Comment by Jeff E on January 6, 2012 at 5:52am

Nice....I envy you since I dont have the means to make one but would like to get a cheap one like ESC32 or the AfroESC which TC stop making. HerKules II is out of budget. So I am stuck in waiting :(

Comment by DaveyWaveyBunsenBurner on January 6, 2012 at 5:59am

This is the problem with the "scene" today.

We have great controllers, motors, props etc, but suitable ESCs are few and far between. Sure, I can hang my $3,000 carbon fibre beauty off of a piece of HobbyKing junk, but it's a shame when everything else is selected for quality and reliability.

I have contracted a UK electronics company to rework the board and schematic into a layout for multicopters. However, as my project is on a budget, the firm are using spare time to work on it, so it won't be any time very soon. What I will hopefully have at the end of it is a full board layout, and maybe (just maybe) have a few built to recoup my costs. I intend to release the designs etc for anyone to use, it's hardly classified information and TC did all the original work anyway!!

Comment by Magnus Lindahl on January 15, 2012 at 8:42am

Jeff E,
I'm quite sure that TC never did any AfroESC for sale in his web-shop, I asked him about both AfroESC and ESC32, and at that time he thought that was waste with time (I maybe remember wrong, if so TC can jump in and correct me).
ESC32 seems to be another fine (or not) project/product that never will be something other than an ESC used by a limited number of people, looks like we will be wait and see when and if the OpenPilot ESC came to the community.
For now there is still ATMEL based ESC  for sale, grab them and re-flash them with simonk firmware, and you have something cheap and flyable.

Developer Comment by Randy on January 15, 2012 at 10:42am

You know, I would have thought that with some modifications to the [simonk] firmware it would be possible to make the atmel based escs able to communicate back with the micro controller (APM or what-have-you) via SPI.  I think that's one of the main things missing from our ESCs...the ability to hear back from them about their status (i.e rpm, heartbeat, etc).

Comment by Jeff E on January 15, 2012 at 10:54am

Magnus, TC made those ESC but only for himself, he said that useless to create such ESC since most Hobbywing OEM will perform well with simonk firmware. OPESC still no word when they will release but I know they are testing. Sadly like ESC32 still testing and not sure if they will commercially sell it.

Randy, I think it might be possible but I think too much for current Amtel. But the real question is why? If it is more on optimizing the stabilization from microcontroller I think the advantage is not that better considering its another point of failure and possibly getting corrupted signal causing more problem. Unless I misunderstood what you meant.

Like TC and the guy from OP said it is not the refresh rate that is more important as most OEM esc now supports 400-500 but the response of the ESC to drive the motor (i.e simonk or the I2C base MK esc) Well OPESC and ESC32 is targeted for such use but not yet available.

Comment by Tomas Soedergren on January 15, 2012 at 1:21pm

For your info. Castle Creation are Alpha testing new firmware for their ESC products, with instant response to input changes. Targeted directly to the multi rotor market. I have been offered to participate as alpha tester, and maybe I will. For my current early stage octacopter project I have ordered Castle Creations 50A 6S ICE lite controllers.

Certainly not cheapo things, but promising. And with built in data logging.

Aint that sweet?

Comment by Ellison Chan on January 15, 2012 at 1:33pm

I think the push to have more responsive ESCs is great.  I'm all for advancement.  But, let's not loose sight of the fact that many of us are in this as a hobby, and thus affordability is a large part of the equation.  We all know that faster hardware and complex programming can push the speed and response boundaries.  However, if this is at increased cost, it will push some people out of the market.  If the Ardupilot is going in a direction where expensive hardware is required, to run the software I would be very disappointed.

Comment by Jeff E on January 15, 2012 at 1:35pm

I have used castle ESC for a long time, even both their esc that were still version 1 and got replaced to whatever revision but had to ship it back (Im outside US so its a bit expensive). IMHO unless castle will replace the existing HW and then maybe wait until at least rev 3 of that hardware I will not really spend much money as I will spend more sending them back for replacement. Dont get me wrong I still prefer them in my Car/Truck/Heli and even got almost all version of USB programmer but it might be too early to jump ship just yet. at this point it is more logical to just buy hobbywing oem like plush/blueseries and maybe flash it with simonk than to spend on an expensive but not yet workable. Might as well go all out and go Herkules II.

On the plus side, at least the Multirotor community is getting the attention so more manufacturer might release targeted ESC for us

Comment by Anish on January 15, 2012 at 3:30pm

u could program the castle esc using thier interface and has in build data logging. Sometimes useful in after action analysis

Comment by Tomas Soedergren on January 16, 2012 at 12:15am

We will see how things turn out with the CC initiative. But as Jeff said, major ESC brand targeting multi rotor market is indeed very good news. Others will follow, and custom performance will be available to all of us, without black art custom flashing :)

And yes @Anish, I really appreciate the ESC logging feature. For tuning and optimization I think it would be good to know how things are going at ESC / motor level.

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