VESC Nunchuk RF

You can always just buy the receiver too. If that’s all you need.

The transmitter is what I was referring to. I haven’t looked into it to much but inexpensive FHSS transmitter modules are not as easy to come by as AFH.

@chaka just a thought; It is excellent to consider cost in the design of the controller, but right now the “desired” controller options (full badwolf mod or enertion\carvon’s new remote) are selling for $90-$110 usd. If you beat that price point at all for a complete reliable remote it will be a win!

Looks like all I need is a top quality 3d printer if that is the case. I do like the small form factor of the wired nunchuk though.

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my small contribution for the Vedder nunchuk. Replaces the wire rubber shroud with a 3D printed one that mounts a mini USB, just like if it belongs there.

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Great contribution Blasto! That looks awesome.

Chaka have you tested the VESC Nunchuk RF yet? I wonder how well it does too…

Thanks for the part! I’m going to try and print one on shapeways. What scale is the drawing in? mm?

Added a little light pipe to the nunchuk, i like the results

Inside

Do not put to much hot glue on the back side of the pcb, i was stuck cutting it out with a knife right over all the cables

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Looks great! Let us know how the connection goes…

This really looks like the perfect controller to me, but how do i get one/make one. If i order the board from Oshpark, do i only have to wire up the battery and buttons from the Wii Nunchuck, upload the firmware and its ready to roll? Hope someone can enlighten me or post a quick tutorial!

I’ll eventually post a “what i did” kind of thing.

But basically Get a cheap wired nunchuck Dismantle it and salvage the casing, buttons and thumbstick Order the pcb from osh park Populate the pcb, your soldering skillz need to be spot on, there’s a fancy qfn package with thermal pad Print this usb shroud http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1261253 Assemble the whole thing with the new pcb and battery. Open ubuntu and program the firmware http://vedder.se/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=44

Wire up the nrf transceiver to the vesc Open the bldc tool, enable the nrf app, put the controller id according to the 4 populated id resistors on the nunchuck pcb

Test the thing out, hold C and Z, red led should on and stay solid.

Voilà.

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I can help by providing populated pcb’s if anyone needs them. Or maybe a few kits with all the chips and components to solder your own pcb?

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Hello!

What batteries did you use? It’s a pretty tight fit in there. They appear to be 3.7 240 mAH, but what dimensions?

Nice work!

I got these batteries

http://m.ebay.com/itm/2PCS-3-7V-240mAh-20C-Lipo-Battery-For-SYMA-S107G-S105G-Helicopter-RC-Quadcopter-/351532196464?txnId=763149322022

I was planning on using only one, but i figured i was going to lose the spare one anyways. I just broke off a spline inside the nunchuck to fit both of them

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FYI for people who doesn’t know what it’s, it’s basically a Nunchuck PCB design & components that is compatible with VESC. Since Nyko Kama is getting rare and the support for other brands are quite limited, Vedder and his friend are building their own version of “Nyko Kama” but only on the electronic side.

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Beautiful! Thank you!

My board are here, components should be here soon. For what it’s worth, I’m an R2-D2 builder and will be using a pair of these with custom firmware to control my R2 unit. I set out to make my own board like this (I’m an embedded firmware engineer) but this is just perfect.

Love the open-source community!

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And it uses 2.4ghz radiofrequency in stead of bluetooth, so the Nyko Kama drop/signal issues should be fixed with this right?

It uses AFH, adaptive frequency hopping, also called bluetooth. It will have some of the same problems any other AFH controller.

Ideally we would have FHSS for throttle and braking and AFH for telemetry.

Personally I don’t think the exact modus of transmission plays a great role in safety or reliability in general. The logic (or lack of) between receiver and (V)ESC is of greater importance. You could have an uber-reliable connection between transmitter and receiver, and still run run out of battery on your transmitter which -with wonky logic- could cause the board to go full throttle. Most RC receivers have a fail safe setting which makes the output go to neutral (or a pre determined setting) if the TX/RX connection is lost. Does the Nunchuck RF solution offer this kind of fail safe logic ? Information about this thing seems to be scattered all over the forums.

My Ts3t trackstar remote has a fail-safe function build in when signal is lost. I could set it to return to specific value of PWM (1500 for example) when signal has lost. This will loosen the throttle power to the board. I don’t know how this technology works, but I assume it sends presignal / prememory up to the receiver module when connection is lost set to 1500.

But from BLDC tool it’s self, I believe I’ve seen also a VESC setting for fail-safe signal lost. This is useful for our Nunchuck remote to add 1 extra layer of security incase suddenly remote goes out of battery / slammed and destroyed due to fall.

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