Its been a while! I used to be active on these forums back in 2011ish under the tag philip-something, and now im back!
I was wondering what my options would be today, in terms of Escs?
Correct me if im wrong, but neither the NanoTwo by Rory nor the AWEsc are available outside of the UK. My old sabertooth is a bit chunky and will be hard to fit in my upcoming ant.
I hope someone knows a good option!
It's good to be back, cheers!
Philip, from Sweden
"Dad, where's all the robotstuff from back in the days?"
Someone posted an aliexpress thing on 360 degree servos the other day, the boards in them apparently run happily off 2s and are really tiny and capable 2 way 1 channel esc's. I've placed an order, looking forwards to trying them out. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/DOMAN-R ... 2e0eyqMeae
Otherwise there's always dasmikro. Quality control is awful, but BangGood are good at refunds as long as you keep all your packaging.
Bustophedon 10a escs are about 3 quid each on ebay - I know Kyro runs those and I've got a couple on their way to play with.
You don't want brake
Brake is something used in rc cars, where if you go straight into reverse it applies a brake instead of reverse. Without brake is good.
*edit* I'm completely wrong here. George corrects me a few lines down, but for clarity: I'm totally wrong about brake. Brake is good.
The Dasmikros are good... If you get one that works!
Personally I've had more success with the model a (no mixing) than the model b (mixing) but then I prefer to do the mixing on the controller anyway.
Last edited by LimaHotel on Mon Apr 15, 2019 9:30 am, edited 1 time in total.
LimaHotel wrote: ↑Sun Apr 14, 2019 4:19 pm
You don't want brake
Brake is something used in rc cars, where if you go straight into reverse it applies a brake instead of reverse. Without brake is good.
I'm afraid you're not quite right on the braking. Braking on a brushed esc refers to what it does when the stick is centred (no movement), braked actively stops the motor, non-braked let's the motor coast to a stop by itself.
Braked is generally considered to be a good thing as it allows more precise control of the robot. All the good ant escs are braked, and the lack of braking is just another reason why the dasmikro is a poor choice.
Regarding alternative escs, a few I've seen used successfully are; Arc robotics Awesc, fingertech tinyesc or the endbots desc.
George- I will try enabling braking to see what happens. I didn't realise that braking was a useful feature, I didn't use braking on my previous robot (Betsie, which has a sort of fly-by-wire system anyway) and I've not implemented braking yet in the new speed controller (but the hardware is capable)
Robots: Betsie - RaspberryPi controlled flipper bot with gyro stablisation - too clever for her own good? Stacie - tidy flipper; 4wd driven by hair bands
Oooh okay, consider my knowledge updated
Now who was it who told me that was what braking was I wonder? O.o
Regardless, yeah, the dasmikros aren't good boards, but they are small and do what they need to. I will continue to defend them as cheap and easily available escs, but it's also worth noting that I've phased them out of 2 of my 3 bots, and the 3rd I'm planning to switch out as well in the future. My issue with the dasmikros is just how flimsy they feel. I don't trust them not to just come apart after a big hit.
... I could've sworn braking was something we didn't want :facepalm:
Apologies for the misinformation
To be honest the braking isn't a major issue, but having previously only used braked escs I really noticed a slight sloppiness in the control of the robot when I did briefly test a dasmikro, almost as if you were driving on a slippery surface.
But as you said the much bigger issue is how fragile they are, I've never seen any other pcb fall apart like the dasmikro does, and fragile components are the last thing you need in a combat robot.
After soldering up each dasmikro I've splurged a load of gluegun over each of the pads (come apart now ye bar-tender!), but that's obviously less than ideal.
You could also always get a couple of vex29s for the wheels and have a little bec in there for your rx? I don't think the vex has a bec built in at least
EDIT: oh wow, language censorship! That's cute! I almost want to play with that now!