I’m having an absolute hell of a time navigating the forum and finding the available community boards or just generally figuring out what I should buy to start using SimpleFOC. It seems many of them are deprecated, using old components, have issues, or have been removed by their creator. Also, none of them are available to purchase anywhere. Have people moved on to another project like ODrive?
Aside from the two official boards, SimpleFOC Mini and SimpleFOC Shield (both of which are out of stock), what is the driver board that everyone is using at the moment that has some of the more advanced features?
I’ve used hoverboard controllers and motors in the past. I also (mis-) use the SmoothingSensor of sFOC to drive motors with a ZS-X11H driver in closed loop velocity mode.
The ZH controller and some MKS driver boards are available on AliExpress, as well as simpleFOC-friendly ODrive V3.6 boards (probably the most advanced you can get)
If you don’t want to order from Ali, you can use the github files of the shield or driver board to order your own boards.
If the stock firmware does what you need, you might as well use it. If not, use SimpleFOC. I looked into editing the ODrive firmware before since its GPIO mapping wasn’t able to do what I wanted, but setting up the compiler for it seemed so difficult I just added an Arduino to do my extra stuff.
What size motor and what features do you need? As Olaf says, hoverboard controllers are a good cheap option for large motors, as are the ODrive clones.
B-G431B-ESC1 remains a good option for medium-small motors, although it is limited on I/O and has doubled in price recently along with all STM products.
The latest version of my Gooser is not fully validated yet, but it’s good for medium sized motors. No CAN bus since that’s mainly for communicating with drivers that are located near each motor, whereas the primary dual/quad design of Gooser favors having the drivers near the battery. But I have considered adding it to the single-motor version since it’s pretty heavily modified already and can spare the second encoder connector for it.
EDIT: Annnd here it is. 6 hours, I’m getting faster I didn’t even have to increase the board size, just move the mounting screw holes. Less GPIO than before, but still plenty, and the encoder is upgraded to 6-pin so it can do SPI without any hassle.
To develop your own firmware and explore the world of FOC…?
I think you should have a clearer view. SimpleFOC is a software library that aims to be as approachable and as universal to as much hardware as possible. Their boards (the shields and mini shields) are more of a proof-of-concept board than a perfect solution.
Whereas Odrive offers both hardware and firmware, essentially delivering to you an (almost) entire Servo drive solution.
If you are looking for something to use, to drive your motors, go for ODrive and their firmware. If you are trying to delve into FOC firmware development world, then the ODrive v3.5/3.6 is probably the best OSHW out there that you can get.
SimpleFOC is being updated and you can use the source code and modify it as required. It also supports several different driver chips and I believe Odrive just supports their own hardware.
I didn’t even have to increase the board size, just move the mounting screw holes. Less GPIO than before, but still plenty, and the encoder is upgraded to 6-pin so it can do SPI without any hassle.
