I am trying to locate some reversible ESCs (for a sub project). There are some car ESCs out there (e.g., these), but I’m curious if there are other options available.
It sounds as if the BLHeli firmware has a “bidirectional” option available, but I haven’t been able to figure out if any BLHeli compatible ESC can take advantage of this feature, or if it requires particular support. Has anyone looked into this?
Thanks for your help!
I think many ESC’s running BLHeli firmware will work bi-bidirectionally. I have some cheap Velotech ESC’s running BLHeli that I use for bench testing and they do. I just tried the attached setup on the bench out of curiosity and it worked fine using my ESC programming FC (AKA Naze32). Zero throttle ~1500us and +/- 500us.
@dkemxr, thanks for checking! Now I just need to figure out what my options are for ESC programming under Linux…
Use the BLHeli Suite Chrome Configurator? I use Betaflight for passthrough with the Naze32, there is a Chrome Betaflight configurator also or a standalone app for Linux.
There’s a feature request related to this (knows as a Github issue) for this too
Right, but I have a Pixhawk running Ardupilot :). I guess I can buy a cheap F3 controller in order to run the configurator.
Understood. Passthrough would be nice but no go for now. An F3 is a good choice for future proofing because the Naze32 I use for this purpose won’t support the Betaflight version required for BLHeli 32 Suite passthough. I don’t own any BLHeli_32 capable ESC currently but I’m sure I will at some point. F3’s are almost as cheap as a dedicated programmer and you can do them all at once that way.
Not sure if this is what you are looking for.A 3D ESC.
As far as I know every BlHeli supports this feature
Not sure to have undertood well, but there is no issue, the point is that you need to configure your radio and Autopilot correctly.
@lucamax I updated my comment to be more clear to those who don’t use GitHub. An “issue” is a bug/feature tracking tool in Guthub where we keep track of requests for various reasons.
@larsks - I can confirm that all of the BLHeli ESCs support this option. If you want one that’s preconfigured for forward/reverse and thoroughly tested with ArduSub, there are these at Blue Robotics.
Note that ArduSub is normally configured for 1500 µs +/- 400 µs signal.
