Hello,
I’m current running a Castle 2028 800Kv Motor at 50V with a maximum of 200A. I have an issue where we are trying to use skid steering on our boat without a rudder (due to time constraints), and while the boat is fast, it is way too fast to control with skid-steering. I have been searching throughout the forums, Google, and tried using ChatGPT for the first time, but none of the suggestions seemed to have made a noticeable impact from what I can tell.
I will say my method of testing so far involves me slowly ramping the motor to 100% joystick and matching the shrill pitch of the motor spinning at ~40k RPM to see if it has changed at all.
GOAL: I would like to reduce the maximum throttle that the boat’s ESC receives.
This is the current setup
MANUAL Flight Mode
USB Joystick Control (Logitech basic wired F310)
Joystick is set to Neutral is Zero, and reverse thrust is enabled
Joystick is calibrated
Computer as control station communicating via radio
Communicates with Pixhawk running latest version of ArduRover with ArduBoat configuration
ESC itself is configured to only go forward (note: flipping reverse direction option on joystick does not do anything in this regard).
The solutions I have tried:
1: Limit the RC1 Min/Trim/Max from 1100/1500/1900 default to ~1300/1500/~1700 then ~1400/1500/1600
Result: Seems that there was no change in throttle limits. I assume because it is converting the Joystick output directly
2: Limit the MOT_THR_MAX from 100% to 50% or 35%
Result: No effect.
3: Lower Throttle Slew Rate to reduce the change in throttle much slower over time (Tried 10% and 2% and others)
Result: No effect.
4. Tried other flight modes like Acro
Result: No effect, probably because throttle is similar to manual.
I think the reason these behaviors are twofold: 1) Im using a Joystick and 2) Im using manual flight mode. I have seen one previous post that might’ve said to use a radio controller, and while I have debated such a solution, doing so might not be feasible on a short time window or for additional reasons of getting it in time.
This makes me think that there is no way that I am able to control this thing at all given how strong of the motors we chose and how light the boat actually is (we added 30 lb to it in dead weight).
Any guidance on additional solutions is appreciated. If the result is that “ArduRover does not support limiting max throttle in manual mode” then I will look for more extreme solutions then I guess.
Thanks,
Nathan