Introduction to VESC 6

Danger

Regardless of whether you are a core or a new member, you MUST consult senior members if this is the first time you work with a VESC.

If you forgot any step, DO NOT attempt blindly, check the docs again. If there are details unspecified in the docs, e.g. unseen buttons or pop-up warnings, ask someone who may know or make sure you know what you are doing.

Misusing motor drivers can cause severe bodily injury or death.

VESC (Vedder Electronic Speed Controller) is a family of open source and open hardware ESCs by Benjamin Vedder. See the project website for more: https://vesc-project.com/.

Big Picture

Here is a simplified block diagram for a system with a single ESC. Note that, the connections in the diagram may not correspond to physical cables. The setup will be a bit more complex in reality, which you will see in the upcoming chapters.

The Purple Region

More about the battery and SBC in other topics, we will be focusing on the purple region in this topic. Setting up and understanding the purple region is a prerequisite of using SBC for control anyway.

Power over Red & Grey

The red and grey connections on the top of the VESC are the DC power input.

It doesn’t have to be a battery. In later chapters, you will learn how to choose your source and the gotchas.

Control over Orange/Blue

Our ESC can be controlled through either CAN Bus (orange) or USB (blue).

CAN Bus is used in competition for its reliability. Control is done programmatically with the SBC (Single-board Computer), which is often Raspberry Pi in our case. However, it is out of scope for now.

In this topic, we will be setting up and controlling the VESC & motor through USB.