VESC-TOOL Mobile

Vedder and Apple are no good friends and he coded his stuff alone. He owns the copyright for his code. Benjamin is very serious about what he is doing and he is very serious about the GPL-license. E-skaters better get an Android phone sooner than later.

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Apple and freedom are fundamentally incompatible at the very core. This is one manifestation of that. You can run the tool on an Apple laptop :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: (for now)

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True, you canā€™t go back on the GPL. But if Vedder was the sole copyright he could give an alternate license. Heā€™s not though, as others have made contributions and thereā€™s no mention that you hand over copyright when making a contribution.

@Deodand ha, the official docs make no mention of this support, I swear it previously stated partial support for Android :grimacing:. Hereā€™s a thread with some indication it existed. Looks like that support may be getting dropped, may mean a port over to the Bluetooth module needs to happen regardless of iOS support.

Actually the GPL covers all of that

Serial port already doesnā€™t work on android. If you use a phone variant you use bluetooth anyways.

Its true though that QT partially supports serial on android but it doesnā€™t work on many many phones and the mobile version of the vesc-tool doesnā€™t have a serial connect button.

Can anyone give me some instructions on how to flash the Vedderā€™s firmware to a hm10 module?

Sorry but itā€™s not for HM-10 modules they are based on CC25** MCU :cry:

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I donā€™t know why, but just kind of assumed it used that serial port library for Bluetooth connections too. Thereā€™s a single line in the Qt Creator project file you need to comment out to not import this module, after that thereā€™s a few methods that need to be removed that wouldnā€™t work on iOS anyway.

Then you get thisā€¦

I donā€™t have my iPad handy, just the simulator, but layout looks a lot more usable on the iPad. Iā€™m guessing this is because I havenā€™t told it to use the mobile specific layout.

Will try to connect it later on tonight when I get home. Thereā€™s a stack of warnings being printed out, and Iā€™d be very surprised if it worked first time. Still promising for the 5 minutes (excluding the hours it took to download Qt) effort I put in.

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Cool, Iā€™ve been playing around with this code for awhile. Let me know if you get hung up on something.

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Just flashed a nrf module. Very easy everything is done just need to run the script.

Didnā€™t work first time on iOS, but Iā€™d be worried if it did.

Thereā€™s a ā€˜kind ofā€™ bug in the Bluetooth code on MacOS/OSX, I say kind of as its not really a bug more that BT support was never tested on MacOS. This same bug affects iOS. Iā€™d really like to get this fix into the official repo as Iā€™m currently running the VESC Tool in an Ubuntu VM with a USB dongle, whereas I could just use a native MacOS build and the inbuilt Bluetooth. I havenā€™t tested it, but am pretty sure the Mac issue is fixed.

I did test it on my iPad though :sunglasses:

Lots of little issues; UI rendering, have to click through license agreement each launch, where to save motor/app config files, etc. As I said before itā€™s in a pretty good state considering how little effort it took.

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Iā€™m also a Mac user, and need to have a Ubuntu VM as well. Could you make a pull request of your changes ?

Yeah. Will tidy it up over the weekend and do a bit of testing just to make sure it doesnā€™t break other platforms, etc.

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You might be aware of this but commenting or un-commenting #CONFIG += build_mobile in the .pro file will build the mobile UI. In my opinion this UI needs a lot of love before it will feel good to use but it is at least workable on the phone screen.

Thatā€™s good to know. Iā€™ve spent a bit of time looking through the VESC protocol stuff, but the UI and QT Creator is something new to me.

VESC Tool UI does look to be lagging a lot of the other options available, but it seems like the right spot to focus development. Thereā€™s probably 5-6 apps on this forum that all seem to do the same thing but not everything we want, itā€™d be nice if it was a little less fractured.

Of course the GPL issue gets in the way a bit. One possible workaround would be to distribute a compiled ipa/app file, would skip the requirement to install Qt (16GB WTF!) and maybe even Xcode. BUT, theyā€™d still need to signup for a dev account (free) and jump through a bunch of provisioning hoops and these can be a real PITA.

Honestly, as you stated above Vedder needs to get in contact with all other contributors/copyright holders and ask for different licensing terms for this to end up on iOS ā€˜properā€™. Iā€™d go so far as to say he should also require copyright assignment (just like Qt does). Oh and someone will need to get him on a Mac with iPhone/etc for testing. Probably wonā€™t hold my breathā€¦

Yeah imagine if your software had a bug that you knew how to fix that prevented a large percentage of your user base from using it. Then you just told people rather than fixing it to just buy different $500+ electronics.

I think if Vedder could figure out the legal side he could rely on someone to help him test/debug the ios implementation, obviously it canā€™t be too insane if it only took you a bit to get one semi-functioning. I canā€™t imagine there would be a huge outcry against a careful dual license to enable app store distribution and maintain GPL everywhere else. Licensing isnā€™t my area of expertise though :slight_smile:

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Is this new VESC tool software compatible and work well with the Maytech VESC?

Hi, Benjamin always assures max compatibility with all Hardware revisions. Latest Firmware for all Hardware revisions is included. Itā€™s lots of extra work for Benjamin to make this happen. If you like the App please consider to give Benjamin some support.

Frank

Hey, Iā€™m confused: which Bluetooth modules besides the trampa one work with the mobile vesc-tool, and what exactly do I have to do to get them to work? I have one of @JLabs modules which Iā€™m hoping I can use with this.

Our modules have a custom Firmware, written by Benjamin, and they have the correct connectors and pin connections. So that is plug and play for our VESC 6. We ordered more connection cables so that you can connect them to any HW 4.xx ESC (plug and play). Cables should arrive within the next weeks. You can also use the current cable, get yourself a female JST-PHR 7 Pin connector and pop that onto the cable ends. A needle does the trick to get the individual cables out of the 8 Pin connector we supply. No big issue, 5 mins job. Frank