=== Let's Drone Out — Episode 480 ===
Title: LDO 480 -  with special guests AM32
Recorded: 2024-11-07
Hosts: Stephen "Belrik" Howell, Jack "Brightontillifly" Nash, Koel "Koala" Anderson, Wayne "CurryKitten" Andrews, Andrew "Frank" Hyams
Guest(s): Andrew "tridge" Tridgell, Eike "Un!t", Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32)
Total audience: 1,052
Platforms: YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtCvovs_Mwo); SoundCloud (http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/1953828259-letsdroneout-ldo-480-am32.mp3)
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Check out AM32 Online:
https://am32.ca/
https://discord.com/invite/h7ddYMmEVV

#LetsDroneOut #AM32 #ESC #FPV

[0.0] Jack: Hello, and you're listening to Let's Drone Out, a special thank you to our lovely patrons
[6.28] Jack: that help donate so that we can pay the editor to remove the swear words and silly things
[11.36] Jack: we say.
[13.0] Jack: Massive thank you to…
[14.4] Jack: Carlos Campos!
[16.2] Frank: Art Faulkner!
[17.88] Frank: Sam Dahmer.
[19.68] Frank: On with the show.
[20.68] Stephen: Hello and welcome to episode 480 of Let's Drone Out, joined this week by our special
[58.53] Stephen: guests from the AM32 project.
[61.89] Stephen: You're joined this week by Andrew Trichwell, by Pete, also known as Alka.
[69.33] Stephen: Good evening.
[70.73] Stephen: And we've got our regulars here, everyone's favourite, Curry Kitten.
[75.53] Stephen: Hello!
[77.05] Stephen: Jack the ESC.
[79.25] Stephen: This is his Halloween outfit.
[84.61] Stephen: And we also have Cole, Howdy, and myself, Stephen.
[90.65] Stephen: Welcome to everyone, and thanks for the AM32 crew joining us this evening.
[96.09] Stephen: We've got one more of their number who will be with us shortly, he's just sorting out
[100.61] Stephen: some domestic affairs and will be with us in a few minutes.
[104.17] Stephen: But we wanted to spend some time talking about the progress.
[107.57] Stephen: I think we last looked at AM32 probably a year or so ago, and it was very early days
[113.21] Stephen: and we were kind of chatting to IKEA unit about beta flight and AM32.
[118.97] Stephen: And things have exploded then, obviously, since kind of Embargo was put on to BL Heli
[126.21] Stephen: 32, which meant that they effectively stopped exporting everything and very quickly all
[131.01] Stephen: attention focused to the alternative project, which is AM32, now commanding a lion's share
[138.89] Stephen: of the 32-bit ESC market out of nowhere.
[142.09] Stephen: So tell me, guys, how's it been adjusting to all of that?
[147.17] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Wild.
[148.17] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): It's just been, I mean, it's been overwhelming for the past few months.
[153.57] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): That's my personal take on it.
[156.65] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): There's just been too much too fast.
[159.81] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): But luckily, we've got Andrew now, so we're all set.
[166.77] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Goes in trouble.
[168.77] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): We had to bring in a superhero to help us out to get AM32 to the next level.
[176.37] Stephen: So Pete, you were kind of the originator of AM32.
[179.45] Stephen: You mentioned Andrew being a bit of a superhero, and Andrew's been around the block, haven't
[183.73] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: you, Andrew?
[184.73] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Yeah, but I'm very new in this area.
[188.05] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So I know Bugger all about motor control compared to what Pete knows.
[193.09] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And luckily, Pete knows a lot about motor control and can deal with all of that side
[197.05] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: of things.
[198.93] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: But yeah, I'm just delighted that there's a good open source alternative for ESCs, because
[205.77] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: I've just been frustrated by software issues with ESCs for years and years and years on
[213.05] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: bigger vehicles and vehicles falling out of the sky due to ESC firmware issues.
[219.57] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So I am looking forward to being able to make the ESCs really, really rock solid.
[229.57] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And so my focus is on those bigger vehicles.
[232.13] Stephen: That's fantastic.
[233.13] Stephen: And obviously, the bigger vehicles part comes from some of your background as an autopilot
[237.69] Stephen: developer, right?
[238.69] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Yeah, exactly.
[239.69] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And helping people with larger sort of, the sort of 20 kilo, 50 kilo, 100 kilo plus type
[246.85] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: vehicles, you know, and where they're, you know, even a rare failure on a little racing
[256.15] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: quad or, you know, if you get an ESC failure occasionally, well, okay, you might not win
[263.49] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: that race or whatever, but you pick it up and rebuild and go again.
[269.09] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: But on a bigger vehicle, there's more consequences and a bit more pricey.
[274.79] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So really interested in being able to find ways of making them just as robust as we possibly
[280.79] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: can.
[281.79] Curry: So can I ask a real beginner question?
[285.39] Curry: And this is coming from someone, I feel there's many of us out there that treat an ESC like
[289.87] Curry: this black box.
[291.35] Curry: You connect a motor to it, you connect the signal wire to it, and it goes.
[295.23] Curry: So when I always hear about, oh, people are developing new firmware for it, I'm thinking,
[301.39] Curry: what to do apart from your firmware takes the control signal and says motor spin.
[306.39] Curry: And aside from the fact that, you know, we've had protocols that do this quicker, what else
[311.67] Curry: is there?
[312.67] Curry: Because it sounds like there's a whole lot to get your teeth into.
[314.91] Curry: But from my stupid layman's point of view, I'm just thinking control, make motor spin.
[320.27] Curry: Is there more to it than that?
[321.71] Curry: Clearly there is.
[323.11] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Yeah, there's, you know, you're right.
[327.43] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): You almost could make a motor spin with a very small, very simple set of instructions,
[334.23] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): and maybe even do it with discrete components, just as soon as, you know, a comparator reads
[340.79] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): a certain voltage level, it turns on a MOSFET, which activates a phase and gets a motor spinning.
[347.51] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): But it doesn't account for any of the millions of things that go wrong.
[351.55] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And that is where the magic sort of happens.
[358.55] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): You could write software to make a motor spin very, very easily.
[364.15] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): But then what if the voltage changes?
[367.11] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): What if zero cross doesn't happen on time?
[371.69] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): What if one happens too early or too late?
[374.87] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): What if the PWM that's sent to the motors is interfering with the times that zero process
[380.71] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): happened?
[382.55] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And then you have to start coordinating this with how you're applying power to the motor
[386.65] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): to based on the input signal, and how quickly you can change power levels.
[392.71] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): What sort of, you're trying to minimize the delays from when an input signal is received,
[400.71] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): converted into an output to power and delivered to the motors.
[405.15] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And at the same time, you're still trying to do all these checks and balances to try
[409.51] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): to make sure that the motor has done everything that it's supposed to do.
[414.19] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So we could just drive a motor very simply and assume that everything is going to work
[419.09] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): out well.
[420.09] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): But unfortunately, it's a very imperfect environment.
[425.19] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And so the MC was constantly doing filtering, checking, readjusting, making sure that the
[432.63] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): times are as close to ideal as possible.
[436.27] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And it's shocking me how much work there is to do, because I was under almost the same
[444.55] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): assumption at first that if you drive a motor at low voltage, you should be able to use
[450.79] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): the same logic to drive a motor at high voltage.
[453.31] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): There's nothing that's changing.
[454.99] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): You're just increasing the voltage of the system.
[457.63] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): But as we keep on increasing voltages and current demands, then we're seeing more fluctuations
[465.07] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): on the system, more things we have to do to try to avert disaster when something doesn't
[472.71] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): happen when we expect it to, or when something is not aligned the way we expect it to when
[478.79] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): it comes to zero cross.
[480.07] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So it's 90% error checking and correction, and a very small amount of running a routine
[492.15] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): that does a very simple thing, which is look at when a zero cross happens and energizes
[499.23] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): phases to make the motor move to the next phase.
[503.39] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): It's just the problem is that the world is not perfect, and the motors aren't perfect,
[509.19] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): and then we have to do a massive amount of corrections afterwards.
[513.67] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): But no, I never thought it would take this much work either.
[518.99] Curry: It sounds much more complex than I've explained it, because there were lots of words I didn't
[522.59] Curry: even understand.
[523.59] Curry: So there's clearly a lot.
[525.59] Stephen: Can we just break down some of the fundamentals, because we hear people talk about zero crossings
[531.19] Stephen: a lot, and I kind of vaguely intuit, but from your mouth, what's the correct way to describe
[538.99] Stephen: what a zero crossing is?
[541.43] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Well, it's, okay, so when you're driving a brushless motor, we energize two phases at
[549.79] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): a time.
[550.79] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So there's three legs of the brushless motor, a three-phase motor.
[554.91] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So we will set one phase low, another phase we will give voltage to.
[560.83] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So there's now current flowing from one phase through to the other phase.
[567.11] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): That leaves one phase floating, that it doesn't have any current through that phase, where
[572.59] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): we don't energize that one at all.
[575.15] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And what we do with that final phase is we monitor the voltage on that phase.
[581.31] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): When that voltage on that phase goes from a low point or a high point and crosses the
[589.43] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): midway point of voltage, we know that that phase is, because that voltage is produced
[598.07] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): by that magnet moving in front of the coil.
[603.75] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So when that voltage changes, we know the position of that magnet relative to the motor's
[608.95] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): coil.
[609.95] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So then we can then change which coils we energize to realign the phases based on when
[616.43] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): that zero cross happened.
[618.39] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So we're always looking at which phase is not energized so that we can constantly move
[627.95] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): or advance the phase that we are energizing one step ahead.
[632.03] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And it's sort of like dragging around a horse with a carrot.
[637.71] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Each time it reaches the carrot, we move it one step further again.
[641.79] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And a zero cross is just our way of getting a snapshot of where the rotor is at any given
[649.27] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): point in time.
[650.59] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And we can tell when that position is, because it produces a voltage when a magnet moves
[654.71] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): in front of the unenergized motor coils.
[658.11] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And when that voltage exceeds a certain threshold, we can tell exactly where that magnet is.
[663.75] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And then we apply the current to a new set of phases to drive it again.
[669.05] Stephen: So that's fundamental to everything like detecting if the rotor's stuck or figuring
[674.53] Stephen: out if you've hit something with a rotor or figuring out if it's going a little too slow
[678.85] Stephen: and it needs more power and things like that.
[681.05] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Exactly.
[682.05] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Yeah, we energize a phase, and then we observe the final phase that's not energized.
[686.81] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And depending on that observation, if we don't see zero cross, we know that something bad
[691.93] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): has happened.
[692.93] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): If it happens much too early, we know something bad has happened.
[698.13] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So we're examining that final phase to see basically what the voltage is on that phase.
[703.81] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Now we're using on the ESC these hardware comparators, which are just comparing two
[711.33] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): voltages.
[712.53] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And when one voltage exceeds the other, it gives you a one.
[716.41] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Or when it drops below the other, it gives you a zero.
[718.77] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So it changes that instead of having to constantly pull that phase to see what the voltage is,
[725.01] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): we just use the comparator to compare the two phases voltages and tell us whether one
[729.85] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): is higher or not to the other voltage.
[734.49] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And so we're comparing the phase voltage to the average of all three phases to find out
[739.89] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): where that phase is, where that magnet is, and at the given point in time.
[745.17] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): It's a fairly simple procedure, but it's just, yeah, there's just so many things that can
[753.53] Stephen: go wrong.
[755.05] Stephen: It's a simple procedure with a ton of nuance.
[757.21] Stephen: OK.
[759.49] Stephen: I noticed that the latest release, 216, you put out quite recently, you're still going
[765.61] Stephen: on adding a lot of features, something caught my eye, that there's some kind of auto timing
[769.33] Stephen: advance.
[770.33] Stephen: And I remember getting into quads, hearing umpteen people disperse canned wisdom about
[776.05] Stephen: timing advance and what it should be set to or not set to.
[780.65] Stephen: You're automating this particular problem for pilots now?
[784.17] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Yeah, the timing advance or auto timing advance was, it seemed to solve some problems with
[795.09] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): particular motors when it comes to hard braking and not losing synchronization, where a lower
[804.81] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): timing advance seemed to do better when it came to rapid deceleration and a higher timing
[810.09] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): advance seemed to do better with rapid acceleration.
[813.37] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So with auto timing advance, we just set it so that when the throttle value is high, the
[819.65] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): timing advance is high.
[820.85] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): When the throttle value is low, it drops the timing advance value low.
[825.97] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And for some people, it actually works very well for some setups.
[833.45] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): There's so many variables that it doesn't work for all quads the way we want it to.
[839.89] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): But some people, it seems to give you give them remarkably more control than a fixed
[849.97] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): timing advance, especially when it comes to braking.
[853.17] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So yeah, we put it in there as an option.
[857.97] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And so it seems that some people are now using it and enjoying it.
[862.05] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So it's hopefully we'll get more feedback and then can maybe fine tune that feature a bit
[868.57] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): more in the future.
[870.01] Stephen: Well, it's awesome to see, you know, you're out there communicating new ideas and letting
[873.65] Stephen: people experiment and exploring what can be done.
[876.21] Stephen: I think that that's the magic to it, right, offering people a chance to explore ideas.
[881.93] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Yeah, hopefully.
[882.77] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): I mean, that's I mean, sometimes I implement things and don't even really know the full
[889.73] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): effects of the things I'm doing because I just there's so many combinations of motors that we
[897.45] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): really need multiple we need lots of lots of hours and lots of experimentation by lots of
[903.49] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): people and lots of setups to to really get to see the benefit of some of these and and
[911.41] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): drawbacks on some systems.
[913.01] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And so we can start making recommendations to other people.
[916.29] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): But so sometimes we'll just make something an option and then people can play around with
[922.21] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): that option.
[922.77] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And hopefully we'll find unit this time goes on.
[926.73] Stephen: Got to be really hard to find the corner cases on the bench because you're looking at all
[930.41] Stephen: those weird situations when something really unusual happens to the motor, voltage
[934.73] Stephen: fluctuation, physical conditions, so forth.
[939.09] Stephen: How do you test for that?
[942.61] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Well, it's so hard now, especially on bench tests, because we were getting to the point
[948.89] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): where sometimes we're trying to look at, you know, we're trying to find problems that
[953.21] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): happen one in a million commutations on one in one in 100 hardware setups.
[961.65] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And so it's I mean, that's why we really need as many developers as possible and as many
[971.09] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): people testing as possible and as much feedback as possible because I just can't reproduce a
[977.17] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): lot of problems that I see people might have in Discord.
[981.57] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And I can try it on a number of different ESEs and a number of different motors.
[985.01] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And I just I can't make the same same issue happen.
[988.85] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And so it's each new improvement gets sort of harder and harder and takes more hours of
[998.41] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): development to do now because of these so many hours of testing on so many different
[1003.89] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): different hardware configurations that is just it's getting more and more difficult.
[1010.09] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So I think the solution is more and more numbers of people helping us in testing.
[1014.81] Stephen: So if people want to lend a hand and maybe preview some new interesting features, play
[1020.17] Stephen: with some cool code and provide feedback, how can they do that?
[1026.22] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Well, the the easiest way is to jump onto our Discord and then we can sort of guide you
[1033.86] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): through the process.
[1034.74] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): We have multiple ways of building and testing now.
[1040.06] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Andrew has been developing and and working on the Makefile builds again.
[1046.5] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So we have built a GitHub is can build through GitHub Actions too.
[1052.06] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So you can even just fork the project, make some changes and download the binaries right
[1059.3] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): from the the what's produced with GitHub Actions.
[1065.02] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Or you can use Kiehl and use and you can build and develop and debug easily at home.
[1075.54] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): But yeah, the easiest way to get started is to join join Discord and then download the
[1083.14] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): firmware or or fork the project and start tinkering.
[1090.54] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Get yourself a current limited power supply because there will be there will be fireballs
[1096.14] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): otherwise.
[1097.58] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): But yeah, get an ST link and and that is what you need to to get going with any of these
[1106.18] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): things. And then you can sort of see behind the scenes of running ESC.
[1111.74] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So that's and we will help anybody out when it comes to setting up a setup to get debugging
[1121.38] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): anyway, so we can have some some more eyes on the code while running running different
[1129.66] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): different combinations of hardware.
[1132.22] Stephen: So a Martian McFly has got a question here in the middle of things.
[1136.06] Stephen: Here's a bit of a technical question.
[1137.66] Stephen: But what impact does having an odd number of turns buffets have?
[1141.14] Stephen: A lot of tiny boot motors do this and it's always baffled me.
[1143.98] Stephen: Or even number of turns.
[1145.54] Stephen: Does it make any difference?
[1148.26] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): I don't I don't think it does.
[1150.98] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): No, it's like the number of turns on each winding.
[1155.66] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Is that what you're saying?
[1156.9] Stephen: That they hadn't I thought I thought it was purely the number didn't matter if it was odd or
[1162.02] Stephen: even just the amount of current is going to be different if you have fewer turns, right?
[1172.38] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Yeah, as you decrease the number of turns, your KV will increase and your resistance will
[1182.3] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): decrease. But I don't.
[1186.62] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Yeah, I mean, I thought the KV was mostly defined by the number of turns on the on the
[1193.86] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): motor winding anyway.
[1195.98] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So decreasing the number of wires.
[1198.14] Stephen: Well, that might just be an engineering thing down to the small, the small production size
[1203.18] Stephen: then that they they can't do the windings the same way they do on the large ones, perhaps.
[1209.14] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Yeah, I don't know the answer.
[1211.5] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And the as far as the ESC knows, it doesn't care.
[1215.5] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So it's it doesn't demand number of windings per per phase doesn't really make a difference to
[1221.74] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): the logic of the way the motor is driven.
[1224.78] Stephen: Speaking of exploring ideas, I noticed a while ago, I think it was Alka Pete, you put a couple
[1232.98] Stephen: of extra protocols on and you started with crossfire, I believe, CRSF was that on then and
[1241.26] Stephen: some some other bits and pieces.
[1242.7] Stephen: And I think Andrew's been been charging off and doing some other stuff for bigger drones.
[1247.14] Stephen: Want to tell us a bit about that?
[1250.38] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Well, Andrew, like he is.
[1254.14] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Yeah, the drone drone can is his baby.
[1258.42] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So I'll let him talk about that for a bit.
[1262.5] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Andrew. Sure.
[1263.82] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Yeah. So drone can is becoming the dominant protocol in in larger
[1271.06] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: UAVs, at least without your pilot because
[1276.02] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: a lot of the larger vehicles just use PWM, you know, like servo style 1000 to 2000 pulse
[1282.86] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: width with no feedback.
[1287.02] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: D shot and BD shot is used by some, but it tends not to be as reliable with the really
[1295.02] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: long cable links that you get in these vehicles.
[1298.94] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And the the little four bit, you know, some that it checks, some that it's got in there
[1304.94] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: is it is a bit weak.
[1307.18] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So drone can gives a lot more flexibility and it provides you with a protocol that you can
[1312.82] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: use not just via your seas, but also for your airspeed and GPS and rangefinder and all the
[1318.98] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: other servos, et cetera.
[1321.42] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So drone can has become the dominant protocol for all your peripherals on larger
[1327.54] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: vehicles. And so one of the main motivations for
[1333.98] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: me getting into I am 32 was that opportunity to create an open source drone can firmware
[1343.3] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: done right by my definition of done right because there's a there's a lot of drone can
[1348.06] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: firmware is out there.
[1350.1] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Most of them close source.
[1351.18] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: There's one or two open source ones, but they have various issues with them.
[1357.46] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And I really wanted a chance to be able to get in there myself and and change stuff.
[1364.58] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And I should give a bit of a shout out to another developer who I've been from VIM drones.
[1369.1] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: He's done this marvelous little development.
[1371.86] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: It's great.
[1373.3] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And so it's it's really cute little PCB.
[1375.98] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: It's got a motor on the end there, you know, can bus connector, debug connector, et cetera.
[1381.22] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And fantastic for development.
[1383.22] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So I was on a trip over to the conference in Japan and I was I was spinning the motor on the
[1388.66] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: on the plane.
[1389.46] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: You know, people were looking at me a bit weirdly.
[1392.3] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And, you know, what are you doing?
[1393.98] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Oh, I'm just playing with autopilots.
[1395.58] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And anyway, they're really nice little development ones.
[1400.38] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And so we've got we've had our first flights on drone can based
[1405.94] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: I am 32 ESEs and now are quite a number of vendors have now put their hands up to create
[1413.18] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: larger ESEs like one contacted me the other day.
[1418.02] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: One hundred and twenty amp twelve S actually fourteen S capable.
[1422.1] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: One hundred and twenty amp ESE, which is great to see how well it actually works.
[1428.9] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: We'll see when we start, you know, yeah.
[1431.78] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Pete's having a bit of a laugh there to see how well that works.
[1436.3] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Yeah, that's right.
[1437.46] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: I mean, people they make these bigger and bigger vehicles.
[1440.98] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: They want to carry big payloads and and they want to fly for a very long time.
[1446.5] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And so the vehicles get bigger and bigger.
[1450.02] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And so the safety requirements do as well.
[1454.38] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Yeah, but you want to get them more and more reliable.
[1457.66] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So anyway, we've got drone can working quite nicely.
[1461.02] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Hopefully we'll get that merged into the main branch of I am 32 soon.
[1465.5] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: But we'll see when when Pete's had a really good look at the PR.
[1469.54] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So that's still pending.
[1470.66] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: But we've had quite a few flights on it.
[1473.34] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And I think it's it's going to be an important part of the autopilot ecosystem going forward,
[1480.9] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: as they say.
[1482.74] Stephen: So drone can, is that similar to automotive can or drastically different?
[1487.78] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Different messaging structure, similar concepts.
[1492.98] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Unfortunately, can is one of those transports where you can really only have one protocol on the bus.
[1498.38] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: There are some exceptions.
[1499.34] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: There's you can split between 11 bit protocols and 24 bit and have them both on the same bus at the same time.
[1504.78] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: You've got this addressing scheme and there's an 11 bit addressing scheme and a 29 bit addressing scheme.
[1509.86] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And so you can mix those two.
[1512.66] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: But most of the larger, you know, more developed protocols use 29 bit addressing.
[1518.54] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: They do that so they can have a lot more types of messages.
[1523.1] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And so drone cans are 29 bit ones.
[1526.26] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: You can't have any other 29 bit on the same bus,
[1529.42] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: which means you end up with a whole lot of competing protocols.
[1532.78] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Right. And we've settled on drone can as the primary one
[1537.5] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: for the autopilot ecosystem.
[1539.9] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And then all of the manufacturers have got on board with that.
[1543.22] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So lots of vendors are making, you know, like GPS, Airspeed, Rangefinder, Servos,
[1548.38] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: ESCs. And most of my time with ESCs for drone can over the past few years
[1554.74] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: has been working with existing vendors of ESCs, getting them on drone can,
[1559.98] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: which which has worked quite well, but it doesn't allow me to sort of dive in deep
[1564.94] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: and and make changes at the fundamental level and work with someone like Pete,
[1570.02] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: who really knows the the motor control side so well to be able to
[1576.26] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: to try to make something really, really robust, because I'm just tired
[1581.42] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: of aircraft falling out of the sky because of software failures in ESCs.
[1587.18] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: It just happens far too often.
[1588.78] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And I mean, if if there's a hardware failure,
[1593.5] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: then sure, you've got a hardware failure, you know, but I
[1597.3] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: I don't like having software failures causing aircraft to fall out of the sky.
[1603.78] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So I am hoping that we will reduce the number of, you know, software bugs.
[1610.14] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: We'll never get it to zero.
[1611.22] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: That's the nature of software development.
[1613.26] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: But hopefully reduce it.
[1616.7] Stephen: And so it's a can, a drone can capable ESC,
[1621.54] Stephen: a completely different beast to one that runs DSHOT or PWM, or is it the same?
[1626.06] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: They can do both.
[1627.22] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So this little one that I was waving about.
[1629.94] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So it's got, you know, a CAN bus cable coming off it,
[1632.66] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: but it's also got this DSHOT, BDSHOT, PWM cable coming off it.
[1639.5] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And, you know, you have the potential to be able to have
[1642.02] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: this as a backup for that or vice versa.
[1644.66] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So I am 32 has got a little
[1648.1] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: parameter, which is sort of what type of input defaults to automatic detection
[1653.38] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: between, you know, DSHOT or, you know, PWM and 32 call servo input.
[1661.94] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So I've added another level to that for drone can.
[1665.34] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And if it's set to drone can, then it actually turns off the interrupt handler
[1669.78] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: for the DSHOT to make sure that, you know, noise on this line doesn't cause an issue.
[1675.94] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So it turns off both the DMA interrupt and the interrupt on that.
[1680.3] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So but otherwise you could set it to both.
[1684.66] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And then you've got to work out priority.
[1686.22] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: You know, you'd have to have a scheme where, you know, if you stop getting signal
[1691.62] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: on the CAN for a while, that it looks and sees whether it's got signal on on this cable.
[1697.74] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: I haven't set up a vehicle yet that's got both,
[1701.46] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: but that's definitely going to be in demand to have a backup for some vehicles.
[1707.9] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: The other thing that some vendors will like is having two CAN
[1711.98] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: CAN buses coming in.
[1713.14] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So you actually have two CAN ports coming in to the same ESC.
[1716.54] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And then you've got redundant flight controllers and two complete CAN buses
[1720.58] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: going round to all the ESCs.
[1722.78] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Unit, welcome.
[1724.54] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Hey, here's trouble.
[1727.1] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So, yeah, anyway, it's lots of scope for twiddling around with a different.
[1736.18] Stephen: We had a follow up question to that from Caroline Tyler, I see,
[1740.06] Stephen: who mentioned a Tesla trying CAN on an IP standard.
[1745.9] Stephen: And I think just before the show started, you'd mentioned some options in that area.
[1751.06] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Yeah, yeah, we support running drone CAN on IPv4.
[1755.82] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: We've got a stand, if you look at drone can.org,
[1758.34] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: you'll see there's lots of different transports for drone CAN.
[1761.3] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: It's not just CAN.
[1762.3] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: CAN is the most popular transport for drone CAN,
[1764.82] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: but it actually can be carried over a whole bunch of different transports.
[1768.42] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And one of those is multicast UDP IPv4.
[1773.7] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And so I expect that that I mean, that's what we do in our simulator
[1778.7] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: because it's really easy to do in a simulator.
[1781.54] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: But I'm expecting that will be used on real vehicles as well.
[1784.74] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So I'm already using that for some devices.
[1788.42] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Yeah, Ethernet, exactly.
[1790.06] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So I've got a couple of my vehicles have Ethernet in them
[1793.74] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: and I can access drone CAN peripherals on those Ethernet,
[1796.74] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: but not ESCs yet over Ethernet.
[1798.62] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So that's something to look forward to.
[1800.66] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So we should add to a drone CAN ESC
[1804.1] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): is does have to have some physical differences
[1807.3] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): from the existing AM32 ESCs out there.
[1809.78] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): It needs to have a CAN transceiver on the ESC itself
[1814.94] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): and an MCU that's capable of hardware CAN communications.
[1819.5] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So it's not something that we can just make all ESCs work with CAN.
[1823.9] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So it is a different ESC that will be made for drone.
[1828.5] Stephen: OK, so this isn't just a software conversion process.
[1831.7] Stephen: You need some actual hardware enablement.
[1834.1] Stephen: Yeah, it's like a controller.
[1838.42] Jack: Does the ESC need to be mounted to the dev breakout for PCB as well?
[1844.7] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: I don't know. You can get I mean, there are lots of different form factors.
[1847.9] Jack: So yeah, it's what you had.
[1851.14] Jack: No, I was just like, yeah, here's the audio.
[1856.02] Jack: It's such a neat little breakout device.
[1860.1] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: That's a little little one from the same vendor who I've been from VIM drones.
[1864.62] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: A tiny little one.
[1866.38] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And then I've got a I've got a dev one here.
[1868.5] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So this is this is a dev one from another vendor.
[1871.7] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So this one's really practical to fit on it on every phone.
[1874.82] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: I mean, you can imagine having eight of these on an octo quad.
[1878.5] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And I think the rubber band is a nice touch.
[1880.9] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: That's how I attach it to my drones.
[1882.42] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Just rubber bands and zip ties.
[1885.18] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And very practically, you see this one not lay out optimized.
[1890.26] Jack: I'd love to see that like mounted to a toothpick or something.
[1896.34] Jack: That would be hilarious.
[1899.18] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: You can sort of construct the quad out of a few of these, you know, just clamps.
[1903.58] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: You know, you could use a little C clamps to, you know, put it around.
[1907.1] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: I think that'd be a good drive to be good.
[1910.5] Eike "Un!t": Wasn't there once a drone where you had a base plate, which was basically a PDB?
[1916.02] Stephen: Yeah, I've got one of those.
[1917.14] Stephen: Don't get track started.
[1918.34] Stephen: I've got one as well.
[1919.86] Stephen: I've got one. Yeah, yeah.
[1921.54] Jack: Black others, LMR or...
[1923.42] Stephen: This is...
[1924.42] Jack: Oh, wow.
[1925.58] Jack: So that's a...
[1926.86] Jack: Welcome to Danger Zone.
[1929.02] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Yeah, it's a light show drone.
[1930.42] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Lots of LEDs.
[1931.5] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So it's got a huge number.
[1933.18] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: See all those LEDs along here?
[1934.86] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: You know, every arm's got piles of LEDs and two 18650s.
[1939.74] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And then this one was designed for going indoors.
[1941.78] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: These little these little things are IR reflections.
[1945.74] Stephen: So that is literally what we would have seen a while ago doing light shows.
[1950.1] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Yeah, so this was for flying indoors.
[1952.06] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: I was flying it inside a this little indoor arena
[1956.62] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: that has this sensing system for the so you can measure the position and attitude
[1962.1] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: positioned within millimeters and attitude within tiny fraction of a degree.
[1967.66] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And then, yeah, it's all just a PC, but it's really neat, actually,
[1972.58] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: for quite a long flight time.
[1974.66] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: It's a it's a really neat little design.
[1976.9] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: I like this one a lot.
[1979.26] Jack: It's great.
[1980.26] Jack: XM receiver like sold.
[1983.98] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Yeah, that's yeah, I think I sold about on it came some of the receiver.
[1987.98] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And I think that's XSR or some similar little receiver on there
[1992.86] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: that I put on the end there.
[1994.5] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Yeah, it's just got a three pin connector you can put.
[1997.98] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Yeah, it is.
[1998.66] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: It is just DuPont there.
[1999.82] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And then you put whatever you want in there.
[2001.5] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And I've just soldered that that one on.
[2004.42] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: But it's also got it's got Wi-Fi.
[2007.38] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So it's got an ESP32 Wi-Fi thing there, which is quite neat.
[2012.14] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So these sort of little drones are great.
[2014.14] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: These are great research ones at universities and people.
[2018.62] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: I was using it to to fly Lissajous curves indoors like with a 3D.
[2024.1] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So it had a height in the Lissajous like I did with, you know, the ABC logo,
[2027.66] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: ABC Television Australia.
[2029.22] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: It's this Lissajous type curve.
[2031.9] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: It looks a bit like a triple figure type thing and trying to fly that as fast
[2037.74] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: as you can. Right.
[2038.9] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So the idea is to to fly that really, really, really fast in this funny pattern.
[2044.58] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: It's the sort of thing that that, you know, generates conference papers.
[2049.22] Jack: As yeah, was that the fly as fast as possible for persistence of vision?
[2055.22] Jack: So the LEDs made it look like it wasn't doing persistence of vision.
[2060.54] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: I was just trying to push it harder and harder and harder until it couldn't hold
[2064.38] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: it and it flew off against the wall.
[2065.86] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And, you know, that was fun.
[2068.18] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: But yeah, it was more about the control algorithm.
[2071.74] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So and also pushing the state estimation because the the little EKF on board
[2077.26] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: that's estimating, you know, where you are in your velocity and attitude with all
[2081.22] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: the really hard accelerations around those corners as you push up the speed.
[2085.86] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And it gets quite tricky, that.
[2087.42] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So there's a there's a lot of stuff related to, you know, the state
[2092.18] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: estimator keeping up with those high rates.
[2096.5] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: It's we've got a project we're starting with aerobatic copters or autonomous
[2101.78] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: aerobatics trying to do freestyle
[2106.78] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: schedules autonomously.
[2108.38] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So trying to produce nice, nice schedules.
[2111.98] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So we'll be aiming to demonstrate that later or middle of next year,
[2117.02] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: something like that.
[2118.54] Frank: This episode was recorded in front of a live online audience, downloaded and
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[2133.66] Frank: All thanks to our patrons.
[2135.86] Frank: Consider joining them and you'll also get other online benefits.
[2139.22] Frank: Find out more at patreon.com or slash let's drone out.
[2144.26] Koel: So I actually I have a random question sort of at a left field
[2146.94] Koel: which is not on top of with anything we were talking about.
[2149.46] Koel: But as a Canadian, I'm curious am thirty two dot C.A.
[2155.06] Koel: Is there any Canadian something going on in the background there?
[2159.42] Koel: Oh, well, you haven't noticed the accent.
[2162.86] Koel: I did, but you can never tell.
[2164.46] Koel: Like Canadians are very polite.
[2166.82] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Yeah, yeah.
[2167.7] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): No, I'm from from Nova Scotia, Canada.
[2170.86] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So that's where it's where I'm based out of.
[2173.66] Koel: Ah, OK.
[2175.54] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Hence the C.A. domain name and also am thirty two dot com was taken.
[2180.94] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Yeah. So where C.A. was the next best.
[2184.5] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): That's right. Yeah, yeah.
[2185.54] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): No, I saw that.
[2186.42] Koel: Yeah, I want to be Canadian.
[2188.9] Koel: Someone's got to be Canadian on this.
[2190.38] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Yeah. No, on the on the river water, Nova Scotia.
[2195.74] Koel: So nice.
[2197.78] Koel: We got a fellow Scotian, I think, in the chat here as well.
[2201.3] Koel: I'm in southwestern Ontario, but yeah.
[2205.5] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): That's cool. Oh, nice.
[2208.42] Stephen: You know, I was going to ask what he's excited about with the project these days.
[2214.02] Stephen: I'm glad you could join us.
[2215.54] Stephen: It sounded like it was touch and go, but great to see you here.
[2218.58] Eike "Un!t": Yeah, thank you.
[2220.18] Eike "Un!t": Yeah, I'm I'm I'm always excited.
[2221.94] Eike "Un!t": And yeah, I think that that we are doing doing great job,
[2227.38] Eike "Un!t": mostly Pete nowadays, because I'm not so active in the you see development.
[2232.82] Eike "Un!t": I'm focused on other stuff like the configurator and such,
[2237.18] Eike "Un!t": which needs maintenance, too.
[2239.14] Eike "Un!t": But yeah, I think that Pete is on a great track on improving stability greatly.
[2247.3] Eike "Un!t": And we are we are I think I'm not sure how how how far into
[2252.46] Eike "Un!t": into a testable firmware for the outside.
[2256.5] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Are you? Oh, I mean, yeah, we've been working on
[2263.01] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): the challenges for 12 SCS for a little while now.
[2267.13] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And this goes back to what Kerry Kitten was saying there about it.
[2272.25] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): It should be simple once you develop an algorithm to control the motor.
[2278.45] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): It shouldn't matter what voltage you run that motor at.
[2280.97] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): But we're finding that as the voltage increases and
[2285.57] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): especially as we get over sort of 30, 40 volts and up into the 50, 60
[2290.49] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): or higher volt range with 12 to 14 s that there is a massive amount
[2295.97] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): of things we have to we can fiddle with on the ESEs to control slew rates,
[2303.29] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): to control the energization of phases, to try to just keep things in control.
[2310.85] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Because it's I mean, the we're talking about major changes
[2317.81] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): when it comes to throttle changes in terms of voltage per second
[2322.17] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): compared to lower voltage rates and lower voltage levels.
[2326.49] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And it's been a real challenge.
[2329.13] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So the last few weeks have been devoted just to 12 SCS and higher
[2336.09] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): and trying to get commutation times more stable when things go wrong.
[2341.93] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): When phases get saturated on loaders, which is something that happens too.
[2349.25] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And when zero crosses are skipped.
[2352.81] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So so that that is the goal.
[2355.97] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And that's the challenge right now is to try to to get those
[2360.05] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): running a little more stably.
[2363.41] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): But it's it's tricky.
[2366.49] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): I mean, even just developing these things
[2370.61] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): where you know, when you've got a twenty two hundred sized quadcopter
[2376.17] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): motor on a bench beside you spinning up while you're on your computer
[2380.09] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): making changes, it's not not that scary.
[2383.81] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): But when you've got a 50 volt, you know, 12 inch prop 400 KV motor
[2390.73] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): spinning like a lawnmower three inches away from your laptop,
[2394.41] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): they are trying to like, is you have to have all these wires
[2398.13] Stephen: might be carrying a hundred amps each, it'll just get a little bit daunting.
[2402.17] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Yeah, that's right.
[2403.09] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And it's, you know, with developing lower voltage stuff, something goes wrong.
[2407.13] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): It might desync and it gets hot.
[2410.09] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): That's not a big deal with 12S stuff.
[2413.21] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Something goes wrong.
[2414.57] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): It just turns into a nuclear fireball on your desk.
[2417.37] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And I mean, there's so little chance for error.
[2422.25] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): It's it's when whenever anything does go wrong, it's a major event.
[2426.57] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): When you're talking such high voltages in current set.
[2429.77] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So it's yeah, it's hard on the nerves, but little by little, we're getting there.
[2435.73] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And I realize now that I think getting this stuff working is not a mass,
[2440.13] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): not a breakthrough that all of a sudden I'm going to find some new routine
[2443.69] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): that's going to magically make it work perfectly.
[2446.29] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): It's a whole lot of little steps and a whole lot of little things
[2450.65] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): to have to come together to.
[2453.93] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): To slowly improve things to make these
[2458.09] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): higher voltage motors and bigger props and larger current draws a little more stable.
[2463.61] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And then as soon as we do, somebody is going to go up to 16S or 24S
[2468.25] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): and 24 inch props and then you'll find your kit and e-bikes and God knows what.
[2476.97] Stephen: Yeah, it's a month rate is just going to go through the roof, man.
[2480.09] Stephen: You're going to be needing a new desk every week or so.
[2482.41] Stephen: Just score marks everywhere.
[2484.37] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Oh, it's it is ridiculous.
[2487.05] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): I've got a four foot plywood box beside me on my desk with a motor inside it
[2493.93] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): just to give myself some blast protection when things go wrong inside there.
[2499.61] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): But the ESC, unfortunately, is sitting on my desk and it's
[2504.37] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): yeah, I've got little scorch marks all over the place.
[2507.41] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): I think things sit on a little wood pad.
[2510.61] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So I've got a little little wooden pad that when it does burn and it doesn't burn my desk,
[2515.09] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): it just burns this little pad instead.
[2516.97] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And each one of those is a dead ESC on there.
[2520.49] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): It's a black and brown experience.
[2523.57] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Yeah, yeah.
[2524.49] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And it's you know, it's not as when you're dealing with low voltage stuff, too.
[2529.01] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And you've got a whole roll full of eight dollar ESCs.
[2533.17] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): If you burn one out by trying some new routines and making a stupid mistake,
[2537.01] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): you just throw another one on there.
[2538.61] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): But when you burn a hundred and fifty dollar motor or a hundred dollar ESC out
[2544.69] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): just in development, it's not something that I don't have a stack of them behind me.
[2549.05] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): I can just grab another and throw it on the desk.
[2551.85] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So so progress is definitely slower.
[2555.05] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): But we're going to keep on working on it anyway.
[2558.01] Stephen: Something else that that always comes up here.
[2559.93] Stephen: We've got people who, you know, always, oh, what about the faster update rates?
[2564.21] Stephen: What about like twelve hundred updates per second?
[2566.57] Stephen: What about twenty four hundred updates per second?
[2568.53] Stephen: What about forty eight hundred updates per second?
[2571.09] Stephen: But what's your take on that?
[2572.41] Stephen: And mechanically, what do you think the the the motor can actually
[2578.97] Stephen: represent in terms of update rates?
[2583.14] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Oh, the motor is is glacially slow compared to those update rates.
[2589.34] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): I mean, you probably wouldn't really be able to tell much of a difference
[2593.1] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): in terms of motor response between a hundred hertz and a thousand hertz and.
[2599.34] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Yeah, thirty two thousand hertz or whatever the the higher update rates are at
[2606.7] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): for really finely controlled PID responses.
[2609.5] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): I mean, the lower the lowest latency and the better.
[2613.3] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): But here the the physical response of a motor with the prop
[2619.26] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): is so slow compared to those update rates.
[2621.94] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): You could send the throttle one step per update from zero to full throttle
[2628.26] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): and back to zero again before the motor would even twitch.
[2631.54] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So it's, you know, I don't think that
[2635.74] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): there is there is a reason to have as low a latency as possible.
[2639.34] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): But chasing massive update rates
[2642.7] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): when the motor itself is a gigantic slow moving blob compared especially
[2648.22] Stephen: for the big stuff, right?
[2650.1] Stephen: Yeah, yeah, definitely like it's so maybe for for whoops, perhaps.
[2653.78] Stephen: But you've got the little seven millimeter motors and stuff like that.
[2658.82] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Yeah, the faster the the physical rate of the possible physical rate of change,
[2664.74] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): the faster the update rate can be.
[2668.74] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): But with these big motors, I mean, they
[2672.9] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): they they won't change very
[2676.26] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): even within one turn, they might not change RPM very, very fast.
[2681.46] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): You know, it could take quite a few turns before they even really have a
[2687.14] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): double their RPM, for example.
[2688.9] Stephen: So by that, otherwise the heating effect would be pretty insane
[2693.42] Stephen: because they're never 100 percent efficient.
[2694.98] Stephen: Right. So acceleration will cause a lot of heating, I guess. Right.
[2700.05] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Yeah, I mean, there's just a certain point where any faster of an update rate
[2703.97] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): is not going to improve the response of a motor.
[2706.81] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And I think we've exceeded that already with the 4K D shot that we're using.
[2713.09] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): I don't think anything beyond that's really going to make it
[2717.85] Stephen: make it much faster.
[2719.09] Stephen: Well, a 4K pit rate with D shot 300, would that be?
[2723.89] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Yeah. And I mean, even I mean, KISS that uses they have a much higher D shot rates.
[2729.53] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): You know, they use D shot 1200 or D shot 2400.
[2733.57] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): But they don't they don't update it any faster.
[2738.45] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So it's not like that D shot signal is coming at a closer interval
[2742.73] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): or a tighter interval.
[2743.77] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): It's it's still being updated at a regular low,
[2748.57] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): I think four kilohertz or eight kilohertz PID loop rate.
[2752.69] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So they I think the only advantage to those
[2757.73] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): is getting a little bit lower latency because the signal is finished
[2760.61] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): a little bit faster, but we're talking microseconds.
[2763.69] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So I don't know what you know.
[2765.97] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Yeah, I'm not sure if it really is going to make much of a difference in the end.
[2770.17] Stephen: Yeah, I'm worried difference between
[2774.53] Stephen: real results and how easy it is to attract people,
[2777.97] Stephen: especially technical folk with with higher numbers.
[2780.37] Stephen: Everyone likes higher numbers.
[2782.77] Eike "Un!t": It's difficult. And for for butterfly, for example,
[2786.73] Eike "Un!t": you already saturate 4K loop rate with D shot 300.
[2790.81] Eike "Un!t": So the only reason to go 8K loop rate and D shot 600
[2795.89] Eike "Un!t": is to enable bi-directional D shot for RPM filtering
[2799.37] Eike "Un!t": because you basically have the data rate in half.
[2803.13] Eike "Un!t": So data rate is 300 and bi-directional telemetry is 300.
[2809.29] Eike "Un!t": So it adds up to 600 and you already saturate the the 8K loop with that.
[2814.81] Eike "Un!t": So for beta flight, there's no reason to go any higher.
[2819.49] Stephen: 32K loop rate, IK, you can run 32K loop rate.
[2822.97] Stephen: What was the answer?
[2824.77] Eike "Un!t": Was there a time where that was possible, actually?
[2831.17] Jack: Carl, you've got a question about the support for.
[2836.09] Jack: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[2837.09] Koel: So that is one thing.
[2839.05] Koel: So with Kisteltra, I've seen that's been added to the website recently
[2842.37] Koel: and and the support for for that.
[2845.33] Koel: Just curious, I guess what that was all like with the development
[2848.89] Koel: and working with Alexander and stuff.
[2853.26] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Yeah, well, originally AM32 didn't work properly with D shot 1200, 2400.
[2859.02] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): We just stopped it at 600.
[2861.7] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And but we wanted to make sure that it worked
[2867.78] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): with as many flight controllers as possible.
[2870.34] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And so we wanted to support Kist flight controllers as well.
[2873.82] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): We've heard a lot of good things from pilots
[2875.98] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): and some pilots really love Kist stuff.
[2878.38] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So it seems to fly really nice and stable.
[2882.38] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So we, you know, we wanted to make sure that AM32 works
[2885.5] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): with those higher D shot rates, too, that people are used to with Kist stuff.
[2889.54] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So we had to just make sure that it could.
[2894.06] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Yeah, we had to just change some of the timings to allow
[2898.66] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): so it can accept 1200 or 2400.
[2901.34] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): It can actually accept D shot signals of really any any moderate.
[2904.7] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): It just compares the the pulse time to the total packet time
[2909.7] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): to to work out whether it's a valid D shot signal or not.
[2915.26] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So we made those changes for Kist
[2918.26] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): and and worked with a few of their test pilots.
[2920.94] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And I hope they're happy now.
[2924.02] Koel: Well, you know, I saw I saw a bunch of stuff that Al Mac was putting out.
[2928.98] Koel: He was working on some with Kist Ultra and the AM32 stuff.
[2933.78] Koel: I don't know if if you're familiar with Al Mac.
[2937.22] Koel: I'm guessing you may be.
[2939.46] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Yes, yes, I am.
[2940.78] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): No, I talked to him every once in a while through the the AM32 discord.
[2946.5] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And we've we've he's helped me out immensely with testing and development.
[2953.06] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): He's been my guinea pig, lovely man.
[2955.38] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): AM60 up and running.
[2958.3] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So it's and he's luckily very patient.
[2962.9] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So thanks. Thanks a lot, Al Mac.
[2965.38] Stephen: I know you're in the chat there, but yeah, we just had him on last week, I think.
[2969.82] Stephen: So hello, Al. Hope you're doing well.
[2974.3] Eike "Un!t": Yeah, also also a shout out to Alexander himself,
[2978.38] Eike "Un!t": who helped tremendous in fixing the configurator to work with Kist Ultra.
[2982.9] Eike "Un!t": And he actually wrote the code to make it more stable
[2987.22] Eike "Un!t": for everybody himself.
[2989.02] Eike "Un!t": And I added it to the country radio.
[2991.62] Jack: Lovely. Very talented man.
[2995.14] Jack: Very. It's a it's a pleasure to know him.
[2999.9] Jack: Even though we do annoy the piss out of him.
[3003.14] Koel: I'm sorry.
[3006.38] Koel: Yeah, that's fair. We definitely do.
[3008.9] Koel: Thanks. No idea. Thanks, Feds.
[3011.78] Koel: Oh, no, the man.
[3014.42] Jack: Yes. How I can't believe, Pete, am I right?
[3019.54] Jack: I checked out an interview with you and this all started
[3024.1] Jack: because you wanted to run DIY firmware.
[3027.86] Jack: Is that right?
[3029.02] Jack: Yeah, I see you and stuff.
[3031.9] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Yeah, it started because
[3036.7] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): well, I was I wanted to make a lot of BLHESC at first.
[3043.58] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So I was making those DIY and just flashing BLHES,
[3047.38] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): which was readily available to them.
[3049.02] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And it was great for hobbyists because you can just play around
[3052.78] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): with your own hardware, download one of the hardware profiles
[3056.5] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): that matches and away you go.
[3057.9] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And and I was really excited about 32 bit
[3063.58] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): BLHESC 32 to be able to do that, my firmware.
[3067.06] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): But unfortunately, it wasn't so.
[3070.46] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So that's what started because I had to I had to make something
[3075.34] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): work on the hardware that I was was playing around with at the time.
[3080.1] Stephen: So I'm glad to see you stuck to it because you've created
[3084.54] Stephen: a juggernaut here. It's fantastic to see. Yeah.
[3088.74] Jack: Oh, you're amazing.
[3091.18] Stephen: I mean, yeah, I was flashing the stuff while buying
[3097.1] Stephen: BLHESC 32 and paying their license fee and then spending hours
[3100.94] Stephen: trying to figure this out and flashing it and importing weird little dongles
[3105.26] Stephen: from AliExpress to to flash the 8032 hardware and everything.
[3110.62] Stephen: And yeah, I think I think it's fantastic.
[3112.54] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Speaking of which, have you seen Andrew?
[3116.14] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Well, I have now, if only that had been around a year ago.
[3119.18] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): That deserves a special mention, especially for anybody who's out there
[3123.54] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): doing any flashing.
[3125.1] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Maybe Andrew, you can talk a little bit about that too.
[3127.34] Jack: Oh, yeah. What it does for sure.
[3130.26] Stephen: I love you.
[3134.86] Stephen: Yeah, he found it very easy.
[3136.26] Stephen: So tell us more about it, Andrew.
[3138.66] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Yeah, it was just I noticed a lot of people struggling with
[3142.62] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: getting the debug connection and and having to solder.
[3145.98] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: I'm terrible at soldering.
[3147.62] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Really, the fine soldering you have to do, you know,
[3151.5] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: in order to get a stable link to your debugger,
[3155.26] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: especially on a four in one.
[3157.34] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And that was a real struggle.
[3158.62] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And, you know, as any software engineers knows,
[3161.34] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: if you're having a trouble with hardware, you try and fix it in software.
[3165.42] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And so the idea was to try to automate that.
[3169.02] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And I initially just did it as a little bash script.
[3171.58] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So it was a little wild, true, you know, open OCD flash, flash, flash, flash,
[3177.78] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: right. And then you hold the pins and then it it goes OK.
[3181.86] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And so then it was just a matter of wrapping that in a GUI.
[3186.78] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So and with the little beeps, you know, it's done.
[3188.98] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So you don't have to look at the screen and that sort of thing.
[3191.7] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So, yeah, I'm really glad it's been useful for people.
[3196.06] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And I mean, the GUI is pretty crude,
[3200.14] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: but it does the job.
[3202.02] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Well, if you want to use it once.
[3203.9] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Yeah, yeah, it's it's
[3207.3] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: it was it was nice when I when I did a four in one with it being able to go tap,
[3210.9] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: tap, tap, tap, tap.
[3212.14] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: You often have to scrape off the little covering.
[3215.5] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: They've got little little conformal coding on.
[3219.66] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Although interesting thing about that, I do slightly worry about
[3224.82] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: people end up then flying, of course, with that conformal coding scraped off.
[3229.3] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And we had this this issue in the past with our new pilot
[3234.5] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: where the debug pins like the debug connector was exposed
[3238.9] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: on the side of the vehicle.
[3240.34] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And we found on some vehicles, you could make them reboot
[3243.7] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: by putting your hand on that connector.
[3246.26] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And so, you know, your fingers touching between the clock and data pins.
[3254.26] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Yeah. And it was just these particular vehicles.
[3256.5] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: It was possible.
[3257.18] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So we've now changed our pilot by default
[3261.46] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: to disable those debug pins just by not setting the auxiliary functions
[3266.26] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: on those on those pins to to enable them.
[3270.3] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And there's a parameter in our pilot that sets whether to enable those.
[3274.18] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: You've got to then set that parameter for or a debugger won't attach.
[3278.62] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And it might be nice to do that in in I am 32.
[3282.5] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: But the problem is that that also makes it harder for people
[3285.22] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: then replace the firmware if something goes badly wrong. Right.
[3289.3] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: But I do slightly worry that there's a small chance
[3294.34] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: of a bit of electrostatic discharge or whatever on those exposed pads,
[3299.06] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: a bit of moisture, a drop of rain,
[3303.06] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: you know, with a with a bit of grime from, you know, sort from cars or whatever.
[3307.86] Stephen: You can always get a little bit of conformal
[3310.18] Stephen: and just just dab it on after you've got the bootloader on.
[3313.74] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Sure. But again, software engineer, you know, if it's
[3316.78] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: if it's above the level of like zip ties and sticky tape,
[3320.3] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: then it's sort of beyond my capabilities.
[3322.06] Stephen: What about a hot glue? Do you interpret that in the list?
[3324.62] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Yeah, I do have a hot glue gun.
[3326.94] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: It's funny enough, I bought one of the US 110 volt hot glue guns
[3332.3] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: and I find that run it on 250 volts in Australia and it really heats up fast.
[3337.02] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: That was great.
[3338.62] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So I've got a really fast heat up hot glue gun.
[3343.18] Jack: You're on a live podcast. Shut up.
[3347.78] Jack: If you're only a man with pooming chores,
[3350.38] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: I've only had to trip the, you know, the house figure a couple of times
[3355.78] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: when I plug in the hot glue gun.
[3356.9] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Most of the time it works, but it does heat up fast.
[3363.34] Jack: Yeah, that I'm not telling you to do this,
[3365.58] Jack: but if you get the temperature controlled ones and bypass the direct
[3372.14] Jack: goes when it comes out, it bubbles and it's quite steam.
[3376.7] Jack: Excellent. Excellent.
[3378.06] Jack: Yeah, do that rather than 110, baby.
[3382.18] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Oh, right. OK, so you sort of steam the glue on.
[3385.18] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Yeah, this sounds like a great idea.
[3387.86] Stephen: Some kind of super soaker with a jet of steam.
[3394.66] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Excellent. Great advice.
[3397.1] Eike "Un!t": Do you guys want to hear something awesome about Andreas
[3400.94] Eike "Un!t": and another another thing?
[3402.86] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Go ahead. Not really.
[3404.3] Eike "Un!t": Do you guys all know Zumba?
[3408.34] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Ah, I haven't worked on that for a long time.
[3411.22] Eike "Un!t": It's Zumba, SMB, Zumba.
[3413.58] Eike "Un!t": This is. Yeah. Say hello to the creator.
[3418.46] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Yeah, that was that was a long time ago.
[3420.06] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: That was procrastinating while while working on which versions
[3423.5] Stephen: a long time ago in the version one days or up to version three.
[3428.82] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: I think we're on for a vision for I started all the ones up to version four.
[3433.14] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: But then I then I hung up my Samba development hat
[3436.34] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: and handed over to the rest of the team.
[3438.74] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So I haven't done Samba development for a long time.
[3444.02] Stephen: Well done. That's made a lot of my infrastructure come along happily.
[3447.94] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So good stuff. Yeah, it's it's good.
[3450.42] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: It's really good feeling to make software that people find useful.
[3454.42] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And as I'm sure Peter's discovered,
[3457.1] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: the satisfaction that comes from, you know, appreciated software
[3461.02] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: and the frustration sometimes when it doesn't work.
[3464.1] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And, you know, oh, no, you blew up my essay.
[3469.18] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Yes, that that happens, too.
[3471.18] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And yeah, I've heard a few harsh words now.
[3475.58] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Yeah, the past few years.
[3479.42] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): But, you know, that's that's going to happen.
[3481.86] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): I mean, we've got thousands of people using something
[3485.02] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): and millions of combinations.
[3487.7] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Yeah, it's not all roses, unfortunately.
[3490.82] Stephen: Yeah, the B to flight team has the same thing.
[3493.38] Stephen: You need very thick skin to deal with with all of the users, because it's
[3497.9] Stephen: 99 percent good news that you don't hear.
[3500.54] Stephen: And one percent ruins ruin someone's day.
[3503.5] Stephen: And they'll hang around all week to tell you about it.
[3507.14] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And crash logs takes on a whole new meaning when they've got flying vehicles.
[3511.54] Jack: Yeah. Yeah.
[3514.86] Jack: One final question that I want to ask is
[3518.5] Jack: what is the highest voltage
[3521.66] Jack: you officially support and what you're hoping to get to?
[3527.3] Jack: What's the road map for the height?
[3528.94] Jack: You know, the voltage support of a and 32
[3532.9] Eike "Un!t": yes, I suppose it's more of a hardware thing, isn't it?
[3536.9] Eike "Un!t": I think save for now is eight is right.
[3539.54] Eike "Un!t": And nothing, nothing above eight is
[3543.26] Eike "Un!t": confirmed working.
[3547.26] Stephen: And so I mentioned the security in the chat.
[3549.62] Stephen: They were talking about something that looked like a 12 SCC.
[3554.78] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): It shouldn't really match.
[3556.78] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): That's that's where it should really make much of a difference.
[3560.22] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): But what we're doing now is having to create
[3564.02] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): software work arounds for hardware and possibilities.
[3568.26] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So it's it's it's we're reaching a stage where
[3572.58] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): we with the hardware can't work on 12 S as it is.
[3578.74] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So these 12 SCC is if we were to change voltage from zero to 50 volts
[3584.94] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): and give these motors full voltage right off the bat,
[3588.74] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): they something would break,
[3591.58] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): whether it's in the motor or something in the ESE or it would just
[3595.26] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): they'd be they'd be problems.
[3596.54] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So as the voltage increases,
[3599.58] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): there really shouldn't be logic changes that we have to do.
[3603.58] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): But
[3606.14] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): because the hardware, we know we have to keep things under control.
[3610.34] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): We have to keep voltage fluctuations to a minimum and voltage ripple.
[3614.14] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): We have to now do work arounds to make that higher voltage work.
[3618.86] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): I mean, in the past, aim 32 has been used on 150 volt DC water pumps.
[3624.86] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So but they run at a fixed RPM.
[3628.02] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): They slowly reach the front.
[3629.98] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): They go from a low speed somewhere gradually up to their their final RPM
[3635.54] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): and then they just run at that one speed forever.
[3639.38] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And the hardware was made with that in mind, too.
[3643.26] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So it worked fine.
[3646.82] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): But, you know, the ESE will work fine at 12 S2,
[3651.58] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): but it might not work fine at 12 S if somebody all of a sudden
[3656.26] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): demands 100 percent throttle when they're at 10 percent throttle
[3660.94] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): from all four motors on an ESE.
[3666.1] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): Something might go wrong that.
[3667.34] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So that's that's why it's, you know,
[3670.7] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): I think the highest supported
[3673.62] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): firmware hardware right now is works reliably in 8S.
[3679.06] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): But there are 12 SESC's that some people work and use perfectly fine
[3685.1] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): depending on their setup.
[3686.86] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): But you have to be aware that AM 32 is not doing a lot of restriction for you.
[3691.7] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So you have to do it yourself.
[3694.06] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): If you're going to go to 50 percent throttle and then slam it to 100 percent throttle,
[3700.5] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): the firmware is not going to stop you from just applying that voltage.
[3704.5] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): And it's going to try to do whatever you're asking it to,
[3708.94] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): which is going to exceed the limits of a lot of hardware.
[3711.78] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So we're going to have to add more of the protections that BL Heli had.
[3719.06] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So things that BL Heli 32 did in order to
[3723.1] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): to sort of mitigate disaster from these larger ESEs like
[3731.7] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): slew rate limitations.
[3734.26] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So we're not allowing a massive throttle jump.
[3738.14] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): I'm also looking at sort of active phase
[3744.78] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): de-energization or demag compensation is what they called it for BL Heli 32.
[3750.9] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): More low throttle protections for those
[3756.38] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): those high voltage lower RPM motors.
[3760.02] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): So in order to account for all those fringe situations,
[3764.9] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): we're going to have to just add in a whole lot more options
[3768.14] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): that people could enable to to not be a complex beast.
[3774.7] Pete "AlkaMotors" (AM32): It is. Yeah. Yeah.
[3776.78] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Yeah. I'd like to get to 24S. Oh, yeah.
[3782.38] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: So to 96. It'll take a while.
[3785.42] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: That's not going to be next week, that year or two.
[3788.38] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: But there's quite a number of 24S vehicles that I'd love to see AM 32 on.
[3793.34] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And they're currently flying like the 24S T motors, that sort of thing.
[3799.06] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: And I'd love it to be an option to be on the AM 32 instead.
[3803.22] Stephen: Well, we have a few pilots here who've flown X-Class.
[3806.14] Stephen: I think Clive FPV has flown one of those and Zoe FPV.
[3809.98] Stephen: She was definitely kind of one of the proponents of X-Class.
[3812.9] Stephen: And that crowd are all 12S, 14S.
[3816.74] Stephen: So there might be a couple of test pilots there.
[3819.78] Stephen: Yep. You guys have got a lot of love in the chat.
[3826.0] Stephen: Yeah, everyone thinks you're fantastic.
[3827.6] Stephen: And shout out to Ikey as well.
[3829.4] Stephen: I'm sorry we didn't get to talk to you as much as the other guys,
[3831.84] Stephen: but I think that the config tool that you did,
[3834.56] Stephen: the AM 32 CA config tool is really nice.
[3837.96] Stephen: And that really lowers the barrier to entry for a lot of users as well,
[3842.44] Stephen: which is fantastic.
[3844.6] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: Yeah, definitely. That's been fantastic.
[3846.68] Andrew "tridge" Tridgell: That's been fantastic.
[3849.48] Stephen: OK, I think we're on that note coming up to the end of our slot.
[3853.56] Stephen: So we'd like to thank the AM 32 team.
[3856.72] Stephen: We've had Andrew here and Pete and Ikey.
[3863.44] Stephen: Thank you, guys. You're doing a fantastic job.
[3866.16] Stephen: The community and everyone here really loves the work you're doing.
[3869.4] Stephen: Appreciate you tremendously. So thank you.
[3872.8] Eike "Un!t": Thank you. It's been a pleasure.
[3875.0] Eike "Un!t": Yeah, thank you. Awesome.
[3876.92] Stephen: And thanks to all our Patreons for keeping the show going
[3880.12] Stephen: and paying all the hosting and editing costs.
[3883.56] Stephen: You're amazing as well.
[3885.36] Stephen: And we'll bid you adieu for another Let's Throw Now episode.
[3889.36] Stephen: You have been joined by everyone's favorite, Kerry Tietem.
[3893.32] Stephen: Right. Fertilling around with the sheets of cardboard.
[3896.44] Jack: It's Jack. Thank you.
[3898.84] Jack: I was trying to make an ESC mobster at my friend.
[3902.44] Jack: They're not playing.
[3903.8] Stephen: And also, Cole, thanks very much.
[3907.68] Stephen: See you.
[3909.44] Stephen: Myself, Stephen, too. Good night.
[3911.92] Stephen: Thank you. Good night.
[3912.68] Stephen: Catch you later. Bye. Bye.
[3915.12] Stephen: See everybody. Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye.
[3918.52] Koel: Telemetry loss.