Using magnetic position sensor on motor to stow the propeller

Hello! I’m now in process of developing my own UAV plane and plan on using a 13" prop. It’s so big that to land I have to stow it horizontally somehow, so that the blades don’t hit the ground. How do I find the angle of the rotor and how do I programm it in the ardupilot software? Help would be much appreciated!!

Dear Elijah,

In Germany there’s a company which sells an esc with position sensing in order to stop the propeller on a predefined position.
Link to the site:

Best regards,

Maarten

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A vesc controller running in HFI FOC mode can do motor positioning on an unsensored motor.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001985255966.html

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Cool esc’s but at 500 euros, I think most people might find that expensive.
But this feature would be awesome from Quadplane pilots.

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Is that a some kind of programmable ESC? Can I just connect it to a Flight Controller like a usual ESC and treat it like a usual ESC in everything else?

Yes it can do PWM like a regular ESC or canbus but to do what you want to do I think you might have to send it commands over serial to set the position but i believe you can also run scripts directly on the ESC, so you could probably automate it to stop in that same position every time without much issue. you might have to make sure the propeller is in the correct position on startup so it can track it correctly.

I use a bigger version of it for my ebike i have a pair linked with canbus for traction control.

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Oh! Thanks, 50A! Exactly what I was looking for!