Mix new and old ESC due to BlueROV2 Heavy Upgrade

Blue Robotics Products
1

I have a BlueROV2 vintage early 2017. It has the old (pololu?) ESC’s on it. I have purchased the Heavy upgrade that only comes with 2 new BR ESC’s. Can I mix and match them? Do they have different operating conditions that the old ones? Do I need to send different command signals to them?

2

Hi!
Lessons from when I did the same upgrade from a 2017 version.

  1. new ESCs made half the RPM on the motors
  2. Old ESC had 5V supply to pixhawk/Companion (Change to new 12 to 5V adaptor)
    Motor speed problem upgrading to Heavy
3

Thanks!! I was trying not be redundant, but did not see you previous post.

4

Can you clarify what you mean by change to new 12V adapter? Should I supply the old ESC’s on the 12 V?

What is the solution to the RPM on the new motors? Multiply the signals by 2? Is the thrust/voltage curve the same?

5

You need to supply 5V to Rapsberry and Pixhawk in any way.
One of my old original ESCs did that, new did not.

If you end up with different RPM on thrusters you have to change all ESCs
Check RPM by thrust lowest possible, then you can estimate different speeds by looking.

6

I assume once I estimate the different speeds, I should modify a parameter in gazebo. Any idea which one?

Would it be better to just replace the vertical axis ESC’s with new ones?

7

Any comments on what I need to change in the parameters from BlueROV itself? @patrickelectric

8

Hi @rdehart,

If I recall correctly, if you are changing to the Heavy configuration, the only thing necessary is to set the heavy parameters, the ESC change should not matter if is a supported version.

9

Even with a mix (polulu?) of old and new ESC’s