Using T-Motor 4in1 ESC with T200 Thrusters

[EliotBR (Eliot)]

Hi @khedar, welcome to the forum!

@khedar

1. If this ESC is suitable to be used with the T200 Motors?

That depends on how you’re powering it and how hard you’re intending to drive the motors. From the T200 Technical Details, a single thruster with a 16V power supply will draw 24A of current at full throttle. The page you’ve linked to says the ESC is capable of handling 45A, so you could handle 2 T200s with it at almost full throttle (assuming a 16V supply). If you’re using 10V then the max current is down to ~13.7A, so you could run 4 at almost full throttle, but you wouldn’t have very much thrust (just 55% of the thrust you can achieve with a 16V supply).

If you were hoping it would allow full throttle for all 4 thrusters then it’s unfortunately not suitable.

@khedar

2. Does the ESC protocol have any influence on the performance of T200 Thrusters?

The input protocol tells the ESC what speed to use, so some protocols might be able to change speed with more fine-grained control, but it shouldn’t have an effect on the actual thrust the thrusters can output (that’s determined by the thrusters themselves, and the ESC firmware and hardware, and its power handling capacity).

@khedar

3. Is the bidirectional nature of ESC comes from the firmware used or the ESC hardware itself?

Brushless DC motors are controlled by activating coils in a particular order, so they act as electromagnets that magnetically push/pull the rotor around. If you swap any pair of the wires going into the motor it will turn in the opposite direction - it’s the order that the coils are activated in that determines the spinning direction, so bidirectional control is a firmware option (although not all firmware types will support it).

@khedar

4. What other requirements should I keep in mind while selecting the ESC?

The main components are:

• current capacity
• an input method you’re able to support (e.g. ArduSub uses PWM control for the motors)
• feature set suitable to the motors you’re driving and control you require, e.g.:

@EliotBR

our BasicESC comes pre-flashed with bidirectional control, and “low RPM power protection” and “demag compensation” turned off to properly run the low kV motors we use.

@khedar

From the forums and learning material on Blue Robotics BasicESC, I understood that the Blue ESC uses the One Shot 125 protocal and uses a BHeli Firmware.

Note that our Basic ESC is a separate product to the (retired) Blue ESC. Our Basic ESC does use a BLHeli firmware, and we usually control it using PWM inputs (1100-1900us pulse duration).

If it’s helpful, our Basic ESC firmware settings are available in the ESC Technical Details, but note that they may not be suitable for all BLHeli ESCs for use with our thrusters (some ESCs have a lower current rating), and non BLHeli ESCs will require similar settings but they may not be exactly equivalent.