FINAL REPORT: RESEARCH ELECTRONIC SPEED CONTROLLER

Abstract

The Research Electronic Speed Controller project was conducted to better optimize and troubleshoot unmanned aerial vehicle motors. The electronic speed controller (ESC) is a circuit that releases current in a timed fashion in order to spin a brushless motor. The goal of this project was to create an ESC that can operate at a variety of ranges, including at least 120A and 50.4V, and acquire important operating telemetry from the motor. This includes voltage, current, temperature, and RPM of the motor in real time. The ESC was first built at low power so that the team could better understand how the circuit worked. Code was implemented on an Arduino and a 3S LiPo battery was used to power the 12V motor. By doing this, the team succeeded in creating a working ESC. The code was adapted to comply with a Teensy 4.1 Microcontroller and the sensors were briefly implemented one by one on the low-power model. This was scaled up to the high power, however was never tested to an error in the high-power driver. It was found that the implemented RPM code used to sense the motor was +/- 0.31% in accuracy, the CAN communication +/- 0.39% in accuracy, the temperature +/- 4.57% in accuracy, and the critical components all met the needs of the temperature, voltage, and current that the sponsor desired.