some 3D printed mechanical supports for the capacitors and quite a lot of silicone
I just saw this thread. I was looking into this too for a diy e-scooter project.
For everyone that cant believe the prices, this is around the same price/power rating as those generic 20s scooter/ebike ESC’s. Perhaps flipsky is taking a loss/less profit to gain foothold in that market?
The main advantage of this being a fully programmable VESC.
The main disadvantage is that it’s not compatible with those nice ebike/e-scooter LCD’s, pedal assist, horn, lights, etc without doing diy jank.
Hope the specs are as good as they claim! Interested to see how they’ll hold up amongst the hundreds of generic cheap ebike controllers out there
Yeah they’re not even fully fully programmable, they don’t support BLDC (though I wouldn’t be using that anyway) and it seems they lack the ability to update the firmware to future versions of VESC FW. That could be a much bigger issue based on the statements from VESC devs about upcoming features. I would be surprised if VESC development didn’t start to incorporate more escooter-specific features (like maybe a standard for easy display out) as those grow even more in market size
Sorry fellas, I promised to report back about the 75100. Going through some unexpected life crap right now, I had to put fun stuff on the back burner… Anyway, I just got the ESC installed in a Ninebot Max, 10s 12500mAh pack, bypassing the BMS for discharge. Using thumb throttle on ADC1 and hand brake (mechanical/electric)on ADC2…
First time VESC, I did a little research but was mostly on my own figuring out VESC tool, Its so intuitive, I had no problems setting the motor up. Performance is great!! Im REALLY impressed with the torque, top speed is less than I expected but I guess I can’t do much but increase voltage. Im open to suggestions if any setting might help with speed.
FOC is incredible, dead silent. I thought E scooters were quiet before VESC, FOC brings it to another level. Impressive!
Im sure Im going to be tweaking setting but where I have it now is better with low end torque and smoothness than any hacked stock ESC Ive ridden.
As to build quality. I did do a teardown, I took tons of macro pics of each and every part of the PCB/components. I need to reduce file size of the pics because their ridiculous as is. Maybe I can put up a Google photos link.
Anyway, I thought quality was great. Thermal management was simple but effective.
Question about Bluetooth. I have several Nrf52840 modules. Do they need to have firmware flashed onto them or will generic nrf52 modules work if Gnd, 5V, RX, TX is connected?
The forum will reduce their size automatically if you upload them here.
I’ve been playing with this on an ebike. I’ve only tested it up to 35 battery amps and 50 motor amps for several minutes straight up a hill but so far so good.
Flipsky’s refusal to provide the firmware source code (so it can be updated) makes it really hard to recommend this to anyone though. What a shady company. Not only is that a dick move, but what about a year or two down the road when field weakening is mature? PAS is fully implemented? Still stuck with 5.2?
I’m working on creating a hardware config for this version so we can use the normal firmware. It has a very similar layout to the 100/250 with 3 battery shunts and independent gate drivers. Already have the shunt config, shunt voltage divider resistances and ntc resistance/beta value for the fet temp figured out. GPIO pins next.
I’m just not sure what makes it incapable of BLDC? The EG3112 gate drivers? Disabled for fun?
Generics need to be flashed, but will work. That’s what I used to configure it. This is probably obvious, but RX on the NRF module goes to the TX on the VESC
See here how to do that, I did the ST-Link method. (same process for the 52):
Awesome and thank you for the NRF module info!. I have a crapload of the Arduino/Circuit Python modules made by Sparkfun and Adafruit. I figured I could get them working somehow. Yeah, I learned the TX/RX to RX/TX lesson a long time ago. A little counterintuitive at first but it makes sense when you think about it.
A far as locking down the FW, not surprising at all. Their culture doesn’t recognize or value open-source as western society does. Hell, look at what they do with patented IP, they ignore and treat it just like they do open source, copy it (sometimes with absolutely no shame) and sell it as their own.
Yeah, leaving out traditional BLDC commutation mode is weird. Is another “version” coming out that will make you “pay” for it to be enabled? Lol!H
Holy crap, 35A battery and 50A motor? I put mine at 75A motor and 100A battery ! too high? I figure its only going to have high currents for a few sec at most.
Question about switching frequency. I raised my from 25khz to 30khz. Any problems with that?
Yeah… really wish Flipsky would step up and be different.
Mine was set low based on the junk battery and 500w hub motor with 16 gauge phase wires lol. The controller should be able to handle 75A battery / 100A motor just fine.
The only thing I would mention about those settings is that usually motor amps are set the same or higher than battery amps.
I think that’s about as high as you can go with a battery shunt design but this hasn’t been well tested to know for sure.
I upgraded a 48V 15A FOC controller with the FS for my driftboard. I will set battery amps to 100 and start with 80 phase amps. If everything works out I will increase to 100pA and then to 120pA.
I don’t know if the motor will hold up since I’m going 20S on a hub motor, but otherwise I will buy a bigger one.
The HW of the FS controller seems legit so far. TO 220 fets and ARM STM32 MCU are industry standard. I’m just a little concerned about the amount of fets, since there are just 6. My other 100V VESCs are rated with 200A/300A but they have 18 fets. I’m really curious how the FS will do under 100A/120A.
If it’s eighteen FETs with inadequate ratings then that can be a lot worse than six good FETs. Though, of course, those six FETs could be completely inadequate too. Too many ratings games being played by too many companies makes judging stuff like this so difficult.
Things like inductive voltage spike suppression, input capacitor quality, ratings, and position and the cooling (or lack thereof) also affect ESC reliability. It’s all the little details that matter, not just the quantity of FETs.
Especially with things like those caps flopping around in the case…not good IMO.
