ESC Firmware Suggestions

[BrianG]

lol, if it gets too complex, pretty soon you'll have some hacker taking over your R/C. All he has to do is gain control and drive out of your sight and then he has a new vehicle.

Seriously, some of these ideas are very good. However, my original intents was more towards augmenting current functionality and adding things that would be fairly simple and not require 1GB of memory to accomplish.

[What's_nitro?]

Brian, 1GB is nothing.



But I know what you mean...

[BrianG]

lol, I know. I have one of those mircoSD cards in my celly, but in 4GB flavor. Could beat the price at ~$10 (incl a regular SD adaptor) when the 1GB was only $2 less. Anyway, I wonder how tolerant those are to the elements?

[What's_nitro?]

They are completely sealed. Just don't flex them too much.

[TexasSP]

You know the cell phone idea is nice. If they could modify castle link to work with windows mobile, I would be in good shape. Already got the USB and Windows Mobile on my phone.

[BrianG]

Originally Posted by What's_nitro?

They are completely sealed. Just don't flex them too much.

I was thinking more on the lines of the temperature extremes...

[What's_nitro?]

The casing material would need to be changed, but my guess would be the internal transistors can handle anything the ESC could produce. Short of a fire, of course. I don't think the cold would be a problem, except for the casing becoming brittle if it were not changed.

[plumslow]

I would do away with the punch control and replace it with a current limiter. That would allow you to handle the initial power like a current limiter and not interfere with the rest of the throttle unless you set it too low and the ESC would feel flat. It would allow better runtime since less current would be flowed for the instant you would be above the current limit. I always liked the current limiters in the ESCs I had. The punch control is not that useful for me compared to the limiter. Punch control seems like a 2 stroke hitting a power band if you set it too hi. It can also be dead acting until it hits the power band.

[crazyjr]

I tryed the punch control once and forgot i had it on, thought i had a bad 4600 motor. Never used it again, I say lose it

[BrianG]

What did you set it for? If around 20-30%, it's hardly noticeable IMO unless you are a hardcore racer.

As for the current limiter, I don't think the current hardware supports this type of measurement. So, that leaves having the ESC detect voltage dips past X amount and pull back on the power until it levels out again. I personally think this would be kinda cool because it would help prevent people with substandard batteries from puffing them, or damaging something else. However, if you have really good batteries that don't drop much voltage under heavy load, the current limiter would be useless.

Again, these ideas are for firmware updates that uses the existing hardware. While some of these ideas hold merit, they require additional circuitry.

[SV6000]

I think all these ideas are really good. The cell phone/PDA programing would be a fun touch. I would gladly settle for a speedy that could handle much larger amperage even if double the size of the MMM especially if a HV version

[Unsullied_Spy]

I agree on the current limiter, I was able to run a Neu 1515 1.5D on 18 cells NiMH in a E-Revo with my MGM 16018 and that would have blown the cells apart with a MMM. Also, as the pack loses juice it would limit the current draw to keep the cells above 3v/cell. The previous owner of the ESC ran a 15C 1500 mAH lipo in a MM5700 powered Rustler and it did fine, he tried the same lipo with a MM and it puffed the pack.

[Pdelcast]

Nice thread.... keep the suggestions coming. I'm gonna print out this thread and bring it to the next engineering meeting.

Patrick

[Sparky]

I run in the expert class. Current limmiting is the real answer. I run 5s and 6s and the punch at 100%. It does not seem to have much limmiting effect at 6s. I think it must have been setup around a 4s setup. I hope they expand the limmiting capibility.

[pasan]

About ABS... that wouldn't be difficult to implement in theory. When the brakes are applied, there's reverse flow of current, so measuring the size of the wave would allow the ESC to vary the brake at a preset point i.e. when the size of the wave becomes large (when the motor has almost stopped spinning) it will reduce the brake. Of course, there is the problem of when the ESC will know if the vehicle has come to a stop or not. 1:1 vehicles have all sorts of sensors which tell the computer the vehicle is still in motion even when all the wheels are not moving; our humble ESCs will not know how to distinguish between locked wheels during motion and a full stop :(