Tag Archives: comp_pwm

HobbyWing XRotor 15A ESC with “OneShot” and Damped Light

Posted by on September 16, 2015 4 comments

Two weeks ago I posted an article about the XRotor 10A ESC, which I wanted to use for my next acro quadcopter. I wanted to download the English manual from the HobbyWing website and noticed these new XRotor 15A ESC. The XRotor 10A performs in my opinion great compared to the SimonK and BLHeli and HobbyWing claim these new XRotor 15A are even better than SimonK and BLHeli ESCs. I wanted to know what the difference is and asked the HobbyWing support team. This is the info that I got:

  • The new XRotor 15A does not support signals with refresh rate up to 621Hz like the 10A version.
  • The new XRotor 15A support “OneShot” and “DEO” (which is like “Damped light” on BLHeli or comp_pwm and motor_brake on SimonK). The old 10A ESC does not support these functions.

HobbyWing made some tests and claim that these new ESCs have better efficiency and lower temperature. So I decided to give these ESC a try and ordered 4pieces for the acro quad.

The ESCs came extreme quickly from Hong Kong to Germany, only 10 days. Before I mount them on the quadcopter I wanted to know what’s inside under the heat shrink, so opened one and made some photos.

The ESCs are a bit bigger and heavier than the XRotor 10A. Unlike them these have longer motor cables and some other type of gold connectors.

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On the backside you can see the IRFH8318 MOSFETs. These are rated to 30V, so maybe flying on 4S could be possible. Here you can find the datasheet.

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On the front side the XRotor 15A is completely different from the XRotor 10A. I will check and ask what the elements exactly are, as I cant find any information right now.

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  • MPSF34 / MP6530 – Brushless DC Motor Pre-Driver by Monolithic Power Systems (Max 60V).
  • HW503 / 515AB – I can’t find any information about this chip. (Thanks to QuadMcFly from RCGroups, who corrected me, that it is not HH503).

I will update the article as soon as I mount these on my SG Acro v1.1 quadcopter with the T-Motor MN2206 and give them a try.

Update 30.09.2015: The ESCs are already mounted on my acro quadcopter and they perform very well. OneShot is activated and I have no sync issues with the T-Motor MN2206. Active breaking is about the same as on HK BlueSeries 12A with BLHeli, but in my opinion not so great as SimonK with comp_pwm and motor_brake enabled. The ESCs are rated for max 3S, but I have tested them successfully on 4S with no problems. They don’t get warm and I haven’t experienced sync issues. Here a picture of my SG Acro v1.1 with the ESCs heatshrinked directly on the arms. I can’t tell for sure if these ESCs have higher efficiency than BLHeli or SimonK ESCs, as this is hard to test without a power meter. If this helps you, I got about 14min mixed flight time (Quad weight is 270g without the 4S 1300mAh battery; props are 6” carbon).DSC_3436

SimonK vs. BLHeli firmware vs. T-Motor 10A Air ESC

Posted by on June 23, 2015 No comments

Both SimonK and BLHeli firmwares are getting updates, new features and I was wondering which of these is better for my quadcopter. Since I started with the multirotors I was using the SimonK firmware and I am still happy with it. I also will test one T-Motor 10A Air ESC, which has its own firmware.

On four different ESCs I flashed the following versions and functions of the firmwares:

  • SimonK 2014-09-30
  • SimonK 2014-09-30 comp_pwm enabled (here is an article on how-to enabled it)
  • SimonK 2015-04-19 comp_pwm enabled (support “OneShot125”)
  • BLHeli 13.2 damped light enabled (support “OneShot125”)

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comp_pwm disabled vs. comp_pwm enabled vs. damped light comparison:

There is a significant difference between the SimonK firmware with enabled and disabled comp_pwm feature. The motor on the ESC without the comp_pwm stops probably a second later. On the other side the ESC with the BLHeli 13.2 and damped light stops even faster than the one with SimonK and comp_pwm. So 1-0 for BLHeli over SimonK. I was corrected on the RCGroups forum, that I didn’t enable the “MOTOR_BRAKE” feature on SimonK, so the comparison is not exactly right. I will test that too and update this article.

Then I decided to compare the BLHeli 13.2 and the SimonK 2015-04-19, as both support the “OneShot125”. Well here I found the SimonK better and smoother than the BLHeli ESC. The motor on the SimonK ESC was much quieter. 1-1 SimonK vs. BLHeli. Note: I used the standard settings on BLHeli, so there could be an option to change, that will make it perform better.

The T-Motor 12A Air ESC with its stock firmware does not have a feature like comp_pwm and damped light, so it behaved like the normal SimonK firmware. The motor was very responsive and its sound was also very quite. It is a bit subjective, but I think it performs like the SimonK with the “OneShot125” or even better. It is also a bit lighter (7.3g) and smaller than the HK BlueSeries 12A ESC.

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Please note that I only tested one type of ESC (HK BlueSeries 12A) and one type of motor (T-Motor MN2206 2000kv) on a 3S battery. The results can be different on other configurations.

Conclusion: The damped light on the BLHeli is a bit better (*to be updated) than the comp_pwm on SimonK, but the last one performs in my opinion much better in “OneShot125” mode.