How to flash ESC's with BLHeli 13.01

[danhampson]

This guide is just my personal findings when i flashed my own dys sn20a esc's.

the usual disclaimer follows, that bricking your ESC's, magic smoke and any other death and desturction caused by trying this, is in no way, mine or the forums fault.

LAST CHANCE.

IF YOUR NOT SURE, YOU DONT KNOW HOW TO INSTALL DRIVERS, CANT FIND A DEVICE COM PORT OR ARE JUST PLAIN SCARED OF DISTROYING YOUR ESC DONT DO IT!

How to flash afro and other esc's using usb tool.

in this tutorial i am going to show you how to flash your with an Afro programme stick
these are avaliable from hobbyking
http://www.hobbyking.co.uk/hobbyking/st ... _Tool.html
To use this programmer you need to have CP210x USB to UART Bridge VCP Drivers installed on you computer, if you are already using a naze32 then you should already have these drivers installed on your computer. if not they are avalliable for here http://www.silabs.com/products/mcu/page ... ivers.aspx

For this process you are also going to need the blheli 13.01 software suite download the file from the following link
http://www.helifreak.com/blog.php?b=2162

Install your drivers and decompress blheli.

If the esc's that you are going to flash have a BEC please ensure that you remove/isolate the live before you attempt to flash you esc.

So that i dont have to mess around every time i want to flash or alter settings i have modded an servo extension by completely removing the live wire

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Plug you usb stick into your computer and connector the other end of the extension to the esc

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find where you decompressed BLHeli and open the software, find the com port your stick is on and power up the esc.

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click the connect button at the bottom left of bllheli. this should bring this page up.

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click yes and you will be prompted again for firmware selection

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PLEASE TAKE EXTRA CARE HERE TO SELECT THE CORRECT FIRMWARE AS A MISTAKE CAN POS BRICK YOUR ESC.

[danhampson]

On this occasion im flashing a dys sn20a so that is the selected firmware.

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click ok and the firmware will be flashed. this takes a few moments then the settings on the screen will change.

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you now need to change the settings for PWM Frequency/damped to light damped (active freewheel), and motor timing too high (best for high KV motors)

Hit write setup (wait for flashing lights bottom left)

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then hit read setup. this should be displayed

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click disconnect and disconnect power to the esc move on to esc #2

[Lee]

Nice write up Dan.
For me, there were two other steps to get the software set up like yours.
1) Go to Atmel/Silabs tab and change to, Atmel Afro Prog tool.
2)Once connected, it didn't automatically give me the update firmware screen.
I had to click "read setup" Then it gave me that screen.

I now have 4 20A Afros with BLHeli, but nothing to put them on

[danhampson]

put them on your mini and run oneshot Lee it is amazing.

[Derek]

BLHeli is good stuff??? and what is "oneshot"?

[danhampson]

have a read of this Derek.

https://wiki.openpilot.org/display/WIKI ... or+PWMSync

[Lee]

How do I know which ESCs I have, to know what FW to put on them?
They are the RCX 12A SimonK ESC.

[Graham Lawrie]

How did you connect them to your 250 Dan? the ends of the Afro a pre-made, i assume you cut them off and soldered direct?

[danhampson]

How do I know which ESCs I have, to know what FW to put on them?
They are the RCX 12A SimonK ESC.

Download this Lee there are some pdf's in there that have images of all the esc's that can be flashed. https://github.com/bitdump/BLHeli/archive/master.zip

How did you connect them to your 250 Dan? the ends of the Afro a pre-made, i assume you cut them off and soldered direct?

The esc's i used arent afro's and didnt come with bullets on if it was me i would cut them off an solder

[Lee]

Thanks Dan, but it doesn't help me.
Mine are from Myrcmart. They are the RCX 12A, not mentioned in any of those files

[danhampson]

You will probably find that they are made by someone else the only way to identify them would be to take the heat shrink off one and compare the chipset, Not all of them can be flashed with the stick some have solder pads that the programming is done through or there is this http://www.hobbyking.co.uk/hobbyking/st ... _Tool.html but you still have to know which firmware to flash.

[Graham Lawrie]

Thanks Dan i will solder:) Another question(S) cant get the afro programming tool to show up on BLHelisuite? and what do the Afro 12A come under in the list of softwear? Like Lee i cant see them on the list:)

[Graham Lawrie]

Hi Dan, i found out where i went wrong:) I had not changed a setting in ATMEL/Silabs to "Afro ESC Programmer" all flashed now with each one taking 24 seconds to do:)

Brilliant write up:)

[Lee]

Hi Dan, i found out where i went wrong:) I had not changed a setting in ATMEL/Silabs to "Afro ESC Programmer" all flashed now with each one taking 24 seconds to do:)

Brilliant write up:)

My first post explained about that step Graham I spent a few frustrating minutes finding that out too

[danhampson]

I'll add it to the first post. I had forgoten about that as i had already used the suite on that computer.

[Derek]

I bought 4 20amp Afro esc's, a while back, for a quad project that I want to do. I also bought the USB programmer at the same time (made sense, lol). I had full intentions of flashing the esc's to BLHeli by following this write up. I have to say....I'm quite disappointed. Graham said that he did his esc' in 24 seconds each.

I swear I followed this write up, each and every step and it took 25.6 seconds for each esc to successfully flash, lol. Ok...now that we know that my "disappointment" is a joke, ha ha ha, this was awesome and very painless. I now have 4 20amp Afro esc's successfully flashed with BLHeli 14.0.

Thanks for this write up, Dan, and all the help that you guys contribute. Now that I have the esc's flashed, I can get them installed on my new scratch built quad. Now, if I can just find that spare time that I use to have to build stuff. Hopefully soon!

Thanks Dan!

[Graham Lawrie]

The difference is amazing Derek:) I showed Cameron it on mine and he was the same:)

[Derek]

I just need to hunt down an rx for the new quad and I'll have everything for the build. I'm really looking forward to this.