Tag Archives: hobbywing

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

HobbyWing XRotor 10A ESC

Posted by on September 1, 2015 No comments

Some time ago I looked for small, quality and not expensive ESC for my SG Acro quadcopter and I found the HobbyWing XRotor 10A. Ordered four of these and approximately 2 weeks later they are by me. I don’t have a free acro frame now, to mount them on, so the flight test will be in a few weeks. But as I love to take pictures, here are some of the ESCs:

They came well packaged, but with manual in Chinese. This is actually normal as I ordered the Asia-Version, because it was cheaper. If I wish, I can always download the English manual.

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The ESC is really small: 36.5mm x 16.4mm x 4.1mm. The weight is 6.5g with 2mm connectors already soldered. So it is really easy to connect to my T-Motor MN2206 or MN1804 motors. It is important to know, that the ESC does not have any BEC, so you cant power the flight controller directly from the ESC.

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I decided to remove the heat shrink on one of the ESCs, to check what is inside and as expected, these ESCs are exactly the same as the T-Motor Air 10A. I have already tested one T-Motor Air 10A (compared with one HK BlueSeries 12A flashed with the newest SimonK and comp_pwm enabled) and it performed great. I am not absolutely 100% sure if the XRotor 10A have the same firmware as the T-Motor Air 10A, but it is probably the case.

HobbyWing XRotor 10A:

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T-Motor Air 10A:

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Both ESCs are labeled as 2-3S, but I will give it a try on a 4S configuration and see if it will burn. If you already tested these ESCs on your multicopter, I would love to know about your flight experience with them.