VESC - Vedder's open source ESC

A passionate maker, Benjamin Vedder, wasn’t satisfied with the ESCs on the market. So he simply decided to make his own, called VESC. It’s all open source, hardware and software. Because yes, that thing is programmable ! You can find a lot of info on his blog or on the official website. It’s not cheap, but e-skaters often say it's the best ESC for electric skateboards.

Why is it so special ?

This forum post contains all that you need to know about the VESC. Basically, the important features that are unique to the VESC are:

• limiting the amount of amps that comes from your battery to your motors
• limiting the temperature of the VESC to avoid overheating/frying it
• set a min and max input voltage (min voltage is good if you don’t want to make your battery go completely flat and brick it)
• set a max regenerative break amps (so you don’t send too much amps to the battery)
• set a speed limit
• works with a wide range of controllers
• has a CAN bus that allows dual-VESC setups (for dual motors)

To set it up the way you want, you have to connect it to your computer via a USB cable and launch VESC tool (the old version was called BLDC-tool). Check out our guide to learn more.

A member of the esk8.builders, Ackmaniac, forum even created his own firmware and bldc tool for the VESC, allowing for even more customization, and a nice Android companion app.

The VESC is nicely customizable and allows for some control but it’s not 100% safe either. It's possible to fry some of its components. The voltage rating is: 8V to 50V; current: up to 240A peak or 50A continuous). The VESC also has a 60000 eRPM limit, going over that limit often result in frying components.

Who manufactures it ?

The VESC name is actually a trademark, so other manufacturers have to “rename” their products and use a different name.

As VESC hardware and software are open source, there are a bunch of manufacturers making some, with different level of quality. Some provides extra cooling so they can handle higher power without frying. Some use high quality components, making them more reliable. The FOCBOX (from Enertion) is well known for its quality. You can even find cheap ones on Alibaba but again, cheap often means poor quality. It also depends on the esk8 setup, a cheap VESC can handle a small battery and small motor.

VESC 6

Benjamin Vedder worked on a high-end VESC, based on better components. It's called VESC 6 and is officially manufactured by Trampa only (store link). This VESC is supposed to handle more power (resulting in a higher erpms tolerance).

The VESC 6 schematics are also available on the VESC project site, allowing anybody to build their own from scratch (this requires some knowledge in electronics of course). Some makers already did, like this one.