You are totally wrong. There is no downside of 3rd party apps at all.
The problem is that Benjamin doesn’t care about backwards compabitility. This already happened multiple times. I remember once all command codes were incremented by one, just because Benjamin decided to insert one command code in the beginning. Read motor configuration command turned into write motor configuration and resulted in many VESCs bricked. This could have been easily avoided just by adding the new command code in the end and keeping backwards compatibility. I talked to Benjamin specifically about this issue and he told me he doesn’t care much about it. Which is totally fine. He is a one man army does it the way he likes it.
But yeah @taz you were brave to even try 3rd party apps. What are the odds that COMM_GET_VALUES command turned into COMM_SET_DUTY? Pretty high since they are so close
I was one of the “lucky” ones that was affected. I had to get an ST link, solder pins to one of my Focboxes and upload the bootloader to un-brick it
I had no idea it was that easy to to mess things up.
I was ignorant not brave so next time I will wait for others to do the testing for me.
I second @rpasichnyk.
I asked Benjamin at the beginning of VESC-Tool project about the operture of this project to other contributors.
Got the answer that you’ll write an ethos page for guiding contributors, blablabla.
But, afterall, everything’s in Ben’s hands.
For instance, I wrote a custom FW with mode (or profiles) months ago, but couldn’t push anything since Benjamin told (in november) that he’s completely rewriting the FW on his own.
Got no answer about the release date, nor any kind of info. Just gave up my custom FW.
THAT kills contribution. Really.
I love this project but did my mourning about seeing it as a real OS project (funny that you took the Firefox example for justifying TM. This project has 6,5k contributors).
Today we have a paid app and software/firmware without sources (temporary I hope).
About third party stuffs, thanks to them we have some fixes and features added to the official firmware.
Telemetry, Modes, PPM center pulsewidth, easy dual setup FW update…
They push the game further instead of braking it as you think.
Sorry, you got me wrong. It’s just that a major update comes with plenty of new code and the nature of such a release is that it creates work for others. Benjamin tries his best to come up with solutions that are future proof and form a foundation to build upon. It is a complex software. You can nail a problem in many ways and some ways are better than others, not working yourself into a corner.
If you plan a major update with all those new features it requires to restructure things.
I am happy for the new VESC tool. It introduces many new interesting features and makes setup a lot less intimidating for a new user.
I am sure @rpasichnyk will find a way to make his excellent metr pro module and app work with the new FW.
IMO It would be better for all if they could work together to make such transitions easier but it is what it is.
All I can tell you is that Benjamin takes his time and sketches things up before starting to code to avoid complications and to avoid working things into corner. He always does things for a reason and publishes the code, so everyone can have a look and straighten things out, which is a fair move.
This is a major update and many things have changed quite a lot, so other Apps will have to adopt to the changes and it will take some time. Benjamin doesn’t do such things to create incompatibilities on purpose. It is simply the nature of a major update that things change. Moving forward means changing code base and Benjamin does things the way he thinks it is best.
Personally I think he did a fantastic job and the App and VESC-Tool is on a different level now.
I’m also pretty sure that @rpasichnyk will find a way to adopt to the new tool and make his App compatible.
No doubt about Ben’s wish to have the better app and FW.
However, it’s quite difficult to have a general point of view and understand the needs of most users when you work alone.
Stuffs that Ben may consider as minor changes could have a deep impact on our work.
This is what @rpasichnyk tried to explain.
And I experienced the same.
Few words exchanged with Ben could have avoid tons of work/customer support for us, 3rd party devs.
This may be a dumb question, but if I use the new Vesc Tool, will it break my ability to use the Metr App? The Trampa Vesc App™ looks really archaic and I can’t see myself wanting to use it.
No that is not the case! If you update fw via usb there are no problems to be had with the metr pro as far as i can tell. I havent tried changing settings on bt after update which might be the thing to avoid for now.
But if the MASTER controller for any reason goes down, the slave stops working and now both drive trains are down instead of only one drive train. So, no brakes…
Dual receivers is better man
I’m not even talking about split PWM, but two receivers (dual PWM)
This is pretty scary. All of the rest of the smartphone wars and licensing bullshit has nothing on this.
The whole point of open source is the ability to build off other peoples contributions and build something that is greater than the sum of its parts. I’m not worried that when I update Firefox it’s going to cause a kernel panic next time I boot. On a skateboard traveling at 25mph, the equivalent of a kernel panic is street face with a side of hospital. If @rpasichnyk is correct, and I believe he is given the current state of my board, this is physically dangerous.
Yesterday, I downloaded the new vesc tool for windows and updated my board’s firmware using the TCP bridge feature in the Metr.at app. The firmware update went fine, and I was able to configure it using the new motor wizard. It appeared to be functioning fine on the test bench, so I took it out for a ride. Everything was fine on that ride, but it seemed that the speed limit I had set previously using the Metr.at app has stuck around. So I opened up the app and changed modes. Then the motor wouldn’t start when I gave it throttle.
I don’t feel like anything in the previous paragraph is wildly irresponsible or obviously dangerous. And yet, it caused my board to be suddenly non-operational.
I am extremely glad that whatever setting Benjamin changed that broke compatibility with the Metr.at app, didn’t cause my board to suddenly accelerate or cause my brakes to not work because I probably would have been severely injured.
Prior to reading this thread, It hadn’t occurred to me that someone would be so wildly reckless as to release a new patch that fundamentally changes the way other devices/services interact with something so crucial to the safe operation of a motor vehicle.
I’m pretty pissed off right now, but I really feel like never riding my board again and selling it for parts.
I recently got the Metr.at module and it’s awesome. However, the fact you can use it to configure critical VESC settings makes me feel rather anxious. Now, if it changes the settings without first checking that the VESC is running a compatible FW version, that’s pretty bad. Doing such checks should be mandatory for all 3rd party apps that change the VESC config.
Vesc-Tool has such a feature built in since the day one. It checks the FW version and refuses access to settings if the FW is not compatible. You need to update if your FW is outdated or incompatible. This way there is always a match between config software and and FW.
The onus is on the third party provider to test compatibility with current firmware( before allowing any interaction with VESC) and not on Benjamin.
So your anger is misplaced. If you just use Ben’s code + firmware+ app, they always work. If you use thirdparty apps and devices, then ask them to test everything before end users can talk with new firmware versions.
I have been playing rainbow six siege recently. Last patch they made a change that reset some keyboard settings for some players.
You know what greeted me when I logged into the game? A nice message saying “we made some changes to X. Please check your X settings as they may have changed.
It’s really not that hard. Don’t make changes that you know will break stuff without letting people know first.
