Not sure i understand this comment. can you please elaborate a bit more? i’ve sensorless motors so not sure if this applies to my build?
I’m currently deciding whether to buy a Unity from a guy in UK for 225 £ or a Go-FOC Retro from Maker X for 155 $. What would you guys suggest? Consider i’m coming from a dual esc from flipsky based on 4.2,
I’m going to be honest here, fuck the unity, non-standard implementation of VESC hardware and software with 0 recourse the second something goes wrong at damn near the price of a VESC 6+ which is bulletproof. The GO-FOC from Maker X at least is using standard VESC4.12 hardware and software and I’ve heard they have pretty good support for trouble shooting and fixing them yourself is doable because the gerber is posted. Its based on v4.xx hardware while new generations are based on v6.xx but the only sizeable difference is the addition of a sampling shunt which smooths high speed acceleration but personally I would go with the GO-FOC Retro simply because I burnt damn near 6 VESCs before I ever got my board working.
Hey Secco,
My apologies for taking so long to reply.
Since you are using “Sensor-less” Motors, you will not have to worry about connecting the Hall Sensors to the ESC. So that doesn’t apply to you.
Also, if your wires between your battery pack and your ESC are 50-60 cm long, then that is probably your issue! It also matters what your ESC voltage and Current and Power Rating are. THe further below these you are, the longer the wires you can tolerate. but it can be difficult to predict.
I’ll try to keep this brief and my understanding is not perfect, but gives an idea.
First, there is some part of each ESC Electric Speed Controller that is subjected to the maximum “DC” Voltage of the Battery all the time.
Now as soon as that DC Voltage and the subsequent current enter the ESC, the constand Power from the battery is chopped in to a lot of little spikes, maybe 1 thousand spikes per second for example,.
Your ESC decides how many of those little spikes to let through to your motor depending on how far your squeezing your handheld remote controll trigger.
Also, wherever there is a electric current flowing, there is a field or cloud of electrons surroundign it.
For example, around your battery cables might be a region about 1cm in diameter and cylinder shaped all around the wire with a high electron density.
When current starts to flow, the electron cloud around your batter cable appears, and when current stop flowing, the electron cloud disappears.
So basically the bigger and longer your battery to esc wires, the more electrons will be floating around them in this cloud.
So when you arecruising at 1 or 2 miles per hour, your ESC is only allowing 1 or 2 spikes of power to go to the motors every say 100 spikes. but if you then squeeze the throttle hard, the controller will start llowing a lot more electricity through and it will suck the electricity and some ofthe electron cloud with it toward the motor. but then you suddently let go of the throttle, and all the current that had begun to rush in to the controllers DC to AC sonvertor is stopped and only a little is allowed through.
THis creates something like a Electrical “Waterhammer” which is a plumbing phenomenon and applies to water in solid pipes primarily. Buy o’m just saying tht having those long wires or thick wires and expeciallky if your batter ysupplies close to the maximum voltage the exc can run on, well when you go from almost t=no throttle or full throttle to the opposite, it causes an inductive spike which may cause a spike to come out of the DC to AC chopper system in your ESC. If one of those spikeshits a sensitive comopnent, it may permanently damge it.
Not this is an oversimplification and it is late and I need to go to sleep. But I have seen in my own board that having excessive cables from battery to controller kills controllers. so even if it is not the best layout or the most aesthetic way to do it, you should rearrangethe stuff on your board so that the ESC is like within 4 to 6 inches of your battery;