I tried to do this test but I did not use the computer. I just used the same throttle percent on the maytech remote screen. About 17%. That equated to the motor being at about half it’s RPM in no load test. My 75/300 VESC RPM readout is wrong. Need to figure out how to calibrate it. Way too high a number. But the motor I filled 3/4 of the way full with corrosionX and my other same motor which hasn’t been filled, were exactly the same amp draw of about 4 amps and exactly the same RPM. Full throttle no load testing was also exactly the same between the two motors.
This motor filled 3/4 full with corrosionX is what I’m using in my test video. Works good. No issues.
I had some of the issues you are describing early on in my testing. I had a cheap skateboard remote. It had trouble calibrating the throttle position and would sometimes have starting issues, and jerky throttle control.
The crunchy sound and motor not starting from a stop makes me think the upload didn’t work. Are you sure you are running the BUartLowKVmotor firmware?
I was only able to verify the upload worked by trying to reconnect to the computer program after flashing firmware. If the upload worked the ESC with not connect to the change settings part of program.
I would say to flash the stock firmware back on the ESC and test it with the motor and see it’s behavior. Then again flash the new firmware and see how behavior changes.
Did you tell flier you have the black 400amp Boat ESC? Maybe it’s not the same as the red waterproof boat ESC and you need a different firmware.
I have no issues now. Good throttle control. Good start from stop. And motor sounds very smooth, not crunchy, jerky sound.
I am happy with the red flier 400a waterproof boat ESC with this firmware. It works great with the 65161 120kv motor.
Yes I am pretty sure the firmware reflash worked. It was unable to connect to the PC afterwards and I have flashed back and forth between original and various LOW KV firmwares that Cathy at Flier sent, including the one you are using from the flash list. I am jealous of your success.
I am heading back to the pool now. I have both 80100 and 65150 mounted to my board and i will be testing both with various firmware and props.
played around with Flier firmware again today. I swapped back to the Boat16S_V30 firmware.
Acceleration= hard
Start Power= 100%
Timing = 25 degrees (But seems to work just fine with any timing)
Motor ran smooth out of the water. I took it to the pool for a static test and… it worked just fine. I might even say great. Sounded really smooth (A tiny bit of funny noise at around 60-80% throttle). Pulled around 180A but then this started to drop to around 100A. According to the maytech remote the motor would spin almost 4K RPM (120KV @45V = 5400RPM so this seems believable). After pulling the board out of the water I figured out why the amps slowly dropped off… Check out that prop lol. blades couldn’t take it.
I took the board out for a spin a couple days ago. Just to recap, I am running the Flier 400A ESC with 120kv 65151 flipsky motor. I am now using the “Boat16S_V30” firmware, not the special low KV one. I was having a hard time getting the low kv firmware to work well (see above posts) and just decided to try the old one again. Low and behold it worked and seems to work really well. And i can now adjust all of the motor and LVC settings! Not sure why all of the sudden it works but have emailed Flier to see if they happened to make any changes. Would love to see if others have the same result (@Louis, @Flightjunkie…). I am running 60% start power and 25 degrees of timing, medium acceleration, not power restrictions, 12S etc… If you just punch the throttle there is still a little wonkyness right at the beginning like the esc is trying to get a good read on motor position before getting synced up and then spinning up smoothly. This wonkyness lasts about 1 second and then smooths out so im cool with it.
I swapped over to a solas prop for the meantime since my printed FR clone bent under load. I first stopped by my hood’s pool to do a static test before heading to the beach to make sure the motor and new prop got along with each other.
After running it in the pool it seemed pretty good to me. Wide open it would pull just under 200A (keep in mind the board was fixed). Sounded pretty smooth and was definitely pushing some water!
I headed to the beach for a test ride. I only stayed out fro about 15 minutes and used maybe 40% of my two turnigy 6S 20AH batteries (in series 12S, 20AH). It looked like it was pulling about 60A (@12S) just before taking off which I am pretty pleased with. 60A is WELL within the capability of my power system from at thermal standpoint. I was lucky enough to ride the lift efoil for about 45 minutes a month or so ago so had a good benchmark for comparison. The 65150 had plenty of power at first. Throttle was a little tricky to control well. Also having the weight of the batteries hanging way off the nose made it difficult to balance. I am currently moving the battery box into the deck between my feet (pacificmeister style). The last thing I noticed was that I had to pitch the nose of the board up quite a bit to get up on the foil. This also meant that if the board came back down and touched down flat on the water, the foil would be angled slightly downwards (like a spoiler on a car) and would pull the board down into the water, bringing it to a very abrupt hault. In fact every single time I would touch back down, i would immediately go flying off the front. I have since printed a 1 degree shim to put between the mast base and board to see if i can fix this. I had no problem touching back down on the lift foil.
The bigger issue however seemed to be motor power. A few minutes into the session I noticed that power seemed to be dropping off. Motor also started sounding a little strange like it was getting out of sync maybe. This was concerning so i brought it back in and went back home to inspect things. All electronics were bone dry and I also pulled the end of the motor off to see if water had gotten inside. It looked good with the slightest bit of moisture just on the inside of the seal. No weird burnt smells either. To be safe I went ahead and filled it maybe halfway with corrosion X per @Flightjunkie 's recommendation.
Another thing I noticed is that the RPM displayed by the maytech remote seems to have dropped bigtime. In the previous post i mentioned that it was showing about 4K RPM in the water under 100A load. Now I can only get it to spin around 2K rpm with no load (just in air, with or without a prop on). Either the maytech reading is incorrect or something funny is going on. I may by one of those optical tachometers to verify this or get one strobe light app for my phone.
Anyone else notice a power drop off like this or have any ideas what could be up? I was still at like 47V when i could no longer get up on the foil and like I said before it sounded more like a sync issue. But why would that develop or get worse as time goes on?
Ok so yesterday I did a test with the strobelight app for my phone to see if the RPM reading from the Maytech remote was accurate. I ran the motor in air with the prop on (and a little corrosion x on the shaft seal of course). It looks like the readings from the strobe light app and the remote are almost dead on. There is a chance that the actual RPM could be some multiple of what I was measuring with the strobe light due to aliasing and I have since found a better procedure to use to test this and I think I might try it.
If these results are correct though, I am only getting about 2100RPM out of this 120KV 12S setup with no load. The reason I am so concerned about this is because I wrote previously that I was getting around 4000RPM from the Maytech remote with the motor under load. Maybe whatever software that calculates RPM based on one of the phase wires learns the number of poles the motors has or something and has auto adjusted at some point? I have also tried adjusting motor timing from 0-30 degrees. 30 degrees obviously giving me the highest ROM at 2100.
I wish I had one of those non-contact tachometers.
With perfect efficiency you would get 6000rpm. In reality out of water you should see about 5200rpm. In water around 4000rpm with a well suited FR prop.
Maybe the maytech remote mode got changed during riding. Like during a crash or something. Check all the modes. Try a couple different settings. And calibrate the throttle.
Next I would say re-flash the ESC firmware. Try change to the low kv firmware, test that, then change back.
This is some very strange behavior you are describing. Good luck, and please keep us updated.
Do any of you know how to calculate what the correct timing is for this motor? He was running 25° timing when this happened. Sounds like a lot to me…but, honestly I have no idea how to figure correct timing out.
Is there a way to test for shorted windings, like by measuring the resistance between the motor wires with a voltmeter?
For a low KV larger in-runner 25 deg is probably acceptable. With the smaller 56mm in runners 0-10 deg seems pretty standard, but they are much higher KV. The fact the low KV firmware was working for yours, but not for @Jsonnett may suggest that his motor was shipped to him with an internal short already, which could be a reason why the ESC was struggling to successfully commutate the motor. If there is an internal short, the unloaded current of the motor will be much higher than normal. A good way of knowing would be to measure the unloaded current (revving motor out of water) and see if it is higher than before. Just my thoughts, the problem still could be something else…
Get yourself a cheap laser tacho. I got one for about £9 and it works a treat! It also means that you’ll get proper reliable readings.
Once you know an accurate rpm reading, then you can go about diagnosing if there’s and issue one of your components…
Thanks for all the new updates. Here is a video of my flipsky 100kv.
Most of the time it runs ok. But it can not start. My 100kv is in real life 91kv in open air. At low rpm it also does sound a bit out of sync. More vibrating noise.
Timing is missing.
This start-up is not good and unnecessarily burdens the ESC and motor.
The question about the timing setting is so not easy to answer.
It largely depends on the degrees of angle and the number of poles to each other.
Basically, however, only use as much timing as is necessary for a safe start under water.
Greetings Frank
So, what is the correct timing? You say it’s so easy to figure out but then you don’t say what it should be. It’s not easy for me to figure out. Will you please share your knowledge? What is the correct timing for this motor?
