Feature idea/request: imitate badgerwheel SureStart behavior

Hi. The SureStart is one of my favorite upgrades I’ve made to my XRs, probably second only to the Enduro. Unfortunately it’s not compatible with the VESC, I tried it but it just keeps both ADCs at 2.7V regardless of input on the pads. I can’t imagine it’d be remotely difficult to just build in to the firmware. I haven’t programmed in 15 years but if someone could help me get set up with an IDE so I can poke around the firmware I’d be extremely grateful.

Visual Studio Code is as good as any as an editor. Beyond that it’s getting set up on the build process (see, for e.g., the readme on GitHub - surfdado/bldc at rel_5.3_plusV4) and you’re gtg. I build through linux as its a bit more straightforward.

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it would help if you described the behavior you want

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Ah, sorry- It’s a “smart posi” - for the first ‘x’ seconds that you step on half of the sensor, it activates both. It lets you stop getting mounts of shame like a posi’d sensor but you can still do a heel lift dismount.

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damn, that is an awesome feature… I want that too!!!

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Btw, loving that feature!! Added it last night, works like a charm! Have it always enabled for now, not sure yet how to let people enable/disable it

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Haha I’m glad you like it as much as I do. It’s a total game changer as a city commuter. Worth every penny of the $100 badgerwheel charges for it.

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Asymmetrical adc fault values? Some Specified ADC values? I want that too!!! :wink:

Maybe for ADC Half State Fault ERPM values of 1-99, the feature is active, with the chosen value being how many seconds it waits after engaging before reverting to standard dual-sensor behavior?

That would be consistent with Halfstate ERPM=0 for posi.However you would lose the ability to configure your halfstate erpm (which admittedly isn’t a big deal, having it hard-coded at 200erpm seems fine to me)

However, I’m not convinced that this grace period needs to be confgurable at all - right now I have this time at exactly 0, i.e. i dont have a grace period at all, and it works great for me.

Here’s why:
You get on the board and ride off, e.g. jump start etc and you have whatever “half fault delay” milliseconds you got configured to accelerate from 0 to your normal half-erpm. So if you start really slow and timidly then it’ll briefly turn on and right back off if you don’t have your foot planted. But if you do a normal start (one where you’re risking a start of shame if it fails) then a single sensor works just fine, because even though I have a very aggressive 50ms for half-fault delay I have no problem reaching 200 or 300erpm (aka 1mph) in that time even with a single sensor engaged…

Thoughts?

I’d personally prefer setting a delay since there’s many scenarios where I’ll mount the board but idle for a bit before taking off, and would prefer posi still be engaged for a bit to prevent the board accidentally disengaging before I take off (happens a lot with how light I am lol). It’s nit-picking though, and having the feature with no delay is definitely still better than no feature at all, as long as it’s toggleable.

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Sounds interesting the way you have it set up… since the badger chip can’t communicate with the controller it’s just a configurable amount of time after you step on the sensor that it posi’s, so if I’m waiting at a light mounted but not engaged, I have to lift my foot for an instant in order to reset the timer. But it makes sense that you can do it even better with VESC since it’s all integrated. Personally I would prefer it if there’s a few seconds of “grace” so that I can mount and engage a few seconds before I actually start moving.

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Lifting the foot for an instant to reset the timer? Isn’t that a flaw rather than a feature? That means that a beginner trying to get off the board might temporarily disengage the board but then surestart kicks back in and off he goes?? Am I misunderstanding how this works?

fwiw I now do have a 5-second cooling off period after disengaging the board before I allow surestart again. I guess I could reduce that to 1 second or so but I definitely want to avoid surestart to unintentionally re-engage the board, otherwise heel-lifts are gonna be a lot more stressful. I kinda like them to be final no matter how slow I am, I sometimes do the heel lift and feel the board disengage yet I remain naturally balanced so I take a second or two to bring my tail or nose down… I definitely don’t want to worry about surestart fucking with me at that point…

I assume the badgerwheel “Sure Start” isn’t configurable either, so what are the exact delays they use? And are you sure there’s no “cooling off” period on heel lift? There must be at least a half a second or so, right? Does it ever accidentally re-engage with sure start?

It’s configurable from 1 to 1000 seconds, which is definitely an excessive range, and it’s a janky process to configure it. Lifting your foot entirely off both sensors isn’t something you can really do accidentally, and certainly not while riding. It might help to review the store page, it’s got all of the detailed info on how it works - https://www.badgerwheel.com/shop-online/surestart-xr

The badger chip just goes between the footpad and the controller, so it’s heavily limited in the info that it can receive. The timer gets reset when no input is detected on either pad, and begins from the moment it detects a half sensor press. What I meant by lifting my foot to reset it is if I have my foot resting on it without being engaged, the timer can run out before I actually engage it.

Instead of the 5 second cool off, I think it should reset when no input is detected on either pad

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good call on that

btw, I discovered that this feature isn’t desirable when the board is on the bench for testing… had a little surprise start today :slight_smile: