Limiting current

I have four BasicESCs powering a prototype unmanned surface vehicle each with 1000KV motors. During testing, I noticed the motors/ESC drew as many amps that it had available to it from my DC power supply. I’m planning on powering my whole USV with a 12V 36AH battery. I’m worried the motors/ESC will draw too many amps and drain the battery too quickly. Is this a legitimate concern? If so, can the ESC’s limit current by a software setting? I’m open to suggestions. Thank you.

Hi James,

You can use the MOT_BAT_CURR_MAX parameter to limit the maximum current.
Note that with the current implementation it may take a few seconds for the current to decrease and settle to your limit.

Thanks for the reply but I’m not using Ardusub. I’ve tried googling this but either there isn’t any information or I don’t know what keywords to use to find it.

What are you using?

With ArduRover you can set the target speeds.

If you are using just the ESCs and a radio receiver, you could change the radio curve so the maximum PWM value is not as high.

I’m using a raspberry pi with a hardware pwm controller.

Then you should probably just limit the maximum PWM you are sending.
The BlHeli_S firmware doesn’t have any current limiting options.

Oh I see. I was over complicating it in my head as normal. Thanks for your patience and advice.

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