Master (V)ESC Controller

For selling, I don’t know it would be too expensive for the general public, as it would have way too much thing for simple people :wink: I going to connect each vesc via uart/ppm/usb to the main board. Also there will be usb hub on board so I would only need to plug one usb to the board for BMS, Vesc’s and main controller :wink:

Sounds much more complicated then what I’m thinking of, lol!

Well, I have idea of controlling each motor individually so I could accomplish really tight turns on my eMtb by braking one wheel and spinning another that way I could make decent 90º turns with ease. Of course only on low speed and it also would require CH2 or as I will use my own remote some kind of button/thumb control to make it work.

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Look if you want a simple solution, setup all of the escs as Masters and slaves.

For example use “multiple esc over can” on every esc, and “send status” on every esc. As well setup ppm on every esc… hook all esc up to a canbus chain.

For 4wd install a 4 way switch, wire the ppm from each esc to the 4 way switch. If your main master dies switch to a different position. Or setup the 4 way switch as channel 2 on the remote so you can switch masters by remote.

It’s already simple…alot of your suggestions seem overcomplicating something simple…

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What would be a 4 way switch? Is a canbus chain just 4 of the wires where there all spliced in series? I don’t know that seems like it could fail easily too, plus, the signal is not being received at the same time but each one gets it after the preceeding. LOL sorry don’t mean to over-complicate things, though I know I tend to do that :blush:

Canbus is a bus. The escs are wired in parallel. Just like two batteries would be…

You know what a 2 way and 3 way switch are? …you can get 4 way 5 way and ,6 way switches …

From the 4WD Master

I don’t know why but I can’t think of what you mean by a 4 way switch…?

Canbus would be so much easier for 4WD if they had a canbus in, and canbus out you could plug into, rather then having to splice wires.

It’s just a 1-3 parallel Y splitter You could make a small PCB with 4 parallel ports that all vesc plug into

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He meant to use 1 to 4 output switch so you can select which vesc gets PPM in

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I like the idea of just using 4 receivers, lol. Then wouldn’t have to connect any of them…

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That’s an interesting idea… It’s essentially what I was thinking of just without any complicated software to potentially fail!

And I could probably figure out a way to connect the receiver to that also…

Yeah…there’s really nothing to do…4wd can works as-is, you can have fwd and rwd traction control even

To do that would I keep the front and rear VESC’s separate?

Would that be better than left side and right side traction control?

You would still have left/right just independent front/rear too The vescs can be physically anywhere

Ok… Man I’m so ready to get my build going. The one thing I just not super confident about is properly setting up my VESC’s, and since I’m getting 4 ESCape’s, I really don’t want to risk frying one of those beauty’s…

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Gotta pop that cherry one day

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If you look at quadcopters typically there’s an esc for each motor, and a flight controller sends control signals to them via digital protocol.

The interesting idea being the brainbox and dumb escs talking via some protocol.

See…

That works for quadcopters because the flight controller is centralized has a gyroscope and is sending signals to each esc to keep it stabilized at x angle. So it can fly. They are synchronous based on the gyroscope. In skateboards there is no gyroscope. But traction of all four wheels

Then benefits of having a “brain” are already implemented into the vesc, canbus allows the 2 wire communication, and provides the traction control. Any vesc can be the brain. If we are asking for a smarter traction control, where canbus IDs = motor corner location. You could implement torque vectoring. But again, each vesc Is already a brain in it’s own right. I setup all my vesc as Masters and slaves, if something ever arises in the field, just swap ppm or uart pins and keep riding.

I have a 4WD with 4 Vescs, and I use this to split the remote signal:

That has been very reliable. I’ve not messed with telemetry so far, but I’m planning on putting an HM-10 on every VESC, as well. That might be overkill, but I never had any luck with the CAN back when I was trying.

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