Hey everyone!
Two days ago my two month old SXT Light Plus V randomly died as i wanted to scoot off,
Scooter turned off and motor was braking, the BLDC bridge appears to be completely shorted out.
I have already put in the RMA request and am waiting for a new controller, but frankly i have completely lost trust in whatever they put into this thing - that is a dangerous failure mode, imagine rollin at 20km/h or more and suddenly the thing shorts out and your front wheel starts hard braking unexpectedly.
Iāve been wanting to build my own controller anyways, found the VESC project and saw that the esk8 scene has been on this for years already.
The motor in this thing does 500W @ 36V nominal, 720W peak, so thatād be 20A maximum.
Iād easily go for a VESC 6 MKIV from Trampa but that thing wonāt physically fit into the space i am working with
I found the Maytech SUPERFOC 6.8 and it looks like it would fit into the space the original ESC was mounted in, the space i am working with is roughly 27x43x134mm
If there is anything better (i donāt care about price if it means not dying from a randomly shorted out BLDC bridge and flying forward over the handlebar) iād welcome the suggestion.
The question however that I really have trouble finding information on is, how flexible is the UART built into this thing? I would like to keep the original display for stealth reasons, and from the looks of it they are using UART to communicate with the ESC
if you have a look at the 2nd picture you can see the red plug with the labels RX and TX
I donāt mind reverse engineering whatever communication they are rolling, i can also write STM32 code myself, iām simply quite lost with the gigantic amount of information and picking what is right for my application.
Iād assume the display runs its own software and handles all the graphics internally and just sends the state of the electronic brake as well as the throttle lever back to the ESC, while the ESC tells the display the current speed and maybe other information such as distance travelled, available options and the likes.
for a 36V application there are smaller vescs that you can buy. Do not need a vesc6 and you save money. Plus the mini from flipsky or similar is ridiculously small.
Concerning the display. If it has UART port with TX and RX it probably has some CPU to handle the data from an ESC. You can try. Otherwise there are many alternative that you can use. For instance use your screen and place an arduino nano o micro to display data on the LCD.
Yeh if you count that fact that most of the 36V scooter for grown people run shitty battery and 500w max. With a 40- 50A and a decent 30q battery you can push much more. This is a good upgrade
thanks for the information so far guys
canāt figure out how to multi quote with this forum software on mobile
Iād rather take something way over the top, as long as it physically fits, have some headroom if i want to later change out the motor and maybe go for a 48V battery.
You guys make me want to double motor power and take the thing to a half pipeā¦
Donāt care about costs, whatās a 100 bucks difference? It costs me more worth in time to replace a cheapo when it dies than just buying a good unit.
So with the VESC, the Torque ESC looks pretty much like the Maytech and costs about the same, anyone with experiences with either of them?
Iāve read a lot of people complain about how bad the Flipsky units are and theyāre ridiculously cheap, i donāt trust them and would rather avoid them.
So these VESC do support bidirectional communication via UART with a display?
if the only problem that might pop up is having to reverse engineer the communication currently used by the display and implementing that into the STM32 (basically just data restructuring), the only thing left for me would be to figure out which VESC variant I want.
How much Heatsinking do i need/whatās the typical efficiency?
i have a large cnc mill so i could make a custom heatsink but Iād rather just couple it to the frame and use the original cover for the ESC slot
You are right on Flipsky parts, they can be a hit or miss but at 10s with conservative settings basically all the vesc will do well. Itās when you push it harder that problems start.
With a 40A setting no real heatsink is needed, plus in e-scooter you can just bolt it down to the scooter enclosure which is metal with a thermal pad in between and you have the biggest heatsink you can ask for.
If you want head room up to 12s avoid 4.12 HW for a VESC and go to VESC6 instead. To me on a scooter the best mods you can do are change battery, then vesc and maybe double motors. For the latter there are nice dual vesc out there, being Stormcore 60D the best unit for the bucks in the dual world. https://lacroixboards.com/products/stormcore
there is a 100d version as well but way above what I would fit in a small 500w scooter.
To multi-quote on mobile, select the first chunk, and youāll have the reply box as shown. Reply and double-space, then select the option in red to go back to any post and select something else.
Iām building a dual motor electric scooter. I have an Ubox V2 VESC, with an ADC adapter from spintend. Using the VESCTool it could detect the motors and the throttle, and I can see the voltage change in CH1 (0V - 2.5V) on ADC Mapping tab. However the motors are not spinning regardless, completely ignoring the throttle position.
Check that the ADC is set as an input (App settings ā General ā App to use ā ADC and UART). Also play with the App settings ā ADC ā General ā Control Type. May need to try just ācurrentā. Some work, some donāt.
You could also try to control it with arrow keys by clicking on that option on the far right just to see if your motor is working and confirm that itās just an ADC issue.
ADC is a little tricky to setup with VESC in my experience.
