EXTENDED ACKMANIAC-ESC Tool based on VESC-Tool

Wait, what? I thought there had to be no pullies or anything mounted. Really, is removing the wheels enough?

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Thanks guys. That was the issue. Didnā€™t use sensors before. Not having wheels on itā€¦ lesson learned

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No, your right. Iā€™m tired :smile:. Nothing should be attached to the motor.

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Need some help with braking in FOC.

I flashed my 4.12 VescĀ“s with the latest 3.100 firmware and did setup FOC sensorless for both VescĀ“s and motors. I am using the Nano remote and the VescĀ“s are connected via Canbus, both motors are spinning after a slight push and acceleration is just fine and smooth. In PPM i have set current with no reverse and braking. And my remotes signal is centered. But when braking, i just get strong braking for a split second and after that the board coastĀ“s and brakes in a rhythmical pattern but with no braking force at all, i donĀ“t know how to describe it, itĀ“s like a kind of cogging. I played with battery min. regen. and lowered it down to -7 to no avail. Sometimes when i accelerate just for a short time the braking works as expected, but if the speed drops beyond a certain amount the board startĀ“s coasting again. When I accelerate to a higher speed the brakes will disengage immediately. This kind of cogging, or whatever i should call it, happens through all the throw of my remote, so the Vesc seems to recieve the signal properly. Running the same setup in BLDC works just fine. I hope someone can enlighten me, i really want that silent FOC to be running. Here in Japan people are jelling and swearing at me because of the noise running BLDC.

I never run BLDC but I have similar problems with FOC when going downhill and the regen current of -10 is not enough to stop my (m)ass. Are you trying to brake on flat spot when this happens? Whatā€™s your weight?

Yeah flat ground. And the speed at that is happening is random. I just plugged both VESCā€™s in to the Esc tool and saw that both show the f*cking DRV error. Anyway motor detection still works in both modes and in BLDC everything is working as it should.

NEW ACKMANIAC_TOOL 3.101

Just released the new Version 3.101 of the Ackmaniac-Tool which includes the latest changes of Benjamin Vedders original firmware and fixes 2 important issues.

  1. By another thread i realized that one of the motors stopped braking when the maximum speed is exceeded like one user reported. This also caused the problem that dual motors did brake uneven when connected by CAN and motor min and motor max had different values. With the new firmware you will realize that the brakes feel less strong but you can simply adjust that by increasing the motor min value. Because now they brake with the same power.

  2. And the other problem was that the brakes disabled themself when the start of the mosfet or motor temperature was reached.

Both issues came from the original firmware and i addressed the second problem already in the official VESC forum. The first problem came also from the original firmware but Benjamin never used the function that caused the issues.

Another minor issue is also fixed which let the slave motor brake when you try to enable cruise control while driving backwards (guess nobody noticed that).

I recommend to update the firmware even if it takes some time to setup everything again. Maybe you should first save the settings with the old Ackmaniac-Tool and then load these settings in the new one. But still double check everything. And test the board properly if everything behaves normal after the update.

PS: I realized that when the master and the slave have both ā€œSend status via CANā€ activated and the same ā€œController Idā€ then the slave motor can cut out. So please be careful that the master doesnā€™t have this parameter enabled and to be safe give them a different ā€œController Idā€.

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Sorry for deleting posts but i think the update info is important. BTW i updated the GIT repository. And Mac version is hopefully coming soon.

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Anything change with canbus? Canā€™t seem to get both motors spinning now with the newest firmware.

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Yes the CAN Baudrate needs to be setup now and should be the same on all ESC. I recommend 500K. And take care that ā€œSend CAN statusā€ is only activated at the Slave and disabled at the master. And as there are new messages for the CAN Bus all VESC should have the same firmware. So donā€™t try it with only one updated. just flash both and then do the setup.

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Thanks dude! Iā€™ve updated both vescs (I wouldnā€™t not update them both lol) but I still canā€™t get it to work right for some reason. Iā€™ve been using these same settings for almost two years now. Any ideas or am I missing something?

Master-

Slave-

Try to set the ā€œCAN Status rateā€ to 100 Hz. I am at skype for a couple of minutes, maybe we can have a look together. And are you sure that you executed the hall sensor detection and applied the values on the motor that jitters?

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Yeah. I actually thought it was maybe a bad motor detection at first so Iā€™ve run them a few times now on each motor. Iā€™m going to going through both motor detections and setup really quick. If I can;t get it going and you wanna skype Iā€™m up for that too. Iā€™ll let you know in just a few minutes. Thanks for the help!

So Iā€™ve done both motor detections and have everything setup correctly as far as I know. Not sure where to go next.

Update- And once again @Ackmaniac to the rescue! Thanks for the help and getting me back up and running once again dude. Youā€™re one of a kind!!!

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Can you elaborate on solution?

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He was using a Virtual Machine to be able to use Windows. And he had the live relatime data, app data and heat rate enabled. Seems that that was too much for the serial communication so that some of the reads and writes didnā€™t work. After disabling of all the live data it worked without issues. So if you use the Windows via a Virtual Machine then you should disable all the live data when you change values.

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v3.101 works like a charm in FOC on my FOCBOXā€™es :+1:

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Thatā€™s closest Iā€™ve ever heard brushless electric motors sound like an internal combustion engine. It seriously sounds like a chainsaw.

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Yeah man. They were sounding crazy! This is how they sound now though. Thought Iā€™d give FOC a go for a bit and see how much money I can blow. Haha :wink:

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i may have seen skipped something, but can i get this for mac?