Topic created by Onloop - Is the Ollin VESC using upgraded components?

Would be nice to have an ETA, but I know that is not under your control

Best I can do is to keep sending him donations for his work.

Vedder just received his revised pcb’s last week so, fingers crossed, it will be posted to the github soon. One thing I am really excited about is a complete redesign of the bldc-tool so get your systems running linux/ubuntu if you want to use it! Although it will be fairly easy to port it over to win/osx if that is your flavor.

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I have experienced good and bad from many of the sellers on this site. I understand there is a learning curve given the new designs.

However, when it comes to VESCs Ollin is the only way to go. I have four from Ollin and they are still running as strong as the day I received them. And have always received within 3 weeks of ordering.

Relative to the Enertion VESC I paid $139 back in April and didn’t receive it until July. It only lasted about about 2 weeks and 30 miles. Now in order to have it replaced I need to buy an additional platinum warranty for it to be replaced at a price 57.00, making my total cost $196 and more waiting.

Some manufactures just make better parts than others. I have been very happy with my Enertion motor mounts and Spacecell pro 4.

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I would like to chime in as a noobie. In fact so new that I haven’t received my Raptor from Enertion. I (we) the customer will pay more money for better components. Whether it is a skateboard component, a better dish washer, fridge or sparkplug. I am with the crowd that is sick and tired of cheap-READ- (profitable for the company bad for consumer) chinese made anything. Guys, BUILD A BETTER VESC even if it costs more money for the better components. Stay away from CHINESE=CHEAP. I want to use my board when I get it and not have it sitting there waiting for new VESCS to arrive. That’s why we the customers will pay more money. I am putting together my 2nd board for my 21 year old son on paper. I will be reading and looking for the BEST components for my 2nd board regardless of price. Just my “customer” point of view. Also this back and forth does nothing for any of you vendors in my honest opinion. It just pushes potential customers away from your brands.

that’s our plan… constant innovation!.. we will also share “how we do it” with the community too.

Check out onloop’s The False Economy thread. Here he states that his purpose is to provide better quality parts to make better electric skateboards.

The VESC design works well under the correct circumstances and with good build quality. The acquisition of such a VESC is as much a challenge as the production there of.

I do agree that mods/alternate solutions in whole or in part must be documented clearly, however a BOM for a board can differ between batches by the same and alternate manufacturers and should not be the source of angst within our community. We should instead embrace the diversity we have been gifted with via the VESC and hope to improve the design such that varying component quality or style does not impact the performance so significantly.

The end solution is that instead of privately communicating with Vedder, we should all use his lovely forums to track our research. Perhaps we should publish component failure/repair rates and keep a public record of problems frequently encountered. As an open source project, ya’ll should be totally okay staring there.

Do you repair other manufacturers vescs?

We do not currently offer a VESC repair service.

Can you please tell us a little bit more about it? What is so exciting that is coming?

The bldc-tool is being restructured to make it easier to make changes.

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@Blasto my apologies for the delayed reply, I was a little busy yesterday.

At least one component is upgraded by @chaka to a higher capacity model, we spoke about this a while ago after he saw my VESC’s. I found it interesting/strange that vedder used 50V ceramic caps on places where up to 50V is applied since capacity drops extremely fast when a ceramic cap is operated close to its designed voltage. Yes this component is easily way more expensive (the cap alone costs 5 euro @ mouser = same price as DRV chip :fearful: ), but hey its that or very little low impedance capacity on the main power bus.

I would never claim that these type of upgrades will eliminate random blow-ups of VESC’s. Lets approach its safe: I think that some component upgrades will reduce the damage in case of wrong settings / los of battery while braking.

A VESC (just like any other BLDC ESC) will most likely blow if you short any of its phase outputs with the other. There should always be at least some inductance in the line close to that what is configured as the motor inductance. The whole current monitoring + regulation is based on the presence of the motor inductance!

You can understand that if the motor inductance is configured incorrectly the current that realized vs. the current that is desired is very different ( since the parameters do not correspond with the real system ). So the current could exceed the max allowed values easily when motor parameters are wrong. (even the motor parameter measurement is sometimes wrong in its estimation).

Another way to easily kill any BLDC ESC is operate it close to its voltage limit, brake, and while breaking disconnect the battery. The ESC will boost the back EMF/energy trying to pump it to the battery, the battery however is gone and the only thing to pump the energy in is the CAPS. The energy storage capabilities of the caps are minimal, thus voltage will rise fast. The VESC has a system to disable when the input voltage is to high, but it might be to slow to react when there is no battery.

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This is exactly my motivation to having a 50V TVS at the input, the TVS will be much faster to react and give an alternative current path to avoid an overvoltage situation.

Are you talking about your platinum service? Chaka offered this a long time before you, and he is the reason you even offer it. There was a whole debate here, because he offered it before you, so what are you smoking?

You host this forum cause if the industry doesn’t grow, you have no customers to sell your products to. It also doubles up as freeing you up from having to give advice to people using your parts. You can point them to the forum, and have us answer them for free, instead of taking up your time, which is worth a lot of money.

You did this to show us how much they cost to be made, not cause you want others to make them. I tried to get them made from your designs, but unless I buy in huge bulk, they would have been over $200 USD each. So they are effectively useless, since the design requires more dimensions on a cnc machine then your new design, which you haven’t released the files for.

If people don’t know how to build them, you have no one to sell your parts to. So it’s not about the goodness of your heart, it’s about keeping a steady flow of customers, and it’s a smart business move for you to inform people how to use your parts.

Same as above, the second you started making all these videos is around the same time your company started blowing up. It’s a smart business move to inform your customers of how to use your products.

Look, at the end of the day, you are brilliant business man. You know what to pick your arguments about and how to effectively argue. You do a good job of spinning things you do that are crucial to the survival of your company as favors to the community.

You are growing the industry and you are allowing others to sell their products on the forum, and that I applaud you for. It’s hard to argue that certain parts you sell like your motors are not high quality motors (whether they are over priced or not is a whole nother argument).

But your a business man. What features have you added to the vesc? Do you even know C? How deep is you electrical engineering education (do you have a degree in electrical engineering)? I just created the first 4wd board I’ve seen on this forum in a working state. I just created the first deck I’ve ever seen that was built from cnc milled 1/16th" veneers and pressed with a hollow core, and 100% Canadian maple (no CF of FG). And I invite you to participate in my thread, and you don’t care to even say anything about these innovations. Your too caught up in your business to see things from a builders eye anymore. You outsource everything you can. Do you even own a cnc milling machine? Or a jig saw or a press or anything that can be used to fabricate parts?

I’m surprised to see Jerimiah actually rip into you, but he’s been very patient, and I think he’s finally done putting up with this hoax you have going of being for the community when you care more about keeping your business going instead of being willing to lose your company because you chose to use shitty Chinese factories multiple times to make shitty quality vescs. If you haven’t significantly studied electrical engineering and can’t explain everything that’s happening at the board level, then stop hating on others that do. I am going out of my way to take more electrical physics class, and C class, just so I can understand the vesc better, and try to offer something to the community. Did you take through calc III? did you take general physics II with applied calculus? Have you taken computational physics (which I’m taking right now)? Stop acting like your smarter than everyone and be willing to admit your mistakes, and man up to them. If I can have my dream of starting a board company, and I make shitty boards, I won’t blame my customers, but accept I picked the wrong company to make them, and accept that my company might go under because of that, instead of my customers bank accounts.

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His motors arent overpiced, and the vesc com from texas… Please stop choosing sides, like @longhairedboy said, chaka’s makes excellent vescs and enertion makes excellent drive systems… And the best parts, it works absolutely fantastic together, so stop the childish behavior and both shoukd work on further developping their own products…

The VESCS only recently started coming from Macrofab. Previously, he has used multiple different vendors, one being Maytech.

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for the last year before this new factory in texas, he went through 3 factories in china. I bought vescs from 2 of those factories, 1 was broken on arrival, the other broke the second day of use. I was told It was my fault, I likely configured them wrong or something. Bought from chaka, did the same thing to set them up in the same setup, and rode for 4 months and they still work great.

Even now with this new texas factory, they ignored vedders warning about the pins needing to be clipped so it doesn’t puncture the main positive lead to the cap board.

His drive system for a mono drive used to suck. His old motor mounts had a small screw to adjust tension. You need to locktite them or they will come loose due to vibrations. Both of the ones I bought, The screws broke off when trying to turn them and take them out. After the first one, I was extremly carful taking out the second screw, but the head still broke off, and the screw threads are stuck in there. They looked like shitty quality screws, and beyond that, a bigger screw should have been used their from the beginning so this would have never happened.

He also used to sell only 9mm belts for mono drive systems. He said they will work fine on hills, but they didn’t I ate through 8 belts in 6 months of riding. Every time, I tried new belt tensions, because I was told it was either too lose or too tight. But the problem was that a 9mm belt can’t handle 10%+ grades with a 200 pound rider. Having told him everything, he assured me I was doing something wrong and his products were great.

I wasted over $1000 on enertion products and I have nothing working 8 months later except a motor to show for it. His products are better now IMO than they ever have been, but he never once offered to replace ANYTHING (excpect after months of arguing, he ddi send me a 12mm belt, which fixed the issue and proves my point that he should never of sold 9mm belts for mono drive systems, despite requesting it and advertising it like crazy.

I have a right to be pissed off, because I was naive and fell for his marketing scams.

This isn’t childish behavior, its using logic, experience, and science to back up my claims. So stop being a fan boy and realize that your experience may not have been everyone else’s.

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Yep. 2 minute fix with a dremel’s sanding drum and some blue tape. Clipping still leaves sharp points of not done with flush snippers.

Ollin’s are very nicely snipped.

if you cut them to the right length before they are soldered on, this problem is 100% avoidable. I remove my canbus ports and solder wires straight through the board. I am careful with the wire length, so that I don’t have pins sticking out. that could short something or poke something. It’s about being aware of what your building and taking the time to build something right the first time.

i want to do somethign similar with the USB ports so i can start having them accessible from outside the box.

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