Sparkfun IoT Brushless Motor Driver - not working - ESP32 reset loop

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1

Hi,

I hope this is the right place for the above board.

I followed the hookup guide and programed the board successfully.

However, the board gets into reset loop throwing the reset boot message to the terminal every second, the motor is not running and has no resistance when trying to turn it manually.

I tried another USB cable, another USB 3.0 port and also connecting directly from wall charger but got the same behavior (for the charger there is an on-board LED blinking every second that indicated the reboot loop).

I did try Arduino IDE 1.8.19 and also the latest Arduino IDE 2.21.

I tried the ESP32 DEV board and also the ESP32 Thing Plus C board.

Then I programmed a simple sketch to print a running counter to the terminal and it worked just find.

Any thoughts what could be wrong?

Thank you.

2

Is the physical reset or boot switch stuck by chance? Have you attempted to upload the default sketch? https://docs.sparkfun.com/SparkFun_IoT_ … e-factory/

If neither of those get it going it’s likely defective; was it purchased from us? If so head over to www.sparkfun.com/returns (contact vendor if purchased elsewhere) and we’ll get ya squared away

3

Thank you very much for your answer.

I tried the default sketch and it worked. Thank you.

I compared it with the sketch that I had and there is a difference in the pinout. I didn’t even think to check it.

Thank you again. Very much appreciated.

4

I’m seeing the same problem now while compiling a sketch even if using the default sketch. It’s likely that something is broken by the latest ESP32 platform or Simple FOC library. Can your team verify this? If so, can we get instructions for how to use an older IDE and library versions?

5

I just verified that the reset is caused by the BLDCMotor init. Not sure why since debugging doesn’t work for this device using OpenOCD.

6

Hello @TS-Russell , I could really use some support with this. I foolishly designed a whole project around your BLDC devkit before realizing that the SDK was broken. The default firmware worked when I first got the product. It’s only when rebuilding it using the latest Arduino and ESP toolchains that the driver reset occurs.

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7

I’d recommend wiping the arduino folders (here’s a thread with instructions How can I uninstall and purge all remnants of an Arduino IDE install? - #3 by jonman - IDE 2.x - Arduino Forum) and re-install after with the older (functional) lubraries/packages

8

Can sparkfun list the library versions that are supported?

9

I don’t have one to test/backbuild with, but that board came out in March of 2023; I’d head to the respective sites and grab the libraries from then and you should be all set

10

Yeah, that did it. I used platform IO to load the Simple FOC version 2.2.3. Platform IO’s ESP32 platform is also older than the one that comes from Arduino. You might want to let your customers know that they can’t use the Arduino IDE with this product anymore.

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11

So calling BLDCMotor.init() causes a reset of the ESP32? If so, would probably be worth submitting an issue in the Simple FOC repo. IMO it’s a bit extreme to say the Arduino IDE can’t be used with this product, sounds like it’s just a bug in the library.

Although given the popularity of the ESP32 and the Simple FOC library, I would be surprised if a true bug exists with calling BLDCMotor.init() on ESP32 that causes a reset. Maybe Simple FOC had a breaking API change that we need to update our example with?