Redesigning Multirotor ESCs

[Hands0n]

So, there';s this rather clever lad in South America who is redesigning ESCs from the ground up.    Exciting stuff it is. 

But the only problem I see right now is that there is no FC that would take advantage of what it is capable of. A classic Chicken and Egg conundrum.  Although, like all things, someone has to break the mould, got to start somewhere.

http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/redesigning-multirotor-esc-s

Most of the ESC';s for multirotor use the SimonK firmware on a relatively simple Atmel microcontroller. There';s a single control wire running from the autopilot to the ESC, which is a signal proportionally dictates how long the mosfets are left open and as such command the torque on the motors.

And that';s pretty much all there is to an ESC... No signal/wire coming back to tell the autopilot how that particular motor is doing or what the rpm or current is, it';s just a "command wire". That sounds a bit antiquated for 2014.

So this picture is of an ESC dev board I first started on, here using the Allegro A4960 chip for simplicity. Shipping to Brazil takes time, so before it arrived the design already morphed into something new, so that';s why the board looks unused. Both the MCU and driver chip changed on the newest development board version and I introduced testing points for oscilloscope readings; this project is about to get serious!

[quadfather]

"Shut up and take my money" sums it up nicely.