Its marketing spin… Hes using all the parts as per vedder bom… unless he has changed the design of the vesc (which he hasnt) he is using the parts we are all using.
Hey slick, this is one of the many components we have upgraded in our pursuit of a reliable system. I find it very strange that you are trying to slander the quality of our VESC’s when you are using them to fix all of your raptors. If you would like to know more about why our VESC’s are so robust feel free to inquire on a consultation.
Hey @Chaka - you double up this cap at c37 (if i’m reading that right) - what’s the result? I might add this to the one i repair a DRV on (bought used w/ dead DRV already).
Hey Jerimiah… don’t you think the community deserves to know about your “many components” upgrades & I am sure that’s what Vedder wanted when he made his project open source…???
You know that keeping these mysterious-special-upgrades private you are directly violating the creative commons license that the VESC has been released under?
Either prove you have “many” upgrades or tune down the hype, slick.
You know, I get your job is stressful but there is no need to be rude. Why does someone buy a VESC from @chaka when it is almost double the cost? Because he has built a reputation for having the best vesc. He is obviously doing something right whether or not he is upgrading components. He just said one upgrade and told you to email him if you wanted the rest. There are a whole lot less people complaining about his vesc compared to yours. You may sell more but, the service he offers and the upgrades that come pre installed are obviously doing something. So I don’t appreciate you saying it a marketing spin, and bashing him.
And if @onloop spent a lot of time fixing broken vescs (because chaka had to start with vedders original blueprints for components), you learn about these types of things. This is the problem with outsourcing all of your manufacturing. You become out of touch with the problems in the designs of your parts. I’m sure many of these upgrades, chaka has found out because he has to fix them when they brake. Going back through, you can figure out the root cuase of the failure. When @onloop s break, its a paper weight, or trashed, there’s no repair service, because you don’t have the tools or time to do it. Since you don’t fix them, you just see a dvr failure for example from what someones post on here, and not the root that cause the dvr failure (like c37 failing). And these little fixes that make the vesc more robust don’t go into your vescs. And then they keep braking, and you blame your customers for it.
Not all vescs are the same and chaka just showed one example of why.
Are you saying he’s not using his own, but your vescs in some raptors?
Onloop is right, any changes to the VESC need to be documented for the community. According to the picture there has been a change to chaka’s VESC bom, Where is this modified bom posted? Was it distributed here or perhaps on Vedders Site?
Back on target for a second, I want to offer another alternative possible scenario…
Tantalum caps really shouldn’t be used as power filter caps. they are sensitive to small voltage spikes and tend to thermally runaway.
I have had exactly the same event completely destroy one of my VESC’s and I always trim the pins below the red power wire. I have also had catastrophic failures in other devices that use tants. I do not use them anymore for power filtering or decoupling. In fact I don’t use them at all.
It would be a really good idea for Vedder to design tants completely out of the next rev of VESC.
I didn’t design the VESC, nor did Chaka, it’s an open source project designed by Benjamin Vedder. The BOM & Gerber files are provided by the designer and the end result is a VESC…
If Chaka has identified problems with the VESC design & changed the Gerber files or the BOM components to improve the reliability of the VESC he should submit a pull request & make it public so that Vedder & the rest of the community can benefit.
If he hasn’t made “many changes” to improve the VESC he should not use language that suggests he has…
However, I think your marketing spin is starting to get the better of you. This statement above is a perfect example, why would we buy your VESC to fix our raptors when we are producing a few hundreds VESC each week in a factory in Texas? I have never authorised a single VESC to be used in our raptors.
If my customers want to pay you a premium instead of have a VESC replaced under warranty for free that is their call.
I know that neither of you created it, it was Benjamin Vedder, but my point is that its hard for you to offer upgrades to the community of the vesc if you don’t physically repair them when customers report problems. Being probabky the largest supplier, you have the biggest oppurtunity to find these problems. But you can’t find these little things if you don’t fix them and trace back the problems. It’s though because the laws are clear with this case, but I think chaka deserves to profit from his improvements, just like vedder deserves to profit from designing and engineering the vesc. While the laws seem clear, it seems like you want to piggy back on his work, and haven’t put anything like the effort chaka has into improving the vesc, just making and profiting from other peoples work.
Upgrading components isn’t necessarily a “design change”, but they are mods that make the VESC perform better. You can split hairs and quote opensource rules all day long, but at the end of the day Ollinboardco is reigning as the number one supplier of VESC with the best warranty in the industry, while you are trying to sell VESC with known problems( ie. pins causing shorts) Don’t be so jealous and take shots at Chaka, just up your game. No one wants you to fail, but you have to prove it…Chaka proves that shit every day. That’s not hype, just common knowledge.
if he has actually upgraded “many components” and he proves that then it will be common knowledge, if he hasn’t it just means you guys are being fooled by marketing hype.
I think his repair service is fantastic, I applaud him for that.
However there is nothing written about any warranty, maybe you can link the community to the written terms & conditions that clearly state what this warranty covers? I doubt it covers user error.
He has stated in emails to me that if I clearly doing something to break it, he will at worst charge you for parts and shipping. He said he hasn’t had that happen yet actually. He doesn’t blame his customers for breaking them unless it’s blatant. It’s hard to tell if a customer broke it being negligent or their was something else that broke it, like a faulty part or capacitor that needed beefing up.
There’s not a single person yet to complain on this forum he refused to fix their vesc. And by his wait times and his pictures, it seems like hes pushing out quite a few vescs these days.
So yes, he does fix user errors, maybe at a slight price, but you don’t offer that. And since it’s difficult to split user error vs. a defect, he has on the defect side every time so far, even though the odds are some of them were user error.
The creative commons license is a copyright license. It’s not a patent or other form of IP protection. Very generally, copyrights protect rights associated with authorship and patents protect rights associated with inventions.
You’re right that the CC license does require him to indicate changes were made but only if he’s producing a work that is subject copyright (something written, in a fixed medium). For example, if he published an updated schematic as his own without updating others via github or giving Vedder credit that would probably violate the CC license. To differentiate, this is not like a patent where you can prevent someone from using or modifying your methodology. If he’s just updating his manufacturing process and not publishing anything he’s free to do so - the copyright isn’t relevant to the situation.
“If my customers want to pay you a premium instead of have a VESC replaced under warranty for free that is their call” this should tell you something, jason i really like your products but i truly believe you are your worst enemy
I’d be interested to know what you changed/upgraded in the VESC too. I built a few myself and if you found ways for more reliability it would be sweet to have that documented somewhere.
Without wanting to bang on the whole you violate the license thing, maybe think about the time and work Benjamin has put into it over the last years and given it to all of us for free. You are able to take it and make some money from it. Wouldn’t it be nice to give back to him a little, for his education/development? Would you treat a friend of yours like that?
I guess you see where I’m going with that… Just be a decent person as you already proof you are with your reliable products and outstanding service.
The truth is, I really hope he is somehow making an improved VESC! Congratulations should be given.
This entire forum is based on pushing the envelope with constant innovations & it doesn’t bother me whether he has done an official pull request or not… at the end of the day everyone’s goal is to make better esk8’s & if his knowledge allows that it should be shared for the common good of the community.
But if it’s true that knowledge is being held back from the community (&Vedder) that may somehow improve the VESC or make it more reliable, that would be a shame.
So please chaka, if you are going to say your VESC has “many upgrades” over a normal VESC BOM at least list what they are for the betterment of the community…
Such a good topic, I guess my opinion is still torn.
The community is all about paying it forward.
However, the community is also full of profitable businesses. This marketing/reality of product improvement is an edge for Chaka’s business. But it would appear that contributing this information openly would indeed be detrimental to Chaka’s business but overall benefit the community.
I don’t think it is fare to pressure Chaka to “do the right thing” by the community if it means he would be disadvantaging himself.
Should we then be pushing all vendors to openly share every improvement or tweak made to products? Outrunner motors, hub motors for example.
