Universal Advanced VESC Remote Control (Photon) - Custom design

Great write up, I really appreciate it. I haven’t tried again since Friday, new puppy and bronchitis so…

1 Like

Great tutorial @Deckoz thanks for taking the time to write this up. Can anyone point me to the source code of FW 3.100? I will look into this today.

1 Like

Hmmm.

@Ackmaniac would you mind sharing your changes to UART with @Wajdi to help get this working :slight_smile:

@Wadji - Maybe you could re-flash your vesc FW to both 3.100 and 3.32 and see if the remote uart comms works OK and let us all know if any issues.

It could be quite limiting for the photon remote if it can only work on FW 2.18 as I think most DIYers would be well beyond 2.18 and some uart apps (such as metr) do not fully function below vesc FW 3.29.

Most would also want to use VESC Tool and I think the vesc FW for the first public release of the VESC Tool (0.81) in Sept 2017 was vesc FW 3.28. AFAIK you cannot use the VESC Tool on vesc FW 2.18.( bldc tool only)

Just a idea - maybe the remote could have the vesc FW as a user selection in the control menu - and then your mcu smarts takes care of everything else?. Pretty sure the uart libraries etc. for the various FWs are open source.

I think some vesc FWs updates do not change the uart libraries so there may not be too many different versions to code up.

Cheers

Currently it auto detects everything below 3.32, that includes 2.11-2.18, Ack 2.54, and all vesc tool releases before 3.32.

It’s not so much the libraries. But the data packet structure :slight_smile:

no worries -I cant get it to communicate on any 3.xx FWs

1 Like

When you are checking for connection on the other firmwares, you have Real time data enabled on the right hand bar of the VESC tool correct?

^ this

About the only thing an external app should rely across all VESC versions is the VESC reporting what firmware it has. Really an app should check what firmware is running on the connected VESC and then decide if it’s supported or not. There doesn’t seem to be any consideration for backwards compatibility, so you can’t assume future versions will use the same data packets or even the same message ids. To support multiple firmware versions you’d have to include the details of the datatype definitions (datatypes.h) for each firmware.

yes -but cant even get basic telemetry comms (vesc input voltage ,vesc fw version etc.) on remote to work (with no vesc tool connected)

That’s correct, I will be testing all versions today and report back what works and what not, I dont really understand why they keep changing the COMM_GET_VALUES data structures every now and then, at least make it backward compatible, all changes that have been done to the COMM_GET_VALUES packet aren’t really that useful, or maybe they can just leave COMM_GET_VALUES alone, and create a new packetid to shove all the extra unnecessary stuff to it.

3 Likes

Hey Wajdi,

Any news on the pre-orders shipping?

Is my order in the ones that are awaiting the NRFs? Order #228

Cheers

What’s the wait roughly around?

I am waiting for shipment from the end of last year. By the way, are the two LED ports total 5V1A?

I don’t know what going on but he told me he would ship my remote last week and he didn’t. Reached out to him again and have not hard for him again

I have a question about using this remote with the VESC 6 clone, the ESCape. I was told that the ESCape has NRF built in, and because of this a receiver isn’t needed to connect a remote. It’s that true and does it apply with this remote, or do we need the receiver this remote comes with to run on the ESCape?

Another question, I know you can connect this receiver to a Y cable and connect to two VESC’s. Is it better to just connect this way, or connect to just one VESC and use CANBUS with master/slave setup?

This remote is designed for uart connection and Nunchuckcontrol over canbus.

If you use pom you won’t get any of the stats making it a regular remote…and a worthless screen…

Ok, so receiver allows for the telemetry to be seen on screen.

Is it better to connect receiver to both VESC or just one and use CANBUS? Or even put a receiver on each VESC?

It only connects to one via UART. You must use canbus for two vescs

I thought there was a cable that connected to the receiver and then split so you could connect to both VESC, eliminating the need for CANBUS.

Receiver on right connected to master focbox uart. Canbus cable from master to slave focbox. Uart on slave connected to Bluetooth module for Android app.

PPM cables not connected

There’s no split from the receiver.

7 Likes