VESC 6 EDU, the new little brother of the VESC 6

[Trampa]

When we got involved in university projects, supporting students in all kinds of fields, it became very clear that students need a different version of the popular VESC 6. A Unit being a lot more affordable while still giving access to all the features of the upcoming VESC 6 MKVI. This seemed very challenging, since a big portion of the cost is buried in the logic stage itself.

We made the miracle happen in early 2022. The Idea of a new range of VESC controllers was born & the ideas were prototyped very soon after. It listens to the name VESC 6 EDU & it’s a smaller, less powerful educational version of the bigger brother, the VESC 6.

It soon became clear that the VESC 6 EDU will become a very capable motor controller that can be used for a lot more than just educational purpose! However, we still call it the VESC 6 EDU though.

The VESC 6 EDU is so special, since it really features everything you need to drive motors as perfectly as a VESC 6 MKVI does.

• Silent HFI

• Sensorless position control

• Scripting and customized firmwares

• 3 phase shunts

• Phase filters

• Individual gate drivers (no DRV or similar driver chipset)

• Hibernation

• 2 x UART port

• Automatic sensor voltage switching via software

• Sensor port, comm port, PPM/PWM input, CAN, USB, SWD, 2x UART

• High precision SPI wired IMU on request available.

• NRF dongle prepared for seamless APP connectivity.

The only difference is the fact that a VESC 6 MKVI has much more power output capabilities, using 12S capable hardware. The VESC 6 EDU is limited to 6S Li-Ion voltage & around 50A peak output power, making it very suitable for robotics, drones, RC-Cars, & so many other applications using 6S/50A. This amount of output power is often more than enough & therefore the SIX EDU is the perfect match for that!

The VESC 6 EDU would even drive a smaller 6S E-Skate effortlessly, perfect for super lightweight lower power commuter board setups, pocket rockets or whatever you can envision around a cheap 6S Lipo setup.

Whilst in the background Benjamin Vedder made huge progress on the scripting & customized firmware features of VESC-Tool, we tried to push the VESC 6 EDU program forward as fast as humanly possible.

Now that it becomes clear that VESC-Tool will become the worlds first E-Drive operating system being available for the general public it is important to give the general public access to low cost hardware & more educational content.

Benjamin Vedder is very happy with the outcome of the VESC 6 EDU hardware & tried his very best to kill the first prototypes using ultra low inductance motors & other torture methods for the hardware. All EDU prototypes survived these tests, which we initially didn’t expect. The robustness of the design surprised us all.

The VESC 6 EDU has some nice additional features. It uses individual gate drivers & can therefore spin the motors at very high ERPM rates. We tested 120K ERPM but that was not the limit. It can probably go as high as 150K ERPM, depending on settings & the motor used.

It features a dual XT60 input for battery connections, so that you can bridge two VESC 6 EDU into a parallel array.

Size: Size always matters & therefore we tried to squeeze the design on the smallest possible footprint without compromising on connectivity using the same JST PH connectors found on all other VESC controller variants. The VESC 6 EDU is only 44 x 56mm in size with components only on one side. This design makes it easy to strap this tiny unit to any kind of heat sink or use the bare PCB in shrink tube if the power output is not too demanding. The bare PCB with connectors weighs as little as 35g and is therefore perfect for drone builds of all kinds.

The VESC 6 EDU was also designed to be as low cost as possible. Depending on your project, you might only need the base PCB or you might need the extra heat sink. You can add the heat sink feature during checkout or simply go with the cheaper PCB-Only variant.

We hope you will all enjoy this tiny but very capable new VESC family member!

VESC SIX Education - PCB

[xsynatic]

@Trampa

Silent HFI

Is that an addition to

HFI

A.S.S

V.S.S

?

[Skyart]

Is it just me, or anyone else thinking 4wd 6s 270kv propdrives?

[bboybowzer]

On your stroller right?

[Skyart]

Yeeeeeees!!! 150erpm is nice tho. But yeah 50 amps

[Trampa]

Silent HFI is the stuff the motor driver community dreamed about for years.
Basically you can control a motor without noises from stand still with full torque and even
have position control down to sub 1° accuracy. Works great for the motors we use in e-skate.
If the motor has more than 140KV we can actually use them like stepper motors, but much faster.

Demo showing full torque at 0 RPM and sensorless position control:

VESC silent HFI. Sensorless full torque at 0 speed.

Awesome performance sensorless control (Teensy 4.1, open source)

And this is non silent with some music injection for rotor position tracking:

Teensy 4.1 open source high performance sensorless bldc / pmsm control, position control & music

And this is a 3 USD display, driven by the VESC 6 MKVI. The display can show anything you want, including data from the VESC controller. Speed, range, battery etc.

VESC load native apps at runtime

And some LEDs, driven by the VESC 6 via some scripted code + the display. Since we don’t need any sensores, the Sens port is now free to drive that strip of LEDs:

VESC-scripting native WS2812-driver from LispBM

Benjamin and I thought we can add some more fun to VESC motor control and scripting is a nice way to do really awesome stuff and add features missing in the UI. Could be anything from self balance code for monowheels, stabilizing a drone to driving LEDs, custom user interfaces for the smart phone VESC-Tool App, cockpits for bikes or gokarts, CAN implementations… You name it. Whatever code can do!

Special thanks to Benjamin Vedder, who coded like a lunatic in the last month to make all this happen and to Elwin Boots for help on the motor control side of things!

[Plurf]

Ok, let’s put it that way, it is a great idea, I was much enthousiasted by the description, then I clicked the link and I went “ah…”

Here’s a hint: “affordable” “education” “125gbp”, find the odd one.

[Evwan]

Name it Sh-fi. Like “shhh” for silent. But its also short for silent HFI.

If you end up using that, you’re gonna have to go into the code and remove any trademarked logos first or else I’ll send you a holiday card.

[Trampa]

Once chips become more available and the volume can be driven up, the price can fall. At the moment the components are very expensive and we start with small volume. Universities and students can get discounts for their projects. At this stage you can get 25 pound off if you purchase in advance.
For us it was important to design a controller that can actually control cheap motors, so that they can be used as proper actuators. And that saves a lot of money! The cheaper low side shunt designs simply can’t do that. So the EDU s a very good compromise in between having all the nice features and still being very affordable.

[rusins]

Omg, silent HFI was working at 100A with the motor stalled and completely saturated in that example video (timestamp 4:20 and onwards) I never had a good experience with regular HFI, so this looks game-changing!

@Trampa

VESC 6 MKVI

MK 6 already? When is that dropping?

[Trampa]

Silent HFI and HFI are worlds apart. sHFI works really astonishing precise and has a much higher resolution compared to Halls.

[poastoast]

good thing students can’t take the code and mess with it without getting in trouble with trademarks

[Trampa]

All the VESC code is GPL licensed and can be worked with. VESC-Tool will soon get an app store like structure to pull code from a code repository. This way people can publish code and users can find and use code. Similar to the app stores used to install apps on tablets and smart phones.
It is still a long way to go, but will happen.

[poastoast]

@Trampa

If you open yourself up you have to protect yourself in the same breath. Otherwise someone can grab the code and the identity and screw the original author over, or do other bad things, confuse customers, drive customers away from the authors distribution channels, or do things that are simply not in the interest of the project or authors.

i’d hope so

[xsynatic]

@Trampa

Silent HFI and HFI are worlds apart. sHFI works really astonishing precise and has a much higher resolution compared to Halls.

Where does it lie between

Hfi
A.S.S
V.S.S

?

[Trampa]

V.S.S. is a method to track the rotor at zero RPM using an audible very short HFI blop.
Silent HFI uses non audible HFI injection and models the rotor position throughout a certain RPM range.
It can model the rotor position so accurate that you can stop the motor at full RPM and it will stop in the exact position it originally started from. You can see that in the first video linked above @ minute 15 onwards.
Also the second short video from Elwin shows sHFI in position control mode. He does really fast motor movements around the original motor position.

[poastoast]

ASS is the best, can’t tell me otherwise

i don’t use any, but ASS is the coolest sensored sensorless silent noisy start

[Trampa]

The next batch of the VESC 6 will be MKVI already. They will feature automatic sensor voltage adjustment via software, a second UART port + spin to start can be disabled + some other cool new features.
They will a also handle up to 120A with proper cooling.We will update the website soon and put them on pre-order. As soon as some missing components arrive, they will be manufactured.

[rusins]

2 UART ports on a single ESC? Very nice!
Also roll to start being a software toggle is great.

@Trampa

handle up to 120A

battery current or motor current?
(Sorry for the derail)

[Trampa]

Motor side. We always talk motor amps…