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Old 04-01-2019, 12:05 PM   #21
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I think your efforts are enough to trade you a revolver for some questions I have
Hell yes! Nice move!
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Old 04-01-2019, 02:25 PM   #22
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I think your efforts are enough to trade you a revolver for some questions I have
You can ask as many questions as you like! that goes for people without motors to give away too! If you have a bare metal technical question or want to dive into understanding or creating your own brushless ( or brushed ) firmware or hardware feel free to post here or pm me.
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Old 04-01-2019, 03:05 PM   #23
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Now I just need to learn diptrace. Downloaded it earlier, I’ll try to dive in tomorrow.
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Old 04-01-2019, 03:26 PM   #24
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I’m pretty dang excited right now. My plans of formally schooling for programming got derailed this semester by a broken leg. This is a fresh breeze in my sails, I can learn a lot from looking at an existing project!
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Old 04-01-2019, 03:57 PM   #25
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Formal schooling is no match for truly loving what your doing and researching it yourself imo.
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Old 04-01-2019, 06:44 PM   #26
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Formal schooling is good when the subject is too complicated to figure out though. Anything to get me out of the office helps, my day at the shop is a peppering of questions every few minutes.
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Old 04-01-2019, 07:19 PM   #27
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Very excited about the developments in this thread and what it may mean for the future of Holmes Hobbies speed controllers.
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Old 04-02-2019, 04:02 AM   #28
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Formal schooling is good when the subject is too complicated to figure out though. Anything to get me out of the office helps, my day at the shop is a peppering of questions every few minutes.
I think the trick is to break it down and deal with one thing at a time, this is easy for me but I don't know if its the same for everyone. Also I get pretty reverent results from google, again not sure if everyone has the same experience. To be fair I cant say I have ever tried anthing as complex as wiring an esc. But I don't consider anything I know to be complex, and I know a few people think i know some complicated things, there is lots of perspective involved. Usually its only hard until you understand it.
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Old 04-02-2019, 04:45 AM   #29
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That was the route that I took. St micro has tons of example firmware that teaches you how to deal with each peripheral one at a time. First get Pwm going on one channel. Then multiple channels. Then add in a timer to change which channels are getting pwm at which times. Now you have open loop control. Then add in a comparator and see if you can use that to find zc's while spinning the motor by hand. Then use that comparator inerrupt to change the channel for you. When you have the comp changing your channels for you now you can deal with the input and regulating power. Bldc control can be built up slowly like this. I recommend getting on of the 10 ohm gimbal motors to learn on. If something goes wrong the resistance is too high to smoke your controller or motor yet you can still work with full power to the ESC.

https://letanphuc.net/tag/stm32f0-tutorial/

That site helped me a lot, very clear tutorials and a video for each one too. Each peripheral that needs to be used is pretty much covered.

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I think the trick is to break it down and deal with one thing at a time, this is easy for me but I don't know if its the same for everyone. Also I get pretty reverent results from google, again not sure if everyone has the same experience. To be fair I cant say I have ever tried anthing as complex as wiring an esc. But I don't consider anything I know to be complex, and I know a few people think i know some complicated things, there is lots of perspective involved. Usually its only hard until you understand it.

Last edited by Alka; 04-02-2019 at 04:54 AM.
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Old 04-03-2019, 07:23 PM   #30
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Mini-review of he hg-p402. I got this thing a couple of years ago now and my first impressions were.. "man this thing is a piece of junk" oh well i will let my kids play with it and bash around with it until it is no more. It has had a fair amount of abuse geared more like a basher truck for a 5 year old to play with. I still think it feels and sounds like every turn of its gears are going its last but it is still going.. steering is the worst I have ever used though, have to do something about that soon. Broke one driveshaft and the other is very twisted but for now it is holding on.. You need to locktite everything or it will slowly disintegrate in front of your eyes on the trail. For the price I am pretty happy.. lots of fun can be had with it! after two years I was looking online at another one just the same even knowing its faults...Going to save for something better I think though..

Anyway here's another video of the progress. This is about as slow as I can go with this standard design and still have decent torque. New hardware designs are on the way. JRH has got me thinking..
https://youtu.be/dCZOd3YfV7Y
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Old 04-03-2019, 08:16 PM   #31
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And you’ve got me waking up at 4 am thinking about hardware right now, lol! Im keeping up with the information better than I thought I would. It’s still a lot to process, but breaking it down Into individual periferals with a header file for each makes it easier by far.


I’ve been poking around in diptrace. I’m going to start with the two layer boards that you have but I can see where 4 layer or two board designs would really help compactness. Long term hardware goal would be power boards with integrated drivers and then brain boards with just brains and a regulator.
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Old 04-07-2019, 01:17 AM   #32
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This is really cool. I was reading the whole Hobbywing Axe thread the other week and was thinking that someone should start a open source project. A quick Google search and I ended up in this thread
Unfortunately I'm no electronics engineer so I can't help much with circuit board design. However I'm a developer and writing some code for this project would be really cool. One feature ive been thinking about is some way to change modes or profiles on the ESC on the fly. Preferably via an extra pwm input.
Say that you have the possibility to setup different profiles on the ESC for example for different types of terrain or maybe crawl or bash profiles. This could be setup with Bluetooth via an app on the smartphone or maybe usb on a laptop.
With a switch from the remote you could then change between the different modes/profiles.

Last edited by Vizual54; 04-07-2019 at 03:54 AM.
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Old 04-07-2019, 11:54 AM   #33
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This is really cool. I was reading the whole Hobbywing Axe thread the other week and was thinking that someone should start a open source project. A quick Google search and I ended up in this thread
Unfortunately I'm no electronics engineer so I can't help much with circuit board design. However I'm a developer and writing some code for this project would be really cool. One feature ive been thinking about is some way to change modes or profiles on the ESC on the fly. Preferably via an extra pwm input.
Say that you have the possibility to setup different profiles on the ESC for example for different types of terrain or maybe crawl or bash profiles. This could be setup with Bluetooth via an app on the smartphone or maybe usb on a laptop.
With a switch from the remote you could then change between the different modes/profiles.
Awesome! this is the kid of thing we need. There are actually 4 different vehicle modes on the firmware now. And eeprom is working , all we need is to get some serial coms working and we can probably 'easily' use Bluetooth adapters to change settings.
The code is messy right now. It is a learning project for me so you might laugh at the it.. any tips you have are welcome. Check out the GitHub link in one of the posts above. If you pick up a one of the cheap stm32f051 nucleo dev boards you can load up the firmware and help add in communication functions.
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Old 05-03-2019, 10:13 AM   #34
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Wow, this is super exciting. I always wonder why rc forums don’t cater to this kind of thing. Someone at rccrawler seriously needs to make a section for open source projects like this and also mechanical design. Maybe experimental would be a good classification?
I love tuning and a printed body, but this is another level that we should all aspire to!
Definitely going to keep up with your projects!
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Old 05-13-2019, 07:41 PM   #35
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Just one more software to learn. Just one more. spent a little time in diptrace today making this masterpiece of a design. seems pretty similar to kicad the way the schematics set up nets and then it is used to build the layout and ensure everything is connected proper.
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Old 05-16-2019, 08:46 PM   #36
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Just one more software to learn. Just one more. spent a little time in diptrace today making this masterpiece of a design. seems pretty similar to kicad the way the schematics set up nets and then it is used to build the layout and ensure everything is connected proper.
Haha, nice pcb ! I particularly like the parallelogram board outline. I bet manufacturers would love that!

I tried kicad but I like the mouse interface in diptrace makes sense more to me.. Adding new parts and footprints is pretty simple too.

How do you post pictures on this forum? I looked at the FAQ and I have no such albums link in my control panel. Tried creating an album and was denied. Something about permission.
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Old 05-16-2019, 11:15 PM   #37
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How do you post pictures on this forum? I looked at the FAQ and I have no such albums link in my control panel. Tried creating an album and was denied. Something about permission.

You need to purchase a star to have access to an album I believe. Some apps like tappa talk allow you to post pictures Just making sure that works.
You can also use a free image hosting site like Imgur, once you host an image they provide links that can be inserted into your posts.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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Old 09-30-2019, 07:00 PM   #38
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Added a brushed mode today, RC car and Crawler modes. Crawler uses full active braking , hold brake and instant reverse. Car mode requires double tap to reverse and coasts to stop.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZAhT9Cs9Sw

link for the code updated on the first post.

Last edited by Alka; 09-30-2019 at 07:05 PM.
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Old 09-30-2019, 07:06 PM   #39
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Added a brushed mode today, RC car and Crawler modes. Crawler uses full active braking , hold brake and instant reverse. Car mode requires double tap to reverse and coasts to stop.

So awesome! Nice work.
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Old 09-30-2019, 07:14 PM   #40
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So awesome! Nice work.

Thanks, it can control two brushed motors at the same time too, there is a separate channel that can be used for the second input. Both motors share the same middle mosfets so the drawback is both have to be going the same direction at the same time ( but they don't have to be going the same speed). Maybe its useful for dual motor crawlers ? otherwise the second channel can control the drag brake strength.

Last edited by Alka; 09-30-2019 at 07:18 PM.
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