halvorlu

I'm looking for a simple ESCfor up to roughly 12A for a brushless motor, with motor voltage around 5.5V-8.4V. For more details about my project, see www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_9813091/tm.htm. I'm completely new to this, but I see that many of the ESC available are programmable with loads of fancy features. I'd like a simple as possible ESC that doesn't need programming, or at least has sensible defaults.

Note also that I'll be controlling the ESCusing DIY electronics, not a stock receiver, so I must be sure about the PWM input specifications. Am Icorrect in believing that a 50Hz signal with 1 ms = 0% and 2 ms= 100% is standard for allESCs?

mike_o

To focus your energy with the boat, perhaps you should just take the electronics out of an old servo? It has all the decoding required, you just need to add more powerful transistors and dump the position feedback.

But why not get a finished ESC off Ebay? They are cheap and you can get almost any you want.

And if the boat is autonomous, why do you need a RC PWM input decoder??

EDIT: Now I'm getting it, Ithink. If you need to control the motor speed based on other inputs than a RC transmitter/receiver, just go ahead and decide for either:
A) digital, and put a simple 8-bit programmable MCU in the system, or
B) Analog and use a comparatorwith the inputof a ramp generator on one input and your (scaled) analog input on the other. Thisdesign can use a little as 0.1mA with a FEToutput transistor.

I thinkyou should get a brushed motor with an efficiency at min 80%. That may be hard to find in alow powerdevice.

DRAGONFIRE81M

hobbycity.com has a line of super simple esc or has the know lest it as SS