Some New FOCers (84V VESC 6 based controllers)

I thought it was a matter of the amount of RAM. 16KB vs 32KB

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I have a few with 32KB of ram, but when i flash them through the VESC i only see the same firmwares as my 16KB ones and they don’t work with my wand. Maybe I need to flash it a different way? :face_with_monocle: This whole NRF thing confuses me.

edit I see support for the wand in the nrf51 repo, gonna try it lol

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:weary: Many wasted hours later, it turns out the ones sold to me as 32k are actually 16k, the VESC detects them as 16k and when i manually flash the 32k firmware they don’t work. So 16k :expressionless:

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Sorry to hear that man…but at least it means that a real 32KB NRF51822 could and should fully support the VESC bluetooth accessories

Ill believe it when i see it.

It would be cool if there was a remote only 16k firmware, then i could use 2 of them with different firmwares LOL! I looked at the code but I’m in way over my interest level.

Im kinda surprised nobody is selling BLE adapters that support NRF, one could slap that chip (or even a 50Q) on a lil jst-xh breakout board from JLCPCB, flash the firmware, and turn a profit pretty easy. I’m kinda considering doing it myself. Maybe i just haven’t looked around enough, and most wand users are probably happy enough to scoop up a trampa module.

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Max sold a few

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I remember that vedder ran the firmware on both 51 and 52, if I’m not misstaken he had stability issues on the 16kb so he pulled support for it entirely.

I also got some NRF modules from him that are like 5 bucks a pop from china. They work well so far. You had to add add a cap between power and ground tho cause the module died occacionally to power dropout :joy:

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For the sake of completeness of a future googler, this the offending nrf51822 I’ve seen it listed multiple places as 32K but the ones i got are 16K and probably all that look like this are 16K, and therefore wont pair with an NRF remote. </end_offtopic>

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been doing it and still have some available :yum:
@NuRxG you want nrf52 for remotes like the FreeSK8 reciever

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I explicitly said supports NRF so I’m not sure why you’re linking ones that don’t explicitly say they dont support NRF.

As discussed a few posts up, NRF51 with 32K of memory should work fine. Have you verified that they do not?

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it’s a radio quality issue not memory though that could also be an issue

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Are you running all beta testers on the Little FOCers or are you planning a run of Serious FOCers after this one?

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I would also be interested in a Mother FOCer for an eFoil build :slight_smile:

Serious FOCer might work as well

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Well my plan is to crank out these beta units so field testing can start. While that’s happening, I’d like to start the design of the Serious FOCer. I already know the direction I want to go for that one.

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What specs are you looking for in a controller for efoil?

Tbh I am a total eFoil n00b. I am most likely going with the FS 65161 motor, which can go up to 20S. I’ll probably make a 16S battery pack. Most builds seem to be 12S and reliable, so 16S seems like a reasonable compromise between reliability and “pushing the limits”. It will be a P42A or a 40T pack with enough amps output to bake the motor.

So I suppose 16S is a requirement. Your 5kW spec in the first post looked good and it sounds like something that might work for me. I will have water cooling available for the ESC, so it would be great if the ESC would have a nice mechanical interface for cooling. I don’t really care about the form factor of the ESC. PPM input and UART are must-have.

And if someone finds that 20S is amazing for eFoil before I start my build, I might do that instead of 16S.

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Most people aren’t going much higher then 14s on efoil right now, most are at 12s due to ESC availability. There was some concern about zapping yourself in the water if the battery case filled with water much above 14s. I haven’t dug into that my self, though.

I am running 12s right now on a 120kv motor and a flying rodeo prop with a ARC200 esc. Works great! From what I see other people doing, pushing it up to 14s seems like it still is in the sweet spot. Next build I’m shooting for 14s.

Current wise: I’ve seen on people’s builds between 70-150Amp start up to get on foil then 20-50 amp cruising on foil.

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Thanks, great input! I will not run in salt water, so that might help with the electrical side. Seems like 14S or 16S will be the design target then.

In theory freshwater is worse for getting zapped: https://www.webmd.com/first-aid/news/20190722/electric-shock-drowning-silent-killer. All those deal with 120Vac or 240Vac, can’t find much info on DC…

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Interesting, thanks! You learn something new every day.