FSESC 4.2 Pro configuration

Esk8 Electronics
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Dear ESk8ers,

a dream has come true: I bought a NOS rolling chassis of an “Ekewill” branded All-Terrain-Board. It seems to be a GTX (4WD). Judging from the fotos it also seems to be the same board as “Ecomobl M24”

Can anyone confirm / deny that? Ekewill does not to exist anymore - it would be great to know if the spare-parts are compatible.

I do not know anything else about the motors as the diameter (63mm) and that is has 12 coils and a straight-tooth planetary gear. Does anyhone have more Infos? (Power rating, gearing ratio..) I did not disasemble the undercarriage yet, though - maybe there’s a sticker somewhere.

What I did to the board is to change the electronics and the battery. I managed to fit 3 10S4P 18650 cell packs, connected in parallel, each pack with an 120A BMS (for beefyness and big cooler, the packs should presumably not deliver > 30A for a longer period of time, as standard “Grade A” cells are used). The motor controllers are two Dual Flipsky FSESC 4.2 Plus. I Y-Wired the switch to both ESCs, connected CAN-Bus, one Receiver for the VX2 Remote and one for BLE, motors and battery.

I compiled VESC-tool from Github on Fedora and I downloadend the Android-App from the Playstore (paying 5 €). After running the motor configuration wizzard (Using “Medium Outrunner” and changing only the wheel diameter to 200 and the number of coils to 12). It works! The settings are quite fine, the board ist absolutely ridable, has a lot of power and >1h playtime from 80%-30% battery. So far, so good!

Now: I’m a tinkerer an love to fine-tune things. For a reason I choose VESC-based Hardware. For example, I would like to:

  • Set the power limits (max speed) and fine-tune the ramping (accelaration) for the Low/Mid/High settings on the remote.
  • Change the break / reverse behaviour on the remote to have a config in which both directions have the same speed and / or figure out how to change the FW / RW setting via remote, if possible.
  • Maybe implement “Tank mode” (Spin left side FW and right side BW or vice versa).
  • Anything related to “E-Differential” oder “Traction Control” is not possible imho: There are no sensor cables on the motor so I suppose they are sensorless. Without sensors, the motor does not know its RPM, so the ESC can’t do such things, right?
  • Get a better Start-from-0 behaviour. The current behaviour is acceptable, though: It does start from 0, but not smooth/reliable if low-speed is desired.

The problem I encounter (besides of not understanding most of VESC settings even after several hours of reading docs and howtos) is, that most of the present settings in the VESC-Tool (android) do not work for me in the current configuration. If I, for example, try to enter the section for the input settings, VESC-Tool asks me where the remote is connected. After selecting the VESC-ID (guessing) the remote inputs are not reflected in the shown numbers (does show 0 all the time for all 4 IDs) and the motors loose their config: They do not spin up anymore, only hum on remote input. After reconnecting VESC-Tool then complains than the CAN-Bus connection can not be deserialized. That behaviour can be fixed again by running the motor detection again or using the backuped settings. I’m unable to change any settings for input for that reason.

Also: The VESC-Tool complains about the hardware not having the most recent firmware (and sometimes, that the two controllers do not have the same version, which they should). I did not update that yet, because Flipsky has a warning about Firmware-Updates on that Hardware on their Website and I do not want to brick that boards. My Question: Is there a known-to-work Firmware-Version for that hardware that I should use? Also, I’m not sure about that hardware itself (did not buy directly from flipsky) The FSESCs seem to be legit Flipsky Hardware to my naked eye - are there known knock-offs in the wild and is there a way to tell if mine are maybe a knockoff? My reason for that thought is, that I got that hardware very cheap (1/3 of the original price). Maybe I have only been lucky…

Furthermore: The speed shown in RT-Data of the VESC-Android-App is far off: Its about an order of magnitude to high. I did not measure the speed shown on the remote - that one seems plausible.

Furterhmore, VESC shows “Limited” in the footer. I do not know what this exactly means.

So: All my problems are “luxury problems” at the moment: The board works fine as-is. I’m unsure if a firmware update can help or will brick the ESC. I also have a hard time to find good howtos and I’m annoyed watching tons of low-quality videos that do not contain the relevant infos for my case…

So: Any help is appreciated, especially if you know something by experience regarding my questions, pointing out possible errors I made - also links to relevant docs/howtos would be great.

Thank you in advance!

Yours, Joe

1 Like
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Hi friend, many questions. I also run Fedora. You don’t have to compile the vesc tool, you can buy it (for free if you want) from the vesc website. Don’t use the android app, only use the desktop vesc tool. Flipsky vescs are bad and they don’t respect the gpl license. For speed you have to use the correct pole count I think it is 14 instead of 12. You don’t need hall sensors, try 45 deg hfi . E-diff is definitely possible . I have made an e-diff algorithm that lets you drive an esk8 like an rc car. Have fun :blush:

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Hi, that’s a pitty. If I should use the desktop software I will have to make one more hole in the chassis to install an external USB Port. It’s a lot of screws to remove the deck… But its possible. Can I do all configs using CAN then? 4 External Ports are too much, I prefer opening the board then.

I’m quite sure about the 12 coils - The motor has holes (for cooling) and I could directly count 12 coils. I counted several times, its 12.

E-Diff would be great! Could you point me to your project? I did some riding on ice and snow lately and plan to do much offroad riding - implmenting some sort of traction control would be very fine!

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You don’t have to open the board , you can connect with Bluetooth or wifi. Vesc wants the pole number not the coils , it is different. My flipsky motor has 12 coils but 14 poles. My project is not ready but I can show you a video if you want

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Great to know! Sure, BT works with desktop, too. Good point, thank you! I’ll also have a try with 14 poles again, I did have the impression from prior tries that 12 worked smoother - but I’ll have to think about on how to do this systematically to compare results.

Regarding the ESC firmware: Should I leave the factory firmware for now?

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P.S: I will wait patiently for you to finish. A link to the video would be appreciated!

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Okay… I played around a bit deeper with VESC-Tool on Linux using BT to connect. The binary works just the same as the compiled version from github.and downloaded the binary version of the VESC-Tool, too. Still, entering input config does not work like expected, but maybe its not neccesary to change something here. I have been able to enable tracrion control (not yet tested how it works) and I have been able to configure reversing to my likings which has been an important point for me.

I made the following observation: CAN detection does detect 3 devices (local and two more), not 4 like expected. Its Controller 1 and 2 from local ESC - the second controller shows as one CAN device, but does turn both motors. I have physically connected CAN from ESC1, Port 1 to ESC2, Port2 using 4 non-twisted unshielded cables ESC1 Port 2 is used as power supply for the switch LED, ESC 2 Port 2 is empty. It seems to be doing fine - do I have to worry about ESC2 showing as a single device (instead of 2) or is that expected behaviour?

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Just to avoid confusion (I mixed up some words/sentences, sorry for not re-reading my last post,) :

I’m in a 4WD config with 2 Dual ESCs. The CAN-Ports from ESC 1, Controller 1 are connected via cable. Vesc-Tool shows 3 CAN devices: Lokal (ESC1, C1), CAN (ESC1, C2) and CAN (ESC2, C1 AND ESC2, C2 as one single device). Testing that CAN-device turns both weels on that trunk. I would have expected that the two controllers on one ESC are internally CAN-connected and do present as 2 CAN devices. Thus I’d expect do see 4 CAN-devices.

It seems to work ok (not yet field-tested, its bad weater). Is the observed behaviour expected / normal or did I do something wrong?

The device I use does not have (or I did not find it looking carefully on the platine and docs) a “single/dual” hardware-jumper.

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I don’t have a 4wd board so can’t help you with that but here is the video https://forum.esk8.news/t/what-are-yall-being-for-halloween-are-you-incorporating-your-esk8/90377/14?u=dimos15

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Unfortunately I do not seem to have the neccesarry rights to watch that video :-(. Thank you for helping, I did get a good step further using your reccomendations!

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