VESC FAQ | !WARNING! - Handle With Care - Read before buying!

So you would recommend doing startup on lab supply, and motor detection on lipo cells? :slight_smile:

I would say it’s easier, and you shouldn’t have any issues. The only issue you could have by using the lab supply during motor config is if you configure the battery min and max voltages for your battery, the power supply your using may be too low of a voltage (depends on the voltage of your battery of course). If you are giving the vesc less volts than the battery min voltage you have set, you will see a blinking red light, and no motors will spin. You also will likely not be able to get the motors to spin via your controller, as 2 amps is very little. I did do a motor config using the lab power supply at 2 amps and 12 volts, but I had to set my battery min voltage to less than 12 to do so,

Overall, easiest route is to power it on once with the lab power supply, that will charge the capacitors, and then you should be fine using the lipo from there.

It also depends on where you purchased the vesc from. Chaka (ollienboard) powers them before shipping, so lab power supply’s are not needed for his.

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For all my stuff testing ESCs I wire a 24V truck headlamp in series with the battery ( up to 6s ) , I even soldered XT male and female plugs and a switch so I can use it easily with anything I need.

Hi guys, i linked my esk8.de VESC only a couple of times in USB with my computer, without problems. But 1 hour ago when i plugged my VESC in my laptop, this one shut down, fan 100% spinning, and heatsink really warm (odd considering the fact that it was on only 5 minutes long). I had to manually disassemble the computer to shut off the battery and stop the fan from spinning. Now the laptop is not charging, not turning on… broken.

Considering that this computer was only 6 months old, was 100% stable under Ubuntu, and precisly shut down when plugging in the VESC. I don’t understand something else could be involved !

The VESC himself seems to have issues, it loose it’s settings, and was blinking red/blue during the issue. Fault was over voltage with 42,3V (normal, my eskate is 10S) in BLDC. I suppose it transfered somehow this voltage to my computer by USB. Did you heard about a case like this one before ?

you should not play with the max voltage… leave it to 57V

also, you might have a problem with you battery or your power source, the 3.3V or the DRV… since the blue led should always stay on and never blink.

Don’t bother, the VESC must be faulty. Since i use it, it loose his settings all the time, this should have warned me in first place. This costs me 3 Lipos in low voltage because the battery cutoff start that i registered at 34V was set to the defaut 10V rate… And now I just burn a 6 months old laptop just pluging it on the VESC by USB ! Crazy thing… (and i’m not a newbie considering computer hardware)

I asked to the guy who sold it to me a refund and will buy a new one.

I realize I’m coming very late to this thread, but if I happen to have one if these: http://www.meanwell.com/webapp/product/search.aspx?prod=spv-300 Would that work for the initial power-up and programming of the vesc? What voltage should I use?

That power supply is rated to 25amps. You would be better served with a laptop supply (4a ~12v).
The reason you want lower amp supply is to lessen the damage in case of a short on the board, or in a component. You could wire in some resistors to reduce the load, or use something like this

http://ebay.com/itm/131925513356 to select voltage and power.
However reputable vendors who have tested their VESC®s will have already powered them on once. Once this is done, the power supply you have would work fine. Or the battery you have for your board would be fine as well. You only really need to take this precaution if you built the VESC® board yourself or have a cheap knockoff version.

Thanks for the info! I’m definitely not planning on skimping here, I’m looking at the ones from scramboards with the built-in heatsinks.

scramboards sells cheap china VESCs - they are not a “reputable” seller

Who would you recommend besides enertion? Shipping to me from AU makes it less than worthwhile. All I can find on eBay is maytechs.

Okay, but I see them on that list too. I went with them because of the heat sink, as it gets really hot where I live. what is a decent one without breaking the bank (though I’m well aware of the wisdom of buying expensive only once instead of constant cheap replacements)?

Hard to say if you don’t tell us where you are from

Sorry, I’m from Israel. It’s 28 Celsius now, so imagine what it can get to in August…

The VESC only gets hot when using high current continously. This is not the case for us. On Average you will use maybe 10-20A with occasional peaks.

Well, I am putting 8 inch tires on my board for dirt trails, so perhaps that will increase the strain on the vescs? What makes the scramboards vesc bad? What’s​the difference between that and one from, say, DIY?

please do some research on your own - there is so much info on this forum. The VESC is not made for Mountainboards. In your case you should either wait for V6, get a VESC-X or stick to Car ESCs

Why would the skateboard’s battery pack burn the VESC if you are spinning the motor in the tool? Doesn’t the VESC pull the correct amount of amps ? I always plug in a 6S lipo when I need to test my drone motors.

This is a very old thread and was concerned with early iterations of the vesc. Its quite safe now to power the vesc via the battery when detecting motors.

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