Oh yeah, those will be pretty good.
My list of motors goes like this:
Single 5055: Double Meh.
Single 5065 Meh.
Single 6355: Good.
Single 6374: Very Good.
Dual 5055: Good.
Dual 5065: Better.
Dual 6355: Great!
Dual 6374: Overkill!
You won’t quite get to “beast” territory with 5055s, but it will be really fun.
Alright I’ve got the VESCs, remote, and misc connectors ordered. Now on to the battery. I need to stay under 160Wh to take it on the plane and I want to buy a premade pack - any suggestions? Ideally, I would stay somewhere around $150 but I can spend a little over $200 if needed. Since those ESCs are in parallel, the maximum that they will pull from the battery is 50A right?
Also, I have one of those battery meters (with 4 LEDs), is there an easy way to hook this up to these VESCs?
@samr U didn’t figure what cells they are and are assuming they won’t cut it. Why not run them at a certain load and see what the voltage does like I said above and then u will know what amount of current u can comfortably pull from them. Your brakes could be fine. Regen current is for a short time and u could set up the motor regen higher and battery lower to compensate at least.
If you hook up a clamp amp meter it should read similar results to what the Vesc records and don’t see the point unless ur seeing how accurate the Vesc is recording that
The max the escs will pull is determined by ur settings and load.
if youre trying to get it plane possible it will either have to be made with super powerful cells or else 100 watthour packs that can be disassembled. you can have two that are 160 watthours I read
You can set the vescs to draw whatever current you want. Anything up to the physical/thermal limit of the vesc/motor/battery.
You don’t hook up the battery meter to the vesc, you hook it up to the battery. Specifically across the battery wires after the loopkey.
@Hummie it was my own homemade pack with INR18650-25R cells. As for regen, I played around with low battery and high motor settings. They’re awful.
O I mistaken posted the last message to u but meant It for Sam related to his unknown pack he could see what it was by watching voltage sag
Ahh right. Yeah a clamp meter is a wonderful tool to have. I’ve got a little Uni-T AC/DC one that’s great!
Yeah I’m just waiting for that clamp meter (ordered it on Amazon) so I thought I would spec out a battery in case I need it.
My plan is to hook the battery up to the stock ESC and run full speed forward as well as some brake tests. I’ll take peak current draw and post them here.
I should have the meter on Monday and I’ll post my readings here and you guys can let me know what you think.
I just got my VESCs today and noticed that they didn’t come with a CAN cable (JST-PH 4-pin). Is that the best way to connect them or should I split the PWM output from the remote? Also, I thought that CAN just used 2 pins, why does this connector have 4?
I’m still waiting on the battery measurements (the clamp meter that I bought only measures AC 
I’m going to borrow one from a friend on Tuesday)
The connector has power ground and two data pins - You only need the two data pins, the middle ones IIRC.
Split PPM works but you only need the signal wire to go to the second vesc, if you have all three (power, ground and signal) you can have problems with ground loop.
Yeah, not all clamp meters measure DC. I have a Uni-T UT210E that works great if you decide to get one in the future.
Alright so I just got back from the “dyno” and unfortunately, I was only able to test the power out and not the recharge. When testing, the motors stalled out when the ESC pulled 22.5A from the battery. Since my VESCs are going to be in parallel, I will be dividing the current by 2 so a good place to start would probably be 7A each? If all goes well with that, I might try and bump it up to 8 or 9. Does this sound like a good way of going about this?
The next thing that I need to determine is the brake/recharge current. The charger that came with the board is rated at 2A so I know that I can at least put 2A back into it. I was thinking of starting it at 2A and logging battery temperatures while I go down some hills. Then I’ll slowly bump it up and repeat the test. Will the battery heat be a good indication of what the battery can take?
7 and 2 (per motor) should be a good conservative starting point. Heating is a good indication in terms of discharge, but unfortunately won’t tell you much about regen.
if you want to figure what cells they are and what charge and discharge they can take, cant you open them up a bit and see their color? if that isn’t possible you should be able to tell by seeing what the voltage drop is under a certain load like I said. that seems the easiest best revealer really beyond the wrap.
regen current is for such a short time and not the same as a full charge cycle and the cell’s rating on that. even that can be taken with salt when at a low state of charge especially. I think heat is the indicator of a lot of damage that is done to a cell whether charging or discharging and you really have to get to some highly untouchable temps to be in danger in danger I think.
I’ve got everything wired up and I put new firmware on the VESCs. Just waiting for the CAN connectors to come in the mail and then I should be ready to ride.
I also ordered one of these to use with the VESC skateboard apps: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32962465399.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.39bf4c4dBMt89X. That uses the same serial COM port as the receiver. Is it possible to connect both of these through the same COM port or will I only be able to use one? Would it be possible to connect the receiver to the master VESC and then connect the bluetooth module to the follower VESC? I couldn’t find anything on the forum but I’m sure this has been asked before.
I’ve got it running but it’s hitting the 7A limit when trying to move without a person on it. Should I bump it up or is there something wrong? It could move a little bit (with no rider) but only if I very slowly ramp up the speed that I’m feeding it.
Based on this video: https://youtu.be/LzXEtWjkj4g?t=350, I think I’m going to try and bump it up to (on each esc):
Motor current max: 15A
Motor current max brake: 10A
Absolute max current: 20A
Battery current max: 20A
Battery current max regen: 10AWell it looks like I might need to replace the battery pack . I think the “random esc shutoff” was because of low voltage.
The VX1 shows only one red light and after riding for a few mins, it starts flashing.
I fully charged the battery and then checked the voltage and got 40.3V. According to https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/charging_lithium_ion_batteries, that’s about 70% capacity. Are there any other measurements that I should take to figure out if this battery is bad?
I suggest you to read and learn more about batteries and the different set ups for Esk8. If there it is something I do not want to play and push limits, and have a problem, it is with batteries. Why? Because a fire could kill you and others… You need to learn…read…and then buy or build…This is a serious matter, and I wish you to play safe…