Gimbal VS drone motor control

Hello,

first I have to say that I discovered the simpleFOC project some weeks ago and i am very excited about the possibilities offered by it !! I will for sure stay connected to see the next releases!

For an academic project, I have to drive a BLDC motor in velocity control, in the range of 0 to 300rpm.
The motor as well as the driver is not yet chosen and I would like to get feedback from experienced users :wink:

Regarding motors :

  • What is the most suited for the range of speed I am willing to use : gimbal (like in gopro systems) or “high-performance” (like drone racing) motors ? I don’t know if gimbal can rotate up to 300rpm as they are used in “quite slow” systems ?
  • Is the pair pole number very important regarding the smoothness of the rotation at small speed ?

The plan is to use the driver in closed-loop with the famous AS5048A magnetic encoder. These will be connected to an Arduino UNO (definitely not the fastest board but it’s off the shelf…) and controlled by the nice simpleFOC library!

I have many small drone motors like this one : Turnigy 3020-1800 (see here). The low resistance of this motor will force me to use a “high-performance” driver board, right ?

and last question, more directed to the superAdmins/moderators, the simpleFOCDShield is out of stock in the shopfor the moment, when will be new boards be available ?

I thank you in advance for your advices and answers!
all the best!

Hey @jeanL, do you just need to drive the motor with no load?
Generally speaking you’re going to get better results with gimbal motors and more pole pair in slower speeds (a few tens rpm). Gimbal motors are not only constructed and designed for very low speeds, but the also have a higher resistance which allow the user to make full use of the PWM resolution, which also results in smoother motion.

Depends, you can limit the voltage and drive a low resistance motor with a SimpleFOC shield or equivalent.

L6234 are very hard to source right now so we won’t have more in stock for a little bit. I think people have had great success with aliexpress alternative so far, worth checking out.

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thank you for the answer :slight_smile:

the motor will drive a load, but it won’t be that huge…
I ordered a simpleFOC shield as well as a BGC on Aliexpress but I would have prefered buying it from the website as this directly supports the project.