I just ran the tests then applied the settings that the program discovered. Once that was done my board was amazingly quiet and will now barely stutter at all when starting from a standstill. Breaking is quiet too.
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@psychotiller in which order did you run the tests ? When I try to measure R & L I get an error “R is zero, measure it first”.
I had pretty much the same experience. But I think I need some tweaking to get the brakes just right.
I did the steps in order of appearance. Top to apply button
How long are the battery cables between capPCB pads and your battery? They should not be longer than 20cm for FOC, I had the same error (and some more) when the cables where to long. BLDC is less sensitive though.
@elkick would the effect of long battery cables be reduced if using more capacitors in parallel?
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I think it would reduce unwanted ripple current to increase the 2000µF caps to a higher value, but I’m not sure if the VESC would perform normally, I never tried it.
My board flexes a lot so I want to put the battery pack at the front of the board and run braided cable underneath the grip tape so I’m looking at a length of around 1m, I suppose I should test this before putting the board together!
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I ran a battery from the front of my board to the back, and didn’t have any problems.
If you look at some of the DIY boosted boards on ES, they run their cables from front to back and I know I’ve seen a couple using VESC’s.
Are they using FOC? It’s no problem with BLDC, but I tested it with different VESCs and long cables (40cm) with FOC, no luck at all.
Yeah I want all this FOC goodness!
my battery cables are definitely less than 20cm. However, WTF do the battery cables have to do with it? I would understand if maybe we were talking about phase wires, but source power cable lengths make a difference?
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@elkick my cables are certainly longer than 20cm so that may be the problem.
Please excuse my scepticism but I would like to hear some objective opinions from real life experience why FOC would be better than BLDC on an e-skate. At the moment it all seems like much ado about nothing, really.
Quoting Benjamin: “Don’t expect any magic from FOC. You will hear a big difference in sound, but you are not likely to gain any noticeable difference in efficiency. The FETs will most likely get warmer and the motor efficiency might increase a bit a low speed, which can be good for hub motors and ebikes. Also, the top speed (or motor kv) will get lower with FOC with a factor of sqrt(3) / 2 or 0.866 since the modulation is a bit limited when full sine waves are modulated. With a three shunt version of the VESC the modulation could be increased to 100%, but that means that the commutation at full speed will be trapezoidal, the same as bldc. Another way to increase the top speed is using field weakening, but I don’t know how well that works and how efficient that is on our motors. The difference in sound is really worth FOC for me though :-)”
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So basically the only real difference is less sound and hotter FET’s. I’m sticking with BLDC.
better sound isn’t much of an improvement. They already sing my favorite song.
So we now have three bullet points that are great on paper and mean ~nothing on the street:
- regenerative braking
- traction control
- FOC
However, whatever they are doing is hella better than any other ESC i’ve ever used.
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Does anyone know which of the two options is set the Raptor?
probably BLDC since there is a lack of documentation on properly setting up FOC with Enertion R-SPECS. @onloop is great about sharing his findings, so i suspect there are no findings yet from his camp, or they are still being gathered.
And after test riding this build for the past two days i suspect there’s no rush. Its already sooo good in BLDC mode.
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@longhairedboy @trbt555 I think that FOC might be a matter of preference in terms of what it means on-the-street. In early testing I’m experience much better low-speed control and smoother startups. Silent operation (if it doesn’t come with a major performance hit) is a big benefit in my usage. I ride amongst other people and I definitely prefer the quiet operation. All just preference, but I think it’s fair to call FOC legit a benefit of VESC, especially over other ESCs that can be neighborhood-waking loud at times. Now to see if I can actually perfect it in implementation 
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