Recent content by bww129

Very admirable of you jumping straight into the deep end on a project like this! I would have recommended you take it a bit slower and read through all the threads of other builds to learn from what everyone else has done before going all in on a design, but that is a great way to learn. BTW...

Accurate CAN bit timing requires an accurate clock source once you get into the 500k-1M baud rate range. Reduce your baud rate to 250k if possible and that will help alleviate the issue. Don't underestimate the importance of the crystal, especially for CAN and USB. The tolerance of internal RC...

One thing to note about the ST CAN bootloader is that they specify the use of PB13 CAN2_TX pin 34 and PB5 CAN2_RX pin57 on the STM32F405 as the bootloader pins. This differs from PB8 CAN_RX pin 61 and PB9 CAN1_TX pin 62 used on the VESC. I'm not much of a software guy and don't know if those can...

Yes, they know it is open source and that code additions would be open source. Adding a CAN bootloader, while not trivial, would likely be based on the existing ST CAN bootloader which isn't proprietary. Changing the CAN messaging format to be more J1939 like is a different story. The open...

It never hurts to include support for it in your design. If you don't want to use CAN then just don't populate the CAN transceiver and supporting components. Unless you're really cramped for space there's not much downside. The company I work for has just become interested in a modular BLDC...

If you only run one ESC then you probably have no use for CAN. CAN is very useful when you have multiple devices and want to control them via a single, robust interface. The VESC CAN interface is not very developed yet, at least not compared to something as mature as the J1939 standards in the...

That's a very interesting concept, and clearly you've put a lot of work into it! However, I would point out that there are other more mature solutions such as LIN (2 wire) and CAN (3 wire) available that would probably be better to implement. LIN is 2 wire and CAN is 3 wire because you really do...

Hadn't seen the errata for the G4 series but there is quite a laundry list of items in there! Good thing the ST rep didn't persuade us to go that route! It may be worth waiting to use it after the next couple silicon revisions... The H7 would be a good option too. All the higher end micros...

I was surprised to read that VESC is running an RTOS. I would have thought that a dedicated control loop would be more appropriate for motor control, but then again VESC does a lot of other things that are easier to implement using an RTOS. Personally, I would want to strip out the USB but keep...

ST makes it relatively easy to migrate code between families, or so I've been told by my software engineer coworkers. We designed the STM32F412 into a new product (not a motor controller) and it's a solid microcontroller. The F4 series has very good features and performance for the price. The...

Apparently not all types of Kapton are created equal when it comes to thermal conductivity. https://www.dupont.com/products/kapton-mt-plus.html Dupont's Kapton MT+ specifically made for high thermal conductivity is 0.8 W/mK, which is 6.7 times higher than 0.12 W/mK figure you may have found...

The Amish are much less progressive than most Mennonites who have adopted more aspects of modern society. You won't ever hear a real Amish buggy with a sound system. :lol: That's pretty hilarious you grew up in the Lancaster area. Not a lot of people know about, let alone have seen, the...

benjamin posted a reply to shaman's questions/observations about the inductance measurement error on the VESC forum a few months ago - https://www.vesc-project.com/comment/5097

First off, awesome build! Second, why not go all out and use Litz wire (if your budget allows)? Lots of strands of 36-42AWG wire would pack a lot of copper in there.

Any reason you chose two large caps over multiple smaller caps? Nice choice moving all the way up to the DC link PP film caps. Looks like you've more than attempted it! Throw enough layers of heavy copper at it and it should be fine. Soldering the components will be less fun if you're doing the...