Finally got my escs to connect and send signal over canbus, had to use the ackmaniac esc programmer over the official vesc tool on the website.
Anyway. Now, as soon as I push off at all, the motors are acting on their own outside of signal from my remote. It didn’t happen till I was like 2 hours into a ride yesterday, but after wiping my escs, reprogramming my motors, making sure the firmware was the same, and making sure shit was all updated and reprogrammed, it’s happening immediately now. It starts when the board is in motion though. It’ll occur when the remote is turned off as well. Sometimes after the board has been immobile for a few minutes, the motors will twitch and sometimes rev up to full speed. And I’m talking some serious signal. I am sure to pair the remote when the board is still. It continually happens. Help asap. Thanks to my new friends on the DIY forum…I’ve been plugging too much info into the reddit community to little avail.
Also, side note…the official VESC tool on the vesctool website (newest version) gave me the most awful time of not being able to program my dual VESC setup. Like literally, the option to program a master or slave was non-existent, and even when checking the proper boxes on the General/ppm tabs to send communication over canbus, nothing. Then I download the ackmaniac esc tool programmer, and yeah, the firmware had to go back a few versions (as read by the numbers), but bam, immediately I was able to program my setup as a master/slave and communication was flawless over canbus. Now, though, I have this ghost in the machine problem.
Sounds like the receiver is shorting out. I had that shit happen on me mid ride and my board shot out from under me. It would randomly apply full throttle or brake.
jesus. I just bought the damn thing not too long ago. You’re saying it be the literal receiver? As in the 3 pin red/white/black box thing. I’ll have to post pics here soon. Esk8 bs and grad school homework don’t go hand in hand lolz.
Yep, my connector got bent by my enclosure a bit and was shorting out occasionally. I just swapped my receiver to my other focbox and set it as the master. No issues since.
I’m using the VESCs sold by DIYelectricskateboard (torqueboards). I’ll try switching my master/slave VESC ID, reprogram as such, and see where it goes from there. I’ll double check something…their tutorials said that the cord order has to be something specific, like the black facing the outside, something to that extent. Thank god I wasn’t shooting to full brake when this happened, but full throttle wasn’t exactly a cakewalk. Thanks for the time and help!
Is your reciever close to any wires carrying high currents? E.g. battery main leads, motor phase wires etc? Make sure to have enough room for the reciever to not get interference from the other electronics. Also check your PPM JST-PH plug that no wires got wiggled out or are broken close to the connector. Sometimes the male pins can push the female crimps out of the plastic housing.
I have no ideas other than what’s already been said. I’d start with taking the enclosure off and inspecting the RX for breakage. Move the RX outside if the enclosure temporarily and see if it still happens.
also get the receiver as far away from the ESC as possible. I mentioned this in another thread, but you don’t want your receiver anywhere near the motor or sensor wires or the capacitirs in the ESC.
A lot of people shove the receiver wherever it fits. It requires a little more thought than that. I always put mine as far forward as possible since the ESC is usually in the rear.
something like that was happening with the board I recently built.
I found 2 causes:
First was I had put the receiver wire right next to the motor phase wires. moving that solved the random motion on the bench.
Second was I have an aluminum deck, and the receiver antenna was against it – that solved the ghost when hitting bumps.
I’m using the Pro2 conversion kit from torqueboards, the 3pin red/white/blue receiver cord that connects to the receiver and esc are in the same enclosure. I didn’t ever have issues with it prior to replacing my ESC’s.
The receiver is in the same proximity of the ESCs, because that’s how the torqueboards kit was sent and setup…I never had problems with it though until I had to replace my previous ESC’s.
That doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Just moving wires can be the cause of this issue. Id start by getting the RX at least 6 inches away from everything and see if the issue continues.
Alright, well then sweet! I’ll try and separate them as best as I can. The enclosure itself doesn’t allow for that very well…but is there a way I could wrap the esc’s in a material to reduce the interference? Like bubble wrap? I’m just spitballin here.
Yah unfortunately kind of a lot of things that can cause this sort of thing to happen. I made my own remote and the radio chip and MCU (main processor) on the transmitter/receiver are usually different packages/ICs/parts so they talk to each other over a bus (SPI for example) and if some pins come loose like MISO pin that transmits data from the radio back to the MCU but the rest of the pins remain intact then it can go from reading valid data to reading whatever that pin floats to and subsequently outputting the wrong PWM signal because it is reading the wrong data from the radio. It could also be as others mentioned here electromagnetic interference perhaps change in position of some components affected things. It could also be the transmitter/trigger is having an issue (potentiometer based ones can develop problems over time depending on how they are designed).
Best bet for now I’d say is gathering more info use the VESC tool realtime data/PPM view to see if the signal is sporadic when punching the throttle on the bench (assuming eRPM is properly limited or below 60k so you don’t blow your DRV). If you can get your hands on an oscilloscope or don’t mind investing in a DSO hand held one can see the raw PWM signal output from the receiver with that but VESC tool might be good enough to get an idea if there’s a lot of jitter/jumps in particular throttle scenarios or when shifting things around slightly.
For reducing noise the ferrite choke mentioned earlier can help to get rid of high frequency noise in the line. Also with custom receivers or ones drawing higher current at times a capacitor across the VCC/GND pins (on the receiver itself) can help to smooth out power.
