Trolling Motor powered by lithium ion 18650's?

[BrianG]

@sikes: Yeah, your setup does pose a few challenges given the wireless thing. But hey, just use an actual R/C radio and problem solved. Just gather an ESC, receiver, and radio , then take out all the other stuff (maybe even sell it) and you're done!

BTW: when I mention losses, I'm not really concerned too much about heat (assuming the stock controller does use PWM to the motor), but more about system efficiency (reflected in runtime) and adding points of failure.

Also, what are you going to use as an LVC? The converter masks the true state of the cells until they just all-out stop. The lack of punch and/or speed of a direct battery to motor setup would be an indication of charge state, but you'll not see it with the converter since it outputs a steady 13.8v.

These converters must simply be high current buck regulators, essentially "large BECs", and are likely to fail the same as any BEC; when it does, it outputs full input voltage (18-36v in your case). Just something else to think about.

[sikeston34m]

[QUOTE=BrianG;391216]@sikes: Yeah, your setup does pose a few challenges given the wireless thing. But hey, just use an actual R/C radio and problem solved. Just gather an ESC, receiver, and radio , then take out all the other stuff (maybe even sell it) and you're done! QUOTE]

This gives me some interesting ideas. OK, here's my "radio".

Center button, ON-Off Left-Right of course for steering. There are 10 steps to speed control. + and - are speed increase and speed decrease.



I wonder if there is anyway to match a receiver to the output of my "radio".

Then a simple BEC to power the receiver AND the steering servo.

If it were possible to match a receiver with this, then the rest of the controls might be worked out.