I am trying to repair a friend's dual motor Trampa mountain board.... He managed to trash the CAN and comm cables and ripped the power connector off the battery meter.
I don't know what if any damage he did to the actual electronics, although I don't see any obvious issues like burned / blown components...
I have built new replacement cables from scratch, and re-attached the battery meter connector. At this point when I plug in the battery, the battery meter comes on and the two VESCs (Version 6, MKIII if that matters) show BLUE LED's. From reading the hardware docs, it sounds like I should also see a dim green LED if the VESC has booted properly, but I am not seeing anything but the bright blue LED.
I downloaded the free Linux desktop version of the VESC tool, and it appears to have installed properly on my Debian v10 (Buster) laptop, as it starts and appears to be running OK. However I can't get it to connect to the VESCs.
Since there were no install instructions, I simply extracted the zip file into the same directory in the ~/Downloads area as where I put the file initially - do I need to put it somewhere else? (BTW, a 'readme.txt' in the zip file w/ install instructions would be nice...)
I get an error saying the serial port is not writable, with the suggestion of adding my user to the dialup, uucp and lock groups. I added myself to the existing dialup and uucp groups. The lock group didn't exist, so I created it and added myself to it. Still no luck.
I have never had an issue connecting to things with the USB ports on this laptop. I tested the USB cable by connecting it to an Arduino and that seemed OK.
Can anyone suggest how to get this to work?
As a separate question - both my friend and I have often move the board around by holding the front end in our laps and pushing the motor end with our wheelchairs, without having a battery connected... Is this OK / safe for the VESCs? I know some controllers get unhappy if they have motors generating power into them w/o a battery connected... I notice that when I'm pushing the board the blue LED's on the VESC's light up...
Thanks,
ex-Gooserider
Is the connected vesc listed in /dev? It should be something like /dev/ttyACM0.
I did a full reboot on my laptop, and it now connects to the VESCs - I get a message on the status line of the tool, "Connected Serial ttyACM0 limited mode" . I'm not sure what limited mode means, but after testing both VESCs separately, and then hooking up the CANbus cable between them, I was able to run each motor separately, but didn't find a way to run both at the same time, other than when I tried running the FOC connect wizard. (motors are Trampa 118KV outrunners if that matters)
I do keep getting messages about the firmware being 'old but mostly compatible' - it appears to be firmware rev 3.65 and HW rev 60 I don't know if I should upgrade it or not... Opinons????
I also never seem to get any LED on other than the blue power LED - even with motors running I don't get the green LED that the docs suggest that I should... is this a concern?
ex-Gooserider
Maker, inmate @ Artisan's Asylum, Somerville, MA
Machining, welding, electronics, fabric arts, etc.
Limited mode usually comes up because the VESCTool version is newer than the VESC firmware and someone decided that the firmware and VESC Tool need to be upgraded in lockstep.
Thanks for the explanation Fallen. Sounds like I need to do an upgrade...
ex-Gooserider
Maker, inmate @ Artisan's Asylum, Somerville, MA
Machining, welding, electronics, fabric arts, etc.