Opto Coupler for dual esc setup

Using two vesc 6 edu’s and want to wire it up to one receiver, manual says to use a opto coupler. Anyone have recommendation for one to use? Just using a basic hobby rx and controller.

Thought about using this one but wasn’t sure : https://www.amainhobbies.com/western-robotics-glitchbuster-optoisolator-wrl-opto/p193517

Any reason why you wouldn’t just connect the two escs via CAN?

Connect the signal wire to both ESCs, and the power and ground wires to just one ESC.

Or you can use CANBUS to connect the ESCs together and just connect the PWM receiver to one ESC.

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I think that would work fine but it is not needed for what you’re doing. You really only need the two ends of that on one wire. (the two female port connector things. names are hard) and then follow what @b264 said to do with it. You could still use that one with the extra noise isolation but I don’t think noise should be a problem anyway.

Although I have no idea how many pins are needed when tying two vesc’s together so if that thing doesn’t connect to enough pins then it won’t work.

This is the answer.

I was just looking at how the diagram in the manual said to follow which was to put the opto coupler between the rx and any vesc after the first one.

page 5, 2nd one from top left: VESC SIX Education with HEAT SINK & Mounting Kit

All I know is I tried only having one with power, signal and ground, with the other with signal, or signal with ground and it didnt work for either case.

Unfortunately didn’t work :frowning:

As others have mentioned about the CAN Bus, it might sound weird but I’m actually trying to avoid using it on the setup I have, the setup I had before used two motors with built in ESC’s and I would take the signal and ground from each one. Here’s link to what I was using before:

Yeah, that’s why you have multiple options. :smiley: No problem to not use CANBUS.

Are both ESCs connected to the same BAT- (black) wire? If the grounds are the same then make sure you set up the software on the VESC, it needs extensive setup in software before it will run. You need to set the battery voltage cutoffs and run motor detection, and then set up the application for PWM (erroneously called “PPM” in VESC) control before it will spin the motor.

If it still doesn’t work, describe exactly what you’ve done here (with screenshots) so someone can attempt to assist.

To make sure that nothing was funky going on before doing this, I made sure that each motor and esc works separately when using the RC controller and ran motor detection, setup cutoffs etc.

After that I made a Y-Harness coming from the RX. One ESC gets signal, power and gnd and the other gets signal. (I did attempt with the second one having signal and gnd as this replicated the setup I had before).

Both attempts did not let me use the controller setup option, essentially as soon as I plug in the 2nd ESC into the harness the first esc and motor stop working

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Which ESC stops working? Try putting a 2K resistor in series with the PWM signal wire of the opposite ESC

When using the y harness and both escs are plugged in, neither of them work. When I unplug the second esc (the one only using the signal wire) the first esc then works.

Gonna try using the 2K Resistor in series with the 2nd ESC

First ESC works now when using the 2K resistor in series with the signal line of the 2nd ESC, 2nd ESC still doesn’t see any PPM/PWM input though

So didn’t wind up finding out how to get it to work, but did find out the 2nd ESC is bad

Update: Got it to work, had an old 4.12 VESC from 2017 lying around.

For those who find this post again, or those curious.

To have two vesc’s wired up to one PPM/PWM receiver, connect the +, -, and signal from one ESC into the y harness. For the second ESC only connect the -, and signal, however for the signal put a 2K resistor in series.