Quote:
Originally Posted by EricH
Pretty sure that at some levels, it's down far enough. There's a reason electric R/C aircraft are becoming extremely common, and it isn't totally due to good batteries becoming more common/cheaper. The motors and ESCs also had to get cheaper. Admittedly, they don't often run on 12VDC, and typically have a "battery eliminator circuit" built in, but those can be worked around, right?
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ESCs (electronic speed controllers) for brushless motors do run on 12v actually, but it actually has to be 12v. Anything more than 12.6v and a little overhead should be avoided. This is because they are designed to be run on lipo battery packs. A 3-cell lipo has a normal voltage of 11.1v, but it's really 12.6v when charged. A lead acid battery like in FRC robots are 13.6v fully charged IIRC, which is a tad too high for a 3-cell ESC. It still might work, but you would have to check.
The voltage drop on the lead-acid battery over time might also be too much for ESCs.
ESCs are actually pretty cheap. Because they are often just SMD parts, I've noticed even cheap ones from places such as ebay work just fine due to the lack of manual work. If you wanted US-made ones though it could cost a bit more. They are usually cheaper than the controllers we use though.