Extended BLDC-TOOL with Watt Control Mode, PPM Cruise Control, individual Throttle-Curve and Android App

You can feel that cruise control in PPM mode changed for dual drives(smoother at carving) and the app has more features. Also NRF should be supported now (somebody has to test it) as well as the possibility to connect the bluetooth module to the slave when a Nunchuk is connected to the master.

Cruise Control now takes both wheels into account and adjusts the speed for each wheel. Because of that it needs some time that both wheels come to the same speed when the board is on the bench. But during riding it works nicely because when you make corners the inner wheel is slower then the outer wheel.

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hah yeah I did take a look… The text descriptions were really nice… sort of like you were sitting right next to me and explain what each settings does… thumbs up for that!

I found a very minor (text) mistake here:

Instead of word ‘‘devide’’ there probably should be ‘‘divide’’

You should care very much about it… especially if the text description might change in the future… just a little note…

Anyways nice Job! For me… who has not used a vesc before… almost all of the settings in this window were easy to understand with the help from tooltips alone…

Besides, were nice, if there was some kind of information, that these tooltips exist now (if there werent any before)… since I assume some ppl might just download your firmware without knowing it has been updated (then again, how many ppl there are who download yours straight away, as their got their vesc in their hands…)

The only a bit harder part was to understand what each ERPM setting meant but I think there were general example to just leave it at ‘60 000’ and that’s it.

I wonder when Benjamin vedder will release his new app / bldc tool, which some ppl are waiting for here… (vescs too, of course :smiley: )

Just made some small updates. I didn’t like the motor and battery’s total average values. Because it doesn’t make that much sense when you make a long brake. So i replaced that value by the “Active” value. So only when amps are drawn or charged it will be counted. When you coast and don’t touch the throttle it won’t be counted. So the average “Active” value is for that and the average “Riding” value is to have the average amps when the board is moving. This way we can get good values to find out in which way we use the battery’s.

Also the average watts during riding are added in the last line besides the average Temperature.

i also added the question mark button with that you can ask all the VESCs in the system if any of them had a fault during the ride. When you press the “Check for faults” and you see nothing then there was no fault. But you have to be connected to the Master to check all VESCs automatically.

next feature is that the throttle curve, braking at cruise control and the cruise control PID Controller is adjustable by the app for each mode. So you can decide if you use the settings which you have for your default mode or if you want to override it with individual settings when you activate this mode. this way it should be easy for everybody to find the sweet spot for the cruise control. (Hint: When Motor amps get changed a lot then you normally need to adjust the PID Controller, good setting for 60 Motor max is P=0.0040, I=0.0040, D=0.0000)

And of course the throttle curve is adjustable for each individual mode as well via the app

i think now we have everything we need to create a couple of drive modes for every situation. Like Carving mode, Chill mode, Power mode, Kids mode, Hangover mode, Ludicrous mode and so on. And if you have more than one board then the apps remember the settings for each one. So adjust it ones for each of them and that’s it.

Anyway, i will create a thread about all the features of the app in the next days.

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Ha! :joy::joy::joy:

I noticed when trying to setup some modes that I dont have the ability to use decimals in Motor/Batt. Max and Motor/Batt Min.

Also, I have the bluetooth connected to my slave vesc, CAN ID 1, and when I check the “Connect by CAN to ID” to 1 to match I get nothing from the app. While when I set it ID 0, the master, values are displayed in the app, but i noticed when riding the values have intermittent pauses. When I just leave the box unchecked everything seems to work fine, values are displayed and no noticeable intermittent values.

When you connect it to the slave and want to read the values of the master then you need to enable “Connect by CAN to ID” and select the controllerid of the master. So it was correct that you selected the id 0. the problem when you try to get the values of the master via the slave vesc then it takes a bit longer to get the data Because the slave needs to receive the command from the Buetooth module, send the ´command to the master, receive it again from the master and send it again to the Bluetooth module. Maybe it makes more sense to get the motor settings of the master but the realtime data of the slave itself.

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Is this then still completely valid:

For cruise control the 2 VESC’s need to be connected via can bus and the Slave VESC needs to send the status via can and the Master VESC needs to enable “Multiple ESCs over Can”?

Or does the master now has to send his status via CAN since the slave communicates via BT?

Still the old setup.

Thanks to @The_Dude a MAC version of the Modded BLDC-Tool 2.53 is now available at the Dropbox link.

I also added a new Version of the Android App. It makes the app a bit more user friendly and small bugs are fixed. So i recommend to update to this new version. As always it will take a while until the new version is available at the Google Play store.

And it would be great if some of you can post some videos which are made by the app. I would love to see the data of a board with pneumatic wheels.

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@Ackmaniac I should have my aluminum board with skikes up by next week. Ill get you some video of it. Also, if you want a google drive repository I have a google business account, I’d be glad to share you a directory you can dump stuff in to.

my raptor 2 vid is coming soon!

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I’m really enjoying this firmware, I increased batt max from 30A to 35A for each VESC and it’s runing super smooth, I also dialed the throttle curve to get a better initial torque as I’m used to the very sensitive Evolve Bamboo GT remote.

I just have some small things I’d like to tune.

  1. Increase braking force. I almost crashed a couple of times behind cars when they brake all of the sudden, the 100mm MBS wheels have a lot of mass and keep spinning, not easy to brake them. Would you suggest to increase batt min regen from -8A to -10A on each VESC safely without friying the VESC.

  2. Increase the acceleration from a stand still. I wonder if I should increase the batt max to 40A, changing the motor a pulley from 16T to 12T should also be an option. I increased the throttle curve, it felt better but when I’m at high speed it’s too jerky and I loose balance easily if I’m not pulling myself forward

  3. Traction control is blocking the wheels just 10cm away from a dead stop and it throws me forward every time, is there a way to smooth the final stop?

By the way I just donated a small amount to support your awesome work!

Please also post a Screenshot of your motor general, advanced and BLDC or Foc tab. And tell me which battery and motors you use (single or dual).

I think i can give you a answer to all of your problems but i need the screenshots first so that we know what we are talking about in detail.

Here are the screnshots:

I raised the batt max to 40A on master and slave and the Max Watt to 1300W on the master and now I’m getting more torque but not in the place I need.

From 0-15kms my torque is too low From 15-30 the board is a smoking rocket!!, all of the sudden it pulls way harder, maybe too much so I need to throw myself forward 45 degrees LOL :smile: From 30-40Km/Hr it slowly raises the speed

I’d like to raise the torque from 0-10Km/Hr, so if not other VESC settings are possible to adjust I might go from 16T to 12T motor pulley or from 36T to 40T wheel pulley.

  • You can raise the motor max to 80 and give that a try. But your Gearing is really high. It would be better to use 15 or 14 teeth. 12 teeth would be to small so that the belt would slip. You can also try to raise the startup boost. But only raise it in 0.01 steps.

  • To have more control especially at the range between 10 - 30 km/h you should lower the throttle curve. Just try 12.5, 30, 60 for the Y acceleration values. You quickly get used to it that when you want more power you only have to pull the trigger a bit more.

  • Then to have a better brake power at high speeds you can raise the battery min to -10. I prefer to might loose some cycle lifes of my battery instead of crashing into a car. But i don’t think that this would harm the battery because you would use those amps only for a second or two.

  • If the brake power is too weak at low speeds you should raise the motor min to maybe -80.

  • To have a smoother brake close to standstill you should reduce the “Max ERPM at full Brake in current control mode” to like 500.

  • And please check your minimum and maximum pulsewidth again because they seem to be a bit far away from each other. But they also could be ok.

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Hello together!

I, too, use a mac and wanted to get this cool BLDC mod running on my computer. When I looked in the Dropbox link I discovered a Mac App but unfortunatly it didn’t work on my laptop. After a little research I discovered the program “WineBottler” which will let you run Windows applications on a mac. http://winebottler.kronenberg.org

I tried it and after a few updates of the current beta of WineBottler I got BLDC running.

Maybe that will help all Mac users as well as @Ackmaniac with the question about a Mac App.

Greetings -Daniel

–SHORT UPDATE–

As you can read in the following posts, it seems that only MacOS 10.12.3 a.k.a. Sierra does not work with @The_Dude’s provided Mac App.

Hi Daniel,

can you tell me what went wrong? I tested the installation file of the BLDC app on my MacBook and it installed fine. Unfortunately I have no other Mac to try it on another computer. May be there is any error message that helps finding the root cause.

Dude

I give it a try. Thanks for the tip !

Hi Dude,

unfortunatly I didn’t make a screenshot but I will reinstall it and will capture the frame. And of course I will try to translate it to english :wink:

-Daniel

Speaking german (native) - maybe you can use the captured frame directly :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: