Self calibrating ESC? How could that work?

[chilly]

I have a really basic brushed Dynamite AE-5L esc in my RTR Capra, and the manual says there is no ESC calibration - it's automatic.

How is that possible, except for calibrating neutral? The whole point (I thought) was to calibrate it to your radio's neutral and endpoints. Well - if I don't move my trigger, it won't know what my endpoints are, so... uh?

Can anyone clue me in on what they are talking about, and how I would make sure I'm getting full power when my my trigger is pulled to full throttle? I suppose my radio I can see the value being sent - but assume a dumb RTR that you don't know - maybe over time the radio/steering pot has drifted and only sends 92% out. A standard neutral/full-forward/full-reverse ESC calibration like any of the other brushed esc's I have would take care of that.

 

[ferp420]

dude dont worry about it be happy your rtr electronics work
dont exspect them to last forever and be thankful they give you the opertunity to spend more money on upgrades

 

[Fallen]

I also don't know how it works, but it does. The ones I've had that did that calibrate themselves everytime you turn them on.

If I had the end points turned down when I turned the model on, the ESC wouldn't calibrate. I had to have the end points at 100% when turning the model on. Once calibration had occurred, I could then turn them down.

I don't know how the ESC "sees" the end points in the TX, but it does. If your radio was degraded and only putting out 92% your ESC won't calibrate when turning on. That would be your cue that something was wrong, and the troubleshooting would commence.

As long as your ESC fires up, your radio is functioning properly.

 

[chilly]

Yeah I know I'm not stressing about it or anything, and know I'll upgrade soon enough, but I just find it all interesting and am curious to understand the workings. Like I (think) I know if I set my cheapo RTR controller on my Arrma basher to 50% then recalibrate the ESC, the 50% doesn't work anymore - it's full game on even at 50%. Just curious - I'm a software guy and a engineer and a nerd - just trying to close the loop and understand how it all works. @Fallen might be on to something -0 it maybe it does rely on a decent controller being setup to 100% and not mucking with endpoints. idk.
Right now I'm upgrading mechanicals, because so far, any time I hit the throttle, the wheels turn - no matter what terrain or what slope. So I'm not sure I yet understand the benefit of power upgrades on the crawler (well aware of the impact on a basher or race buggy). Assuming I just crawl and don't care about speed - if the wheels turn when I pull the trigger, I don't understand what better electronics do for me. But I'm sure I'll get to that. For now - heavy wheel weights to stop me from tipping backwards seems more useful (Capra).

 

[ferp420]

better electronics give you more controle over how fast your wheels turn or maybe i should say how slow your wheels turn torque is the name of the game on a crawler your rig should.move bolders at just a crack of th3 throttle ok that might be a little extreme maybe but hay you get the idea

so if your a nerd why arent you hangin out on diy esc thread if you really want to learn about escs build one lol its a great thread even for us stupid people i enjoy reading about the process they went through and the evolution of some of the best stuff outhere

 

[ferp420]

heres a link to the esc thread
http://www.rccrawler.com/forum/electronics/607034-open-source-esc-firmware.html
and then theres the other thread
http://www.rccrawler.com/forum/electronics/622544-silent-outrunner-esc-less-then-$60.html

 

[Steve g]

I had 2 identical self calibrating brushless escs. One clearly had more top end then the other. At first I was ok with it, as one went in a basher for my kid who was just under 4. Eventually I had to fix it, there was no instructions on how to calibrate it, no info online, so I just did every calibration sequence I knew, and even tried some new ones, and it worked. I guess what I'm getting at is I don't like the cheap self calibrating escs. Those 2 are long gone now.

Sent from my SM-G970U using Tapatalk

 

[chilly]

heres a link to the esc thread
http://www.rccrawler.com/forum/electronics/607034-open-source-esc-firmware.html
and then theres the other thread
http://www.rccrawler.com/forum/electronics/622544-silent-outrunner-esc-less-then-$60.html

Oh my, I'm not that big of a nerd lol. I'm actually familiar with blheli from quadcopters. Blheli32, blheli-s I think? And by familiar, I mean I flash them and configure them - I do not build or write code. It's funny, I had quads before cars, and that's what drove me (no pun intended) to cars - I'd rather replace 10 differentials before replacing 1 flight controller. I don't like soldering or having to change 10,000 settings etc. It was really interesting at first, but then like bashing - fly, break, fix, repeat. Except the fix part was not enjoyable to me. I like the mechanicals - I find it relaxing and it's always intuitive to me how things of our scale of complexity works, don't have to google a billion things and read guides about all these settings etc.

Anyway! Impressive stuff there - probably above my pay grade for now.

 

[chilly]

I had 2 identical self calibrating brushless escs. One clearly had more top end then the other. At first I was ok with it, as one went in a basher for my kid who was just under 4. Eventually I had to fix it, there was no instructions on how to calibrate it, no info online, so I just did every calibration sequence I knew, and even tried some new ones, and it worked. I guess what I'm getting at is I don't like the cheap self calibrating escs. Those 2 are long gone now.

Sent from my SM-G970U using Tapatalk

Yeah I agree, I just don't like it - can't point to something it's not doing for me - just doesn't sit well with me. I think I found a reason to upgrade today anyway too, but I have to read up a little to see if brushless or just a nicer ESC will help first.

 

[JohnRobHolmes]

short answer is that we can make the assumption that all radios output 1 to 2ms pulse with 1.5ms neutral point. To be safer, we assume 1.2 to 1.8ms and lop off the ends to make almost any radio work with just neutral trim adjustment.

End point programming can help throttle control a lot, but on a cheap ESC with poorer low speed control we wouldn't even notice