My project requires the can bus be enabled; I have three hub motors and three motor controllers that need to output the same control data from my ADC throttle. I can't seem to get them to connect or come up simultaneously in vesc tool like I did before. Subject title is the same message I get when I go to scan the can bus in the communication tab. This is frustrating because I finally have all the hardware I need to finish this project as of today and now suddenly software issues. How can I get vesc tool to register all three motor controllers?
What is the HW? How wired up?
I have two flipsky 50A controllers and one 100/250 Trampa controller. The rest of the running hardware is segway ninebot max parts. Before I installed the ninebot battery packs I have now I was using a refurbished battery and I was able to get vesc tool to recognize all three motor controllers.The project is an electric go kart trike thing. Very d.i.y....
Updated the firmware to no effect. Have made three different CAN bus cables so far; I can't see an issue with any of them, wired in order according to the diagrams, good connections as far as I can see. All wired the same as when I was able to get all three motors communicating over CAN bus before. What's strange is that the two flipsky controllers will connect to vesc tool and communicate over can bus just fine, but not the Trampa controller, which is the one hooked up to the ADS throttle.
Looks like you created a GND loop in the system. CAN only needs CAN H and CAN L to be connected. GND and 5V should never be connected.
If you interconnect those, you basically start to share the GND in between all logic satges and that will create major issue. Also the CAN chips on the VESC 100/250 are 60V rated and the other ones I don't know. Maybe they are rated way lower.... In consequence all devices need to be connected to the same batt GND at all times! Switching should be done on BATT + only. If Batt GND is not connected to all of the units, and you have more than 60V batt voltage and you connect only one VESC controller to the battery, then you would blow up the CAN chip. I guess you have damaged CAN transceivers...
The flipsky controllers talk over CAN with no problem; the chips work on that end. I doubt that the 100/250 controller's CAN chips blew because it's made to be robust, and why would the cheap controllers chip not get fried when the good one did?... I tried disconnecting the GND and 5V like you said, and it seems to help or at least not hinder the flipsky controllers CAN connection. My back two wheels spin in unison, but the front one eludes me. Might try cutting the GND and 5V on the other two cables I made and see if one of those fares better...
You can try to connect via CAN to the 100/250 from one of the Flipsky controllers. If the 100/250 shows up, you have a CAN connection. CAN is only 2 wire. The 5V and GND is only present to feed power to a CAN device that has no power supplied from any source and needs to be powered by the VESC motor controller. A GND loop is likely to damage controllers. The logic stages of the VESC motor controllers should never share GND with any other devices!!! They have their own voltage regulators (12V, 5V and 3.3V) and those would work against the regulators on the other controllers. Ultimately some regulators will blow up because of that, since small differences in voltages will cause one regulator to boost the voltage up and the other regulator will do the opposite. One of them will loose the fight..... CAN is 2 wires only! Make sure to always have BATT GND of all devices interconnected if your system voltage is above 60V fully charged!
I removed the 5V and GND from the CAN wires, the BATT GND of all devices are connected. I've decided to sell the Trampa controller and get a third flipsky controller. I think that should work. It's good to know that the GND and 5V wires should not be connected on CAN. Thank you for your help.
I am also facing the same problem: CAN bus support is not enabled in this build of VESC Tool. Have somebody found the solution?
Because of costumer demands, I have to establish CAN communication between computer and VESC 6 MKV (the controller that I am using). I used CAN cable without and with GND connection and there is no difference: the same warming appears.
In the other topics and web sites I noticed others have the same problem and so far I did not find out how to connect controller with PC. I am using Vesc tool 3.0 with FW 5.02, I tried app in windows 10 and linux ubuntu 16.0.4.
VESC-Tool can not communicat eto VESC controllers via CAN. Either you need to use wireless communication or USB.
am i correct in thinking the can bus does not work any more ? is anybody able to make it work ?
Thanks
Can I use PEAK CAN USB interface to connect with VESC controller?
I am successfully controlling and reading stats from the VESC via my USB2CAN module and CAN tools like busmaster.
Has anyone compiled a version of the VESC TOOL with CAN support? I would like to configure and control the VESC via CAN only. In my scenario the VESC is enclosed in a water tight inaccessible compartment with only power and CAN access from the outside.
In the QT vesc_tool.pro I see that DEFINES += HAS_CANBUS is commented out with a 2019 note from Benjamin: # Adding serialbus to Qt seems to break the serial port on static builds. TODO: Figure out why.
UPDATE 8/9/2024 - I realize that I won't need direct CAN support in the VESC tool if I use another VESC as gateway. I believe this is an acceptable workaround. The CAN forwarding between VESCs seems to support everything, including FW updates and motor detection.
Only problem left I am trying to resolve now is: How to I maintain the APPCONF_APP_TO_USE setting? Current FW sets it to APP_UART on my CAN connected VESC after the update. Is there a way to preserve this setting or do I need to compile a custom FW with changed default when updating a CAN connected VESCs? If I don't fix this, the VESC is basically bricked after the FW update, if have no access to USB.