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UPDATED - THE FUTURE OF ESC’s for F5J ?


ThermalBoy

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49 minutes ago, Mike said:

One point I wasnt sure of, is the required arduino board a permanent fixture? Or just for programming esc?

Mike.

Just for programming the ESC

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  • 2 weeks later...

Well, I thought I would jump on board and have a go! I acquired the Adriano board and it arrived very quickly however the ESC was a bit more problematic. Seeing it was out of stock at Flying Tech opted to use the HK outfit only to have it sitting on back order. Mike’s email revealed all, telling us they’re gone out of business; order cancelled now plan “b” . Opted for the Holybro Tekko32 65a , it’s tiny. 
 

This is where I now need some help:- as I understand it the connection to the receiver is just signal and ground but the pins on the ESC are designated “grnd” which is clear , the other  two are “TLM” and “PWM”  so where do I connect the signal wire. Can someone help with some guidance please? 
 

thanks

              Garry

 

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Just flown an Explorer BF with the recommended DYS 70A esc fitted and a separate sbec.

All day session with lots of launches with absolutely no problems.

Bench testing the setup showed an increase in esc temperature of just 6 degrees C for a 30 sec motor run drawing around 40 amps.

Even with the esc inside a very tight fuselage with little air flow  the esc stayed cooler than other large ESC's  I have used.

Throttle response was very smooth and linear.

Saved around 30 grams of nose weight with the new setup.

Thanks for sharing the information on these ESC's Thermalboy - I really think this is a major step forward.

All the best

Steve

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I have been trying to get my Holybro Tekko32 65A going but I'm having a persistent problem:-

I have connected the Arduino which worked fine. The BLheli32 is running version 32.7.02. I can get it to verify the flash memory and it comes back as ok but if I try to flash the memory it fails every time at 98%. It is telling me the ESC is not "Activated" and that's where I stop every time.

I have spent hours searching the internet for answers but so far without success so if anyone has any ideas they would be gratefully accepted.

Thanks

                       Garry

 

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I had my tekko32 working ok, the when I tried changing settings, had a "memory corrupted, do not use this ESC" message. No amount of trying to reflash it was successful...☹

M.

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1 hour ago, gem said:

I have been trying to get my Holybro Tekko32 65A going but I'm having a persistent problem:-

I have connected the Arduino which worked fine. The BLheli32 is running version 32.7.02. I can get it to verify the flash memory and it comes back as ok but if I try to flash the memory it fails every time at 98%. It is telling me the ESC is not "Activated" and that's where I stop every time.

I have spent hours searching the internet for answers but so far without success so if anyone has any ideas they would be gratefully accepted.

Thanks

                       Garry

 

Hi Gary

I'm pretty sure this message means that the "Call Home" has not suceeded. Point 6 in the "How To" notes cover this part of the process. Be sure that you connect the main motor Lipo to the ESC as well as the Arduino and that your computer has an active internet connection. If it suceeds with the Call Home it will tell you. i.e. you see the correct discription of your ESC in the window at the top. This normally means its good to then start programming it.

If it still doesnt work for you, PM me.

Cheers

Colin

 

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21 hours ago, SteveH said:

Just flown an Explorer BF with the recommended DYS 70A esc fitted and a separate sbec.

All day session with lots of launches with absolutely no problems.

Bench testing the setup showed an increase in esc temperature of just 6 degrees C for a 30 sec motor run drawing around 40 amps.

Even with the esc inside a very tight fuselage with little air flow  the esc stayed cooler than other large ESC's  I have used.

Throttle response was very smooth and linear.

Saved around 30 grams of nose weight with the new setup.

Thanks for sharing the information on these ESC's Thermalboy - I really think this is a major step forward.

All the best

Steve

Hi Steve

Thanks for the feed back.  Good to hear that your experience aligns with our test results. I dont really understand why these drone ESC's run so cool compared to fixed wing one's but it seems to be the case on all the one's we've tested.

Colin

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I won, I wasn’t about to let this beat me!
 

Not entirely sure why but it’s now working. I went back to step 6, as advised, and armed the ESC as one would for other units. However, this was odd because just setting the control high then switching on did not arm the ESC, and after trying I few times I got impatient and move the control back and forth several times in quick succession and suddenly it worked. When I then went back to the software it seemed to work.

Thanks for the help.

Regards

                 Garry

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Decided to buy another type of ESC for trials. See the photos below taken with a 20 pence piece for scale. Its tiny! Even smaller than the DYS. OK its only 50 A continuous with 60 A burst rating but probably enough for most applications. Just over £15 from Hobbyking. As you can see this one also has a heat sink. Some of them come without one. I think it is probably important to get the ESC's with a heat sink for our typically enclosed applications.

Components and soldering on the board look well put together.

Programmes well following Colin's instructions and also has programmable low voltage cut off!

Maybe we could use this thread to keep a list of those ESC's trialled?

20191021_205116.jpg

20191021_205157.jpg

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 21/10/2019 at 21:15, SteveH said:

Decided to buy another type of ESC for trials. See the photos below taken with a 20 pence piece for scale. Its tiny! Even smaller than the DYS. OK its only 50 A continuous with 60 A burst rating but probably enough for most applications. Just over £15 from Hobbyking. As you can see this one also has a heat sink. Some of them come without one. I think it is probably important to get the ESC's with a heat sink for our typically enclosed applications.

Components and soldering on the board look well put together.

Programmes well following Colin's instructions and also has programmable low voltage cut off!

Maybe we could use this thread to keep a list of those ESC's trialled?

20191021_205116.jpg

20191021_205157.jpg

I bought a couple of these too. They are indeed very small, the ubecs I bought to go with the them are actually bigger!

As Steve says, they're easy to set up.

 The only 'hiccup' I encountered was when trying to reverse motor direction, It always came back with "write failure", but on checking, it had worked ok. Other settings changes weren't a problem.

 I also tried the Android App to connect my tablet to  the ESC, but couldn't get that to work...

Went out today to test it, (in probably the only flat field soaring site in Gloucestershire not under water), fitted in an old electrified F3J Graphite weighing a mere 2.4 kilos.

Had half dozen flights with several motor restarts of 18-20 seconds each, (2.4 kilos doesn't stay up long in 5mph breeze)!

 I checked ESC after each flight, just a very slight temperature change, otherwise couldn't fault it.

Well done Colin & team for pointing us in this direction.

  Mike.

 

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19 hours ago, Mike said:

 

 I also tried the Android App to connect my tablet to  the ESC, but couldn't get that to work...

 

 

 

This was easy fix, make sure Arduino is flashed for BL32 Bootloader (USB/Com)!

  Mike

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On 17/11/2019 at 00:42, Mike said:

I bought a couple of these too. They are indeed very small, the ubecs I bought to go with the them are actually bigger!

As Steve says, they're easy to set up.

 The only 'hiccup' I encountered was when trying to reverse motor direction, It always came back with "write failure", but on checking, it had worked ok. Other settings changes weren't a problem.

 I also tried the Android App to connect my tablet to  the ESC, but couldn't get that to work...

Went out today to test it, (in probably the only flat field soaring site in Gloucestershire not under water), fitted in an old electrified F3J Graphite weighing a mere 2.4 kilos.

Had half dozen flights with several motor restarts of 18-20 seconds each, (2.4 kilos doesn't stay up long in 5mph breeze)!

 I checked ESC after each flight, just a very slight temperature change, otherwise couldn't fault it.

Well done Colin & team for pointing us in this direction.

  Mike.

 

Nice one Mike. Well done and thanks for posting your feedback.

Close to 300 people have now downloaded the "How To" Notes on this subject. It would be helpful if a few more people provided some feedback on which Drone ESC's they have tried and if it has been successful.

Colin

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 17/11/2019 at 20:21, Mike said:

This was easy fix, make sure Arduino is flashed for BL32 Bootloader (USB/Com)!

  Mike

Hi, I found that following the video was not possible due to variations in the newer version of BLHELI_32 suite to when the vid was made. However it wasn't too difficult to work out what was required, but even then after flashing the Arduino nano v3 as instructed [ using K [4-way i/f]], that following on and flashing the esc [TEKKO 65a} that it resulted in a bricked esc with a flash failed flag in the esc firmware that I couldn't get round. After a n hour or so of exhausting all ways to get the esc to reflash, I decided to start from scratch and first reflashed the arduino, but instead of selecting the advised 'K 4-way i/f' I opted for the more obvious [L   usb/com]. after that, I was able to reflash the esc to BLHELI_32 V32.7.05 without fail, and read and wrote settings changes ok, so guess that the video info was not right for our situation! BEWARE.

Afterwards I experimented with another inexpensive esc Spedix 35amp which I bought for a 2M glider. Using the reflashed arduino [USB/COM] it read the settings on the Spedix ok and rewrote them with changes OK without having to reflash the esc, which was at V32.6x and worked ok at that on a small test motor. I'm sure that reflashing it would work fine but 'ONCE BITTEN' etc! It's probably ok for our purposes at the older firmware anyway, so it may be unnecessary to reflash the firmware - as the TEKKO's are at 32.6 and will udate settings at that without a reflash to latest firmware - initially at least until you're happy with the procedure to do so.

 Hope this helps others.  If I had seen Mikes message before this, it would have saved me a lot of time!

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John Minchell

Dwindd

How much would you charge to do all the "things" mentioned above?  Or who could do it commercially for example?

I like the fact that lighter ESC'c can be used, a great new application for drone tech.  But I have absolutely no idea what you were talking about  (was it even English) above.  I am sure there are many people who are not electronics techie savvy, like me, who would like to take advantage of lighter cool running ESC's, but don't know any more about electronics that how to fit a new 13 amp plug.

Regards John M

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10 hours ago, Dwindd said:

Hi, I found that following the video was not possible due to variations in the newer version of BLHELI_32 suite to when the vid was made. However it wasn't too difficult to work out what was required, but even then after flashing the Arduino nano v3 as instructed [ using K [4-way i/f]], that following on and flashing the esc [TEKKO 65a} that it resulted in a bricked esc with a flash failed flag in the esc firmware that I couldn't get round. After a n hour or so of exhausting all ways to get the esc to reflash, I decided to start from scratch and first reflashed the arduino, but instead of selecting the advised 'K 4-way i/f' I opted for the more obvious [L   usb/com]. after that, I was able to reflash the esc to BLHELI_32 V32.7.05 without fail, and read and wrote settings changes ok, so guess that the video info was not right for our situation! BEWARE.

Afterwards I experimented with another inexpensive esc Spedix 35amp which I bought for a 2M glider. Using the reflashed arduino [USB/COM] it read the settings on the Spedix ok and rewrote them with changes OK without having to reflash the esc, which was at V32.6x and worked ok at that on a small test motor. I'm sure that reflashing it would work fine but 'ONCE BITTEN' etc! It's probably ok for our purposes at the older firmware anyway, so it may be unnecessary to reflash the firmware - as the TEKKO's are at 32.6 and will udate settings at that without a reflash to latest firmware - initially at least until you're happy with the procedure to do so.

 Hope this helps others.  If I had seen Mikes message before this, it would have saved me a lot of time!

Thanks for your feedback.

The BLHeli32 software/ firmware is updated frequently, sometimes weekly it seems.  Also the manufacturers of BL-Heli 32 ESC's continuously update installed BL-Heli-32 firmware on the ESC's as delivered.

It appears that selecting (USB/Com) as the connection method instead of 'K 4-way i/f' as detailed in the "How to Notes" is the way to go if you have issues flashing with the  4-Way interface.

Feedback like this really helps add to the available pool of knowledge.

Colin

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Colin ,

Thank you for sharing this development with us all.

The cheapest way to reduce weight by circa 45grams I have ever seen.

Ian Coutts

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