EXTENDED ACKMANIAC-ESC Tool based on VESC-Tool

This is kind of crazy. @Ackmaniac and vedder thank you so much, this is awesome. On previous hw 2.54 I wouldn’t pull anywhere near 20A on my pack, now I pull a lot more amps and have insanely more torque on foc. (all of the settings are the same.)

I understand your first point, but this seems to have change with the new version v3.x. There is many contributor in the VESC FW project.

What’s wrong with BT and UART telemetry on the “official” FW ?

@Ackmaniac any chance to add a tab in the ESC Tool where you can name and save settings? It will be useful to quickly change between “weak” and “powerful “ settings with one click. Currently I can export settings to file but built in button would be much easier. Thanks !

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@Ackmaniac Any chance that you’ll release FW file directories?

Hi guys, I really don’t want to clutter this beautiful thread but I think I may have just screwed up the firmware update and could really do with some help. I have a slightly older FOCBOX - V1.3 on the board, have just downloaded the new Extended Ackmaniac-ESC Tool (which looks glorious btw) tried to install the new firmware; I selected 410 & 411 & 412 but it hung on 99.7% and I got the spinning wheel timer on my mac which stayed on for the last 20 mins so I disconnected the FOCBOX and now I don’t get the 3 flashing lights on start up (it pauses then just goes to solid green) and it won’t connect. Have a ruined my FOCBOX? Is there a way back from here? Happy to set this up as a new topic to not distract from the awesome content on here :sweat: just let me know.

Any help would be hugely appreciated - hopefully any response will help others avoid doing the same, or help resolve the issue.

Thanks guys,

Dan

I changed many things in the PPM and Nunchuk (NRF) handling. Also the way acceleration and power is handled is different to the original version. Also the Timeout ramping handling needs a lot of changes.

But i realized that it would take forever that my ideas would find it’s place in the original. And i simply don’t have the time to wait for months and discuss everything to death before something happens. I am more interested in development and finding solutions. Also Benjamin don’t seem to be active on the project in the last couple of weeks (of course i could be wrong here). Also my questions in the VESC-Project forum were never answered by him.

And the biggest problem are the changes that are needed that all the features of my app work. And i am pretty sure Benjamin isn’t interested to implement that stuff only for my app.

Sadly i had to give the tool it’s own name because of the Trademark policy’s. I would have preferred that it is clearly visible that it is only a extension.

Long story short. I do this for fun and not for business. And to discuss and fight for every little change is no fun for me.

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Just unplug the USB cable, stop the ACKMANIAC-ESC tool and switch off the VESC. Then connect and start everything again. With the new firmware the FOCBOX won’t flash 3 times anymore on startup (same as official version)

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Ok, that’s reassuring - hadn’t realised that and assumed there was an issue. The mac version keeps hanging with the spinning wheel but the PC version (cheekily just installed it on my work asset -shhhhh) seems to have picked it back up again showing version 3.100 is installed - am I back in the game? I guess it would be unresponsive until I set up it again right?? Thanks for the immediate response - you’re a legend and I’ll be sure to hit the donate button once I get her spinning :blush:

Nothings wrong with the telemetry, I’m simply stating your reasoning that other apps will be harder to support is wrong, because none of the Devs have changed the outward packets data set. Only the inward packets for firmware configuration. You realize all the 2.xx firmware variations can work with all the phone appa, same thing with all the 3.2x versions, its because there’s no value in changing the telemetry data set on the firmware variations… If you don’t do code, let me rephrase it. We have a book called vesc, with a chapter called telemetry. A dev may change the cover of the book or other chapters, but the telemetry stays the same, the words don’t change, and the language/formatting doesn’t change, so all the apps can still “read” it

Available at BLDC-TOOl and Firmware\ackmaniac-firmware_3_100.zip

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Amen. To be honest, I gave up since a while now collaborating with this project. And I’m really sad. After so many hours spent testing, reporting bugs and more (remember the VESC 6 protocol), and never got any consideration for my requests, I’m figuring out that I wasted a lot of (precious) time. :frowning: Anyway, as always said and as @Vanarian tells very well : your skills are amazing though.

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:slight_smile: @Deckoz My turn to say you: it’s pretty inacurate.

I’m the autor of the iOS eSkate VESC app: http://www.electric-skateboard.builders/t/new-version-2-0-ios-eskate-vesc-app-for-standard-and-ackmaniac-fw/32340

I can confirm you, that all the latest version (2.18, 2.54, 3.27) did modify the command interface. And I have specific code for each of this version.

For this reason I’m complaining about seeing a new fork of the FW, because it make our work more difficult. And for the users all this version stream make it difficult to understand and diagnostic compatibility problems.

I can perfectly understand Nicola’s answer, and we are all working on that for fun and not for money. You know it’s easier to work alone than together, but has the proverb say:

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together

Maybe a good solution for everybody, would be to put the ackmaniac extension on Github has a fork of the VESC Project (there are already a lot of fork of the vesc project). This will:

  • permit to Nicolas to keep the freedom of making the choice he want, without loosing time in discussion.
  • make easier to follow the modification for the apps developper, like @rpasichnyk and @emmaanuel
  • Clarify the perimeter of the modification done by Nicolas versus the code from Benjamin project
  • allow to merge into the VESC project all the good ideas from Nicolas
  • allow to keep ackmaniac up to date about all the good ideas from the VESC Project.
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The command interface is different then the telemetry data set.

The data set in all 2.x firmwares is the same. The 3.2x firmware data structure is slightly different but not likely to be modified further.

Executing commands over the UART interface is different then the telemetry packet.

Usually I would have let let the discussion here, but it’s‘not accurate… Even in 2.x the voltage scale has been modified in the ackmaniac 2.54, but you look pretty sure nothing has change… so it’s ok for me but it’s false… so nothing has change and all my code has been added for nothing. It’s easy to tell us what we have to do without realy knowledge about the firmware modification… like Nicolas i’m Stopping to speak about this subject, I’m not going to support this fork anymore until the version are clear enough.

Hi everyone! We will ad an “Ethos” page soon and will provide a section in the VESC-Forum about the VESC-Project itself. This non so much tech related but rather a room to debate the Project itself.

We will ad a structure to enter feature requests, so that they can be worked in. This will be a e.g. a table where you can drop in the feature and post a link for further explanation. We will then drop the request into a fixed ToDo list that is worked down by priority. Sometimes A needs to be solved before B

The last 6 weeks were very busy and in consequence not everyone got the answers they wanted. VESC-Tool is just public for a short time now, so don’t be to demanding. We had the summer vacations, a surgery to extract some Titanium, work on the website, 3 x FW revision etc. Please don’t forget that you are many while Benjamin is a single person and he has a full time job at this stage. We want to encourage other experienced users to help out as well, and keep an eye on posts from others.

This is the way forward:

If you write code for the VESC-Project:

  1. Once the structure is online, drop your request there.
  2. ad your user name, so everyone knows who you are.
  3. make a pull request and submit code

If you don’t write Code:

  1. Once the structure is online, drop your demand there.
  2. ad your user name, so everyone knows who you are.
  3. Write a post about the feature for further explanation and link this post in the feature list.

To make it very clear: Benjamin doesn’t like to see those forks for many reasons.

The VESC-Project is a terrible amount of work and VESC-Tool took almost two years to code. This was only possible with a lot of work after work and a hell of patience. Like a business, the project has costs to shoulder (e.g. a new server is being installed right now, a high speed glass fibre connection was installed and has a monthly bill, travel expenses, advice, accountant, prototypes, computers etc.) So far no money went into “paying Ben for the countless hours he banged on stuff” but rather lowering the base cost. Please note that a fork with some new features still is 99.5% of Benjamin’s code and is only possible because he supplied the code under the GPL V3.

The VESC-Project has the doors wide open as an invitation to work together on a strong single version. A website has been created to give the project a home. If possible, the door should be used to step in.

To write code that interacts seamless with another you need to know what comes next and which dependencies exist. This is a very good reason to work together on one version, rather than splitting things apart. Forks drift versions apart and therefore create incompatibilities in future. This is either wanted by the fork to create a USPs and divert users to the own fork, or it happens without purpose. Both is not good for the community and the project itself.

Frank

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To me Benjamin seems pretty ‘off the grid’ . The vesc-project forum is pretty dead, and Benjamin is not answering many quistions in there. I still find it pretty funny that he is not on the World greatest Esk8 forum. Thats why i like the work Acmaniac is doing in here. He is pretty active, and help a lot when people have quistions. And i find it a little bit funny to, that FOC on Focbox is working on his ‘forkd version’ but still not in the official version. And i like to run FOC. And since nobody seems to know what’s is going on in Benjamins head, and any ETA’s. I can’t wait anymore. I want FOC now :smiley:

If you want people to use your stuff, you have to be where people are.

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@Silverline I wanna echo that.

Sure, Frank i understand what you say about problems of forking. Still i’m very thankful to @Ackmaniac that he is not as patient as we should be… and skilled enough to just implement what he wants from a firmware and software.

So actually i do not think that this will get a totally separate fork, @Ackmaniac is just faster in implementing users wishes (or probably his own).

And sure I’m at least aware that VESC-Tool is made by Benjamin and thanks man thats awsome. But what’s the Problem if someone (@Ackmaniac) is developing it further ? (and that in enormous speed, where do you take all that time Nico ?)

@trampa have you tried @Ackmaniac’s Soft/Firmware ? If you use ppm, Focbox, Dual-Setup and want FOC, Cruise-Control,… this Soft/Firmware here is the only choice. Same is valid for the old BLDC-Tool people who had hope that Benjamin would implement new features would have been dissapointed, thanks to Ackamaniac that he went on .

So, peace People And i also hope that this will get a community Project once, but till then you freay programmers, please keep on developing stuff like you want and think it’s the best.

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Theres a good reason Ben isnt in alot of forums.

From the start Ben answerd alot of questions if not all. But eventually, answering questions started taking up hours. Even days. For awhile he had hundreds of emails per day to answer. Simply wasn’t sustainable. Therefor he chooses to spend most of his day working with his project instead. To bring people like you and me, Amazing hardware and software.

Alot of people dont know this, but the hardware isnt very unique. The software Ben wrote however, is very sophisticated and has been approached by many companies in order to lock future developments down. Ben has turned down every offer because he belives that the project should be avaible to everyone. So in my personal opinion, donating to anyone but Ben is an absolute insult with the years of work he has put in. If others want to help develop and improve. Thats fine. But it has to be done in a good way, making a separate verision that is based on 95% of the original code is not the way to do this. Especially not on new releases.

If Frank can provide a bridge between Ben and others in a sufficient way, it would be very dumb to not consider it. After all, we all just want to ride some boards. Don’t we?.

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Well I agree with @linsus and @notger ! Both posts are valid in their own ways… I would love to have Benjamin implement @Ackmaniac fixes/upgrades/ideas in firmware and Vesc Tool. I totally understand that it takes a lot of time for Benjamin, and it’s har to catch up having full time job, for this reason a lot of us go with @Ackmaniac versions of Tool and Firmware at it comes out quicker and has the features we all want to have. Perhaps somewhere in near future Benjamin can add those features to his work, but since it will take a lot of time we will enjoy @Ackmaniac work.

@linsus is right - we all should do our best to donate to Benjamin and it honesty most of the code is his.

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You only look at the emerged part of the iceberg. If Benjamin had to answer every email, every forum post, every whatever, you would still be waiting for a lonnnng time before enjoying FOC. :wink: Adding a new feature by a pull request is as simply as clicking on a button. Instead, dealing with dropbox folders (when sources are available) is a pain and consumes time and… wait… oh shit, no more time to answer questions. :slight_smile: Endless loop.

Forking the project like still kills the Open Source spirit IMO. (my 2 pennys)

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