Looking to learn how flight controllers and ESC's work?

[makattack]

Sure it's easy enough to build a standard Betaflight/BLHeli based quad and experiment with the opensource software, but if you're looking for something that's more of a development / evaluation kit and just the bare minimum hardware, perhaps these kits will interest you? It will require something like a STLINK or some other JTAG interface https://www.st.com/en/development-tools/st-link-v2.html but if you have a ST discovery board, they also have a built in ST LINK.

Anyhow, I like to tinker and was considering taking a deeper dive into the software side of our favorite hobby using these products. Haven't pulled the trigger because I really don't think I have the time between work, school, life... but it was something I looked into, and thought might interest others. They do have good videos and other instructional material (including the source code) available freely if you don't want to play with the actual hardware.

Check these development kits out:

A brushed quad kit with frame, motors, props, flight controller:
https://www.st.com/en/evaluation-tools/steval-drone01.html

30A ESC with BEC built around a STM32 F3 microcontroller.
https://www.st.com/en/evaluation-tools/steval-esc001v1.html

20A ESC with a motor controller that is purpose built and based on the STM32 Cortex M0 microcontroller.
https://www.st.com/en/evaluation-tools/steval-esc002v1.html

 

[Merv]

I thought they just filled them with magic smoke, that’s why they quit working when you let the smoke out.