Hello! This is my first post, and hoping to get some help. So, I fly RC planes and have simple servo testers laying around. I can use them for testing brushless motors as well with an ESC.
I just made a thruster for my kayak, and have a marine ESC from Hobbyking that has reverse on it. I had originally planned to use a standard servo tester as the control, but it will only go forward, not reverse. In looking around, I see most people can do this with an Arduino setup, which is something I know NOTHING about.
I just need a dial (or two, one for positive signal and one for negative maybe?) that will control the ESC’s in forward and reverse. Is this something that someone here can point me in the right direction, or offer a solution that YOU could do for me and I’d compensate you?
I hope I explained things clearly enough…
Thanks in advance,
Mark in VA
Hello @msestephens and welcome to the RobotShop community!
Most ESC’s are programmable but details may vary between them and without knowing the exact model it would be hard to say exactly what you need to do to control yours. Some of them require you to have the PWM signal either all the way up or down when you power it up to enter the programming mode, others may have a “set” button. So it would be great if you could mention or link the ESC model you have.
I’ve also seen tutorials explaining how to control a BLDC with an ESC and an Arduino like this one:
but it doesn’t mention how to change the direction from CW to CCW. I’m guessing that is because the ESC model they used didn’t have the reverse option.
Doing a little research in the Hobbyking website I found that the instruction manuals of some ESC’s mention the use of a programming card like this one so maybe that is exactly what you need. But if you need an alternative solution please let us know the model you have so we can assit you.
