Hey… After a long wait for parts to show up to help me connect everything together better… I connected everything as I should and my vesc started to smoke… I checked and there was no short circuit anywhere… The smoke came out of the chip marked in the picture, was connected to a 4s battery…
I guess there is no warranty for this things but wanted to know if maybe it’s possible to replace the chip only or I should buy a new one…
Where did you buy that from?
Your TVS diode is blown. The TVS is intended to suppress sudden and very narrow high voltage spikes, however if the high voltage lasts longer than some seconds, the diode will burn down. It looks like the linear regulator outputs a higher voltage than 5V, that would be clearly a production/ component failure and not your fault. Your VESC might be ok (ST32 and DRV chip), however I would contact the manufacturer. Replacing the diode wouldn’t make that much sense, since the failure will occur again.
diyelectricskateboard. Thank you I will pass them this information and hopefully they would take care of it somehow, a 100$ is allot of money for something I didn’t even had the chance to use yet…
Sounds like a manufacturing fault, 2 reasons the tvs could blow.
-bad gnd on the drv chip, made the output unstable >5V -tvs could have been installed in the wrong side, hard to tell from the pic
No problem, however please note that this is just my personal “diagnosis” which could be wrong.
Let us know what they replied. 
Definitely, it makes sense, probably one of the spikes after few connection attempts got the chip blown and it seems not to handle the voltage well…
Maybe you should consider purchasing an anti spark switch or you could precharge the VESCs capacitors with an additional e.g. 500 ohms resistor moments before you connect your battery and the VESC (sparks are beautiful… just not in electronics )
It was connected through a double XT60 or 90… Adding a resistor is a great idea, essentially I would like to connect a 12S battery so even better… So that means I should get a 1500 ohms resistor? 500X3. And how do I do this in an elegant way? The idea is to elevate the voltage gradually to the VESC?
What if I integrate it with some kind of switch/button?
If your gnd pad under the drv chip was badly soldered, it will cause the 5V output to go over 5V
Never done it with a resistor tbh, but some XT60/XT90 connectors are already built spark proof, they usually have green marks on the yellow plastic. google “xt60 anti spark” and you’ll find them.
Well you can use nearly any resistor value, depends on the charging time you want to achieve. e.g. it takes 0.25 seconds to charge the VESCs capacitors (3x680uF) to 12s voltage with a 25 ohm resistor. I always used Vedders anti spark switches, soldered a couple of them yesterday.
C’MON GUY… it is a drv problem… Bad soldering of the ground pads.
yea, most likely, but what’s the problem taking another step and talking about spark protection lol ? He’ll send it to the manufacturer anyway.
The spark that comes off when connecting the battery won’t do any damage to the electronics, only thing that will take damage over time is the connectors themselves. The batteries and caps can handle the momentary inrush current.
But still, on 12s antispark is usually a good idea.
So what exactly was the problem here? Bad VESC soldering from the manufacturer?
its probably just a bad one. cut off the heat shrink and get some close ups of the pins.
i didn’t notice there was no warranty now. i wonder what “tests” are actually being done if this can slip by…
It’s a good question, it has worked for like a month until it didn’t, I did nothing different. My guess is that there might have been a weak soldering point that may have gotten loose on the ground connection… Assessing that according to what I’ve gathered do far with the help of guys on this forum.
I haven’t heard anything from the manufacturer so far. Wondering if I could diy it to replace the faulty chip…
Or to buy a cheap or used one…
for diy replacement you will need a hot air soldering station (50$ on amazon) and some solder paste, I got best results with Sn63Pb37 pastes I would ask someone in the forum to replace your DRV, some friendly guys only charge shipping and material costs
