Allow me to be devilâs advocate for this
- The actual gerber files are not required to be published in order to meet VESC O/S requirements. In fact VESC simply have a diagram with paths, a pdf I think. From that you have to design your own schematic as Stewii did against the VESC6, this results in a gerber that you can have produced.
Enertion also did this with the VESC 4.12 and made some changes to the power stage to make it DirectFET I believe if you dig hard enough you can find a schematic, but unless you are willing to redeign/transfer the pdf into Eagle/KiCAD or one of those other programs then you will never get a resulting gerber file to have made as an end-user.
Even Stewii did not release his for the VESC6-based ESCape. He simply sold on the ready made PCBs to those who really wanted to make themselves. But now he disappeared without trace(!) and this is sad.
Chaka did something similar to Enertion for the 4.12. The pcb was not released or was then pulled and leaked a little. No point in Ohlin boards making ESCs if there is a pcb released to compete withâŚmostly people are cheap, I include myself in that sweeping statement.
- If you were still in the business of producing ESCs, why would you release a gerber to cannibalise your sales?
Why would you even sell a PCB? Removing all the still ok components for reuse is a huge overhead & challenge to the end-user & opens the maker to competition on their own product from those with production skills & access to cheap components aka China or nefarious individuals.
So I can still understand wanting to sell you a new ESC if you are not covered by warranty and you have blown a hole through the PCB under the FETs sometime after warranty. At some point it has to be a case of âtough shitâ.
A business has to be able to sell product in fairness, otherwise whatâs the point? Different if you are an individual with another primary source of income with a deep love of O/S, but itâs challenging to put food on the table solely dependant on O/S.
My advice if you have the skills and equipment & desire is to cannibalise what you want when you have a repairable one.
Or get creative
but sometimes as may be the case in the picture up there ^
Or to design your own PCB⌠And certainly consider dialling back your setting if using a stock heatsink
Until one of the E.E. clever folks puts out a truly O/S design, then this is the current state of things in VESC-based controllers. Watch Shamen, he is not putting food on the table off it (yet) and others who are, would be understandably be a little nervous & possibly rightly so.
There is no VESC6 derived gerber out there to print off a few PCBs, but it wonât be long I feel, thatâs where itâs going to get to - unless a vendor can produce at FlipSky prices which undercuts a home effort they are in trouble without also added value features which not in Vedderâs core design & you better be price-competitive.
That is why there is a huge propriety design added value touch to anything coming out from the big boys regarding controllers/BLE/dohickys = features & forks.
Itâs difficult to close fences around Vedderâs top-level O/S, but itâs the only way if you want to mass manufacture & sell end-product.
Business Vs Ideology
