For the test setup I am using a combination of the DRV8302 driver in combination with the Nucleo64 board.
For the actual robot this testsetup is quite large. This quadruped needs 12 motors and drivers. So I want a smaller driver that can handle the power of the motor (and for the right budget offcourse).
The following driver: B-G431B-ESC1 looks like it can handle the right power. Does someone have experience with this board and what power it can handle? It looks like it only supports hall sensors instead of I2C for a magnetic encoder (I do not want to use optical encoders because they are quite expenisve for 12 pieces)? Is this precise enough to use in a robotic application?
The Dagor board that is development is really awesome! Only it is still in development.
The VESC project also delivers nice hardware but two of those are almost at ODrive level prices…
Is there someone who knows an other great driver that you can buy now that is not on the list? Or have experience with B-G431B-ESC1 that it will work for this application?
Are you going for a 4, 8 or 12 motor quadruped? Comms will play a factor. CAN bus or espnow are options.
@David_Gonzalez has recently made a batch of his Dagor boards. I’m looking forward to trying them!
The b-g431b-esc1 will drive this motor, no problems. My main issue is that the board is small and difficult to solder, I constantly think I’m going to snap the leads off!. I think @Ashemah_Harrison had a go of getting i2c working but it’s not clear from the other thread if he was successful. The board has FDCAN on board.
There are a few custom mid power boards that people have built on this site but nothing you can purchase. I’m trying to design a dual board based on stm32f405 and btn8982. I’m pretty new to pcb design, so still making mistakes!
I took a look at the Cheap FOCer board a while back. Not all parts at JLCPCB were in stock at the time. There is another Xioami board that can be bought on ebay but i don’t think anyone has done anything with it.
I am going for a 12 motor setup. I was planning to do the communication over CAN bus. It is all quite new for me so I have a long way to go!
I have ordered a b-g431b-esc1 to experiment with it and it arrived today . It looks like it has great performance for it’s value (especially if you need 12 ESC’s…). When looking at the data sheet, it looks like that some pins that should be used for a hall sensor, also have support for I2C. I am curious if @Ashemah_Harrison figured it out. But first I am going to get it working in open loop mode (that is going to be a challenge for me ). After that I am going to try to figure out how to get I2C working.
I am also really curious to your board design! It sounds like the ideal board for me .
Bit more expensive the ESC1 Discovery kit though. Unlike the ESC1 kit, but like ODrive and VESC, it is a complete ESC that already does FOC, so you don’t run SimpleFOC on it in the end
They also have an older product: http://www.holybro.com/product/kotleta20/
It’s open source, including the complete ESC software stack… it comes with a pretty comprehensive reference manual: http://www.holybro.com/manual/Sapog_v2_Reference_Manual.pdf
Lots of cool stuff there, but probably more for Propellers at the moment. Still, I was thinking of ordering one to see if it is open enough to run SimpleFOC. It’s designed around STM32, so it could be doable.
Nice ESC’s! The myxa looks like a really powerfull esc.
The Kotleta20 is more interesting for my usecase! Small, light, decent pricing and it looking at the specs it appears to be more powerful than the STM32G431 Discovery kit for drones.
Having a quick look at the datasheet it is based of the STM32F105. The processor can be configured upto 2 I2c intefaces. That would make it an interesting combination with the AS5600 encoder. Only it is a bit difficult to see in the datasheet of the speed controller at which solder pads these pins are connected. If this can be figured out, I think that it will be an interesting ESC!
The Sapog reference manual has schematics for a reference hardware - might be close to the Kotleta20? I think the Kotleta is maybe open source too, but I couldn’t find the schematics…
. It looks like it has great performance for it’s value (especially if you need 12 ESC’s…). When looking at the data sheet, it looks like that some pins that should be used for a hall sensor, also have support for I2C. I am curious if 
). After that I am going to try to figure out how to get I2C working.
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