The page describes how to convert a cheap commercial speed controller into a light, easy to use, brushless free flight timer. It is also a good introduction to brushless ESC's and you could even build your own. The conversion requires very little soldering and is lighter than most people will ever be able to build themselves (2g without wires). It uses free software, can run on 1, 2 or 3 lipos and deliver up to 6A.
The motor starts at the press of a button, ramping up to full power over 1 second. It then runs for a configurable duration before gradually fading over 6sec to smooth the transition into a glide. The run time is stored permanently in memory and can easily be changed between flights. The motor can be stopped manually at any time, and will cut within a second or two if the motor is stalled. At the risk of stating the obvious, you plug the flight pack (eg: 2 cell lipo) and motor into the ESC and that's all the electronics you need.
Having a brushless timer allows you to make use of the affordable 5g, 10g and similar brushless motors. The 6A should drive up to a CDRom-sized motor (~24g). The commercial ESC I have used goes by a few names. I bought the 'Turnigy Plush 6A' ESC. The software will only work without mods if your ESC is identical. It should run on most ESC's that have an Atmel chip although may require changes to the software if not the same as mine.
The timer software is based on a DIY ESC program written by Bernhard Konze. Bernhard has very kindly made his software available for free. I have based my timer mods on his 'Flea' program. Bernhard's software can run the Turnigy like a normal ESC. All I have done is replaced the part which looks for a signal from a radio. While that sounds simple it required me to learn the programming language, how ESC's work and how Bernhard's software works. So, in addition to being a FF timer, I have commented almost every line of code in the program so it would be an excellent starting point for understanding how sensorless brushless speed controllers work (BLDC).
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