Tag Archives: t-motor

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.

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.

T-Motor MN1804 2400kv with 6045 propeller test

Posted by on May 18, 2015 No comments

I bought the T-Motor MN1804 2400kv for my SG Acro quadcopter about two months ago. It is something between the smallest T-Motor MT1306 and the bigger MN2206. Weight is only 16g. Most of the time I have used these motors on my quad with a 5×3 carbon propellers. Yesterday I decided to put 6045 plastic props and I was amazed. It flies much smoother and it is very quiet too. I was not sure if these small motors can handle 6” propellers on 3S battery, but that was not a problem. After an acro flight with lots of flips the motors were barely warm.

A bit more data: AUW is 335g with 3S 1300mAh battery. Copter hovers on about 33-35% throttle. Current is 5A at hover, which makes only 1,25A per motor. Achieved a 12min acro flight on 3S 1300mAh.

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