Vesc - where to not

this is why a good bms should be used, to suppress those voltage spikes. could probably get away with it with a big 50V TVS

It’s not difficult to see that your capacitor is unsoldered or broken, I’ll post a picture when I get home… but you also need to check for it’s value with a multimeter and a ESR meter.

Capacitors on my enertion vesc were pretty cheap and probably would die anyway after couple months.

Am I the only one that thinks it’s interesting none of the people that sell the VESC have commented on this yet?

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@vitormhenrique I don’t understand this; wouldn’t there be a spark on connection with or without the capacitor functioning?

A while back @lowGuido taught me that capacitors slowly age and need to eventually be replaced. If someone has a recommendation for their lifespan, or how to test them, that would be helpful!

While this thread is about VESC issues, I often hear from vendors that no one weighs in when their VESC is working well, so I’m gonna share my good experience:

I have a VESC from Enertion, the HW4.7 batch from September 2015. It was manufactured to spec (as far as I am able to tell) and has been working great for 125 miles on my esk8. I soldered the connection wires and cap myself, added a cap to C18 to improve FOC performance, soldered the cable for my GT2B receiver to the board, used an ST-LinkV2 to install a bootloader, and covered it in heat-shrink. I’ve updated the firmware several times with Ubuntu and run in FOC mode with no issues, but there was a learning curve to figure out how to configure it, especially with regard to voltage cutoff and braking. It’s mounted in my enclosure using velcro and is wrapped in foam to minimize vibration.

There are so many things that can go wrong with VESC, my good experience is 80% luck and 20% practice. I would feel disappointed if I received a DOA VESC or near-DOA. Hopefully all that we do as a community can help the vendors to learn and improve.

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Good idea,

I’ve built 8 vesc and bought 2. Busted them all atleast once, what was the root cause?

Me, by mishandling them, either bad soldering or bad settings.

I tend to think i know what i’m doing, they all working now.

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check the capacitor if the top is bloated or seems to be bloating. that is one of the telltale sign of the capacitor having problems

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below is a rough picture of problematic capacitors and good capacitors

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@AreaKruzer Thanks these are helpful!

the spark is from the huge amount of power the caps draw once plugged in, without the caps there is no huge on-rush.

now on to the other point mentioned, with out the anti-spark yes you can tell that the caps are ok but constant sparks will eat at your plugs over time.