C15 and C38 around the crystal should have the same value (18p), they have however a different color in your video. C15 looks surprisingly like C32 (that should be 100nF), so C15 is likely wrong. They are responsible for the oscillator. Please check and replace these components, they will likely fix your problem.

I’m glad you tried with two boards, I wouldn’t have thought to do that! I really appreciate your openness, even when things don’t go according to plan. Keep up the great work!!

What I love about your channel is that you make videos to beginners but to me as an electronics engineer, is always nice to see your approach to the solution of HW problems. You're doing great!

Hat's of to your patience!! Right from understanding, finding, ordering and waiting to actually soldering a complex to debug circuit !! Thanks to this series, we have a reference for what's it's actually like to DIY a said thing... Love this series. Good work Scott.

@GreatScott! Thank you for yet another excellent DIY or BUY video. Thanks for taking one for the team too! With so many components to solder it's definitely a BUY for me, even though I solder really well. 😋

Humility is cheaper than the lesson. Thanks for trying!

Thank you for this, I have been watching the VESC project for quite a long time. Unsure if I wanted to build this or buy. You have definitely answered that question. Kudos to you.

If you are going to do many projects like this, do get: Flux (helps in getting the tin to behave) A wedge tip for the iron (easier handling, can be laid flat aginst chips/solder wicks) If it's not, get a temprature regulated one (any from china should do) I agree on your conclusion, and JCL got a PCB assembly service that would likely be of great help. By just getting the tiny (resistors & capacitors) stuff out of the way should help a lot, even if you have to place some few parts yourself.

you are one of the best youtubers that do real projects for education and not only for views thank you

I appreciate seeing the failures as well as the successes. Good for you.

Thank you for this video. I have been considering building my own ESC for more powerful BLDC motors. But seeing your experience made me change my mind

Hey Scott, in order to solder the LQFP package as you did, use some liquid flux. Spread it on the pins and use some solder wire on the iron tip to individually solder the pins. It is very effective. I had tried the solder paste method at first but it caused shorting of various pins.

I appreciate your "DIY or Buy" series. This one looks costly for you, but I hope you know that we appreciate your efforts.

Respect for even trying to build the board, I don't think I would be that brave :) And for posting your struggle... Keep up the great channel!

Thanks for trying, your channel is awesome!! One clue I've learned by pain: don't solder everything, do it block by block, if you know what I mean. Place each part, test, then build another block. That save a lot of time and money!

This is probably my fav DIY or buy ep, coz you had to go out and order all the parts, it will make me reconsider my on DIY or buy choices in future :D

I would definitely recommend you using a much smaller solder. I use 0.5mm solder for pretty everything, and occasionally used 0.3mm on really small SMD, but if you add extra flux then it makes all soldering much easier and tidier. (so I haven't needed to use anything smaller than 0.5mm for years.) Also, try a small "chisel" tip on the iron, say around 2-3mm wide. The sharp corners of the chisel can be used to solder very small joints like SOIC and QFP pins, while still having the larger surface area of the whole tip for through-hole joints etc. For both uses, you should get far better thermal contact, plus the flat tip will retain a nice level amount of solder rather than a big blob. Again though, and I can't stress how much this helps, but - FLUX! :p I realise there is flux in the core of almost any electronics solder, but a good no-clean liquid (or paste) flux is invaluable, especially for SMD. (Maybe not quite as much flux as Sir Louis of Rossmann uses, but hey, he's an awesome solderer, so I can't really complain there. lol)

I would suggest ordering a smt stencil when making several boards. Costs about 6$ at JLC and saves a lot of headache and combined with a hot air/oven soldering pretty much guarantees nice and working boards. Lazy as I am (or willing to pay to save time) I also order the boards as panels (another 6$) so I can apply the soldering paste to all the boards in one go. Thank you for the time you spend on making these videos so perfect and interesting!

I appreciated all the detail- especially on your soldering technique and complications. Thank you 🙏

Maybe if you make/buy an SMD to breadboard adaptor for the uC and program it before soldering it. Place it on a breadbaord, add the oscillator and everything, and program it, At least you know that is not the uC with the problem. Great video and pretty complicate proejct!

Check your C15 cap next to the crystal. It looks darker. Darker ones are usually in nano or micro Farad. Thats way to much for a crystal to start swinging. That seems to have wrong value if connected to crystal pin. The other cap is brighter. Thats ususlly pico farad and may be ok for crystals, but depends on crystal and its load capability.

If you want to go at this lvl of electronics you should order soldering stencils. Apply solderpaste to the entire board and reflow cook it in your oven. You can beef up the Mosfets soldering later on if you need to.

Good video and attempt! Ignore the internet couch pros here who are all trying to point out mistakes. I REALLY appreciate your willingness to show how it actually went, rather than editing it to show only the most perfect solder joints and successes. Thank you

Loved your video, but I do have a bit of a recommendation. After working on some complicated SMD circuits, I decided I was tired of hand soldering, and moved towards DIY reflow. I ended up getting 2 solid state relays and used them to drive a 2 element toaster oven with an arduino for temperature profiles. After a bit of programming, everything worked flawlessly. Now I just order stencils along with the PCB's, spread the paste over the board, stick the components on, and bam, perfect boards every time. I would love to see your take on a DIY reflow oven, and it would also help to improve the quality and quantity of boards you can produce. Anyways, keep up the great work!

Very applicable "DIY or Buy" episode for most hobbyists!

Please don't give up on this project.i really want to see it work

The best method I have found with soldering SMD components is to use a paper stencil to apply the solder paste onto the pads. It has worked great for me every time and the results look perfect! To cut out the stencil I use a laser cutter at my school, but you can get a small laser for around $100 and attach it to your 3D printer, which would also be a great video!

Been thinking about doing this for while. Good to have this knowledge going in if I decide to give it a try.

I watched to many videos today.My head hurts,but your video was worth it!

I think you would have had much better luck if you used copious amounts of a good organic water soluble flux, and solder with water soluble flux core. It cleans up very easily with a small amount of soap and hot water. It looked to me like you didn't use any flux except for what was in the solder, this is why you had trouble soldering the close pitch SMD chips. Here flux is your friend, I drag solder those fine pitch ICs all the time it's fairly easy with a lot of flux, and a little technique. If you want to you can send me one of those that you didn't get working, and I'll troubleshoot it for you. Have a great day, and thanks for the great videos. Glenn

I’d love to see a DIY or BUY segment on a multi-battery automatic capacity checker - for someone who had a bunch of 18650s they need to check, but don’t have the time to actively run tests many times. Ideally something that you can place several 18650s in and it will individually charge and discharge as needed to get the final charge capacity in mAH.

I made a simple reflow oven from an old toaster/convection oven. SMD parts are actually way easier than through hole if you do them this way. Just a suggestion. I really enjoyed your project.

I love these esc's, they're fecking great in higher end combat robotics

It was fun to watch you having discovered the vesc :) Welcome to potential pain, and potential high reward :) Careful configuring that thing. You can make it self destruct through misconfiguration. I had to replace the mosfet driver once as a result of my own stupidity. Current limit while testing, that's my best advice. But at some point you also have to let the motor controller profile your motor for FOC. Thar be dragons, depending on how large you go lol. Benjamin Vedder did an amazing job. Love that guy so much for designing and sharing this very complete system.

Love these buy Vs DIY videos!! Keep it up!

love this guys videos so well spoken...

This channel has so much quality...

Should have had a stencil made using the top paste gerber layer, you had the solder paste for it. Also that hot air gun action might not have done some of the components too well either.

Great video bro, I'm a huge fan. Lots of love from India

Hello from Cuba, in my univercity we love your videos.

Have been waiting for someone to do this.

If you failed.... well, that can’t be good news for everyone else! At least you’re honest about the whole process, some people don’t like to admit their failures. This video shows a lot of maturity....and yet, it’s also kind of the way you’ve always done things. Which is awesome btw. Stay awesomer 👏😁

Holy crap add more solder! I recommend you get some of those 5mm thick sticks used for soldering roofing iron, and possibly a flamethrower to melt it all, don't hold back.

The way you solder the SMD ICs is to float the pins with heaps of solder, then tilt the board and flow the soldering irons along the pins and the big mass of solder will flow with the iron tip until the last pin. it'll look like factory soldering. take it from a guy who used to work oir Radio Shack repair centers for many years and this was my trick until board were simply replaceable many many years ago

the rule is: if it is sold ready made, buy it. It is very, very rare that it is worth it to make it your own. Exception is when you want to make it yourself just to make it yourself. Thank you for your time and efforts :)

Thanks for the last video. I still can't wait a comparison video on different smd light in led strips... Hope it'll arrive soon 😉

Finally something I wanted. Can you kindly do a video on high powered brushed esc

man....you are the guy!!!! great video congrats!!!

Awesome video! Thanks for all your content

I think you should use some soldering flux for these small SMD components next time. I tried it and really makes a difference :) It may cause a little mess but it's easy to clean off with some alcohol or aceton.

Wow, I was really rooting for the DIY method. It makes sense, though.

I'm so glad you've shown this as a "failed" project. I bet you were furious with it though!

I think he deserves a like for his hard work

I always enjoy your video, good job man.. gooood job.

Great Scott!! Your videos are very practical. I cannot believe you did not use solder paste and a heat gun. I don't think you would have saved any time, but maybe less problems. Anyway, nice video, thanks for sharing!

It's projects like this that make me want to stay away from any electronic project that has to interface with a computer. It's both a good and bad thing to be biased against such projects that have such a high chance of just not working for reasons that cannot be seen and that can cause a project to fail. I say it's good because I am learning much more basic analog circuitry, I'm at the point where I have designed a schematic for a BLDC motor driver that doesn't use a microprocessor or even a semi-complex IC. Your videos motivated me to learn to do things differently, because it seems like every project you make utilizes an arduino and programming and I have neither an arduino or programming knowledge and I wanted to see you break away from the easiest (and honestly most efficient) way of making your projects just work. I wanted to see you go farther, deeper into the math and the datasheets to design analog circuits to make a project without a single line of code or microprocessor or complex chip. Thanks to your videos I have now completed a first schematic for my own extremely basic motor driver featuring 12 transistors, 6 N channel mosfets, 6 generic diodes, 6 capacitors, 6 zener diodes, and 36 resistors and I will be attempting to assemble a prototype based on what I have learned. I know you probably won't take project ideas especially from the comments of a video that is over three years old, but if you are interested in seeing more of my learning process I would love to share it with you. I'll probably send it to you on patreon if the prototype works at all. Thank you for creating these awesome videos, you are an inspiration to us all.

that was a valid attempt! Well done on trying!

Love your videos! Here's a DIY or Buy Challenge: Camera Stabilizer Gimble (mini DSLR or smartphone)

I also build a vesc from scratch and had some problems with the USB as well. I commented out some code and then it worked, if some failure occurs before usb is initiliazed you don't get usb. In my case, i didn't connect the battery power which caused the problem. Also, if you're on linux you can check with lsusb or dmesg what happened when you plugged in the VESC. If you get a usb device but no com-port / ttyAMC0, it probably means theres a problem with the software or some other failure that inhibts the initialization of usb. If you can still flash the uC, and the two capacitors and oscillator are functional, it probably means the issue lies with your computer. Hope that helps.

You can also buy the Maytech version on aliexpress for 89$ + shipping. I was lucky that Maytech was at some exhibition/fair in Germany when I ordered because they offered fast UPS shipping with no extra cost. Build and soldering quality is decent, solder is very shiny. So far it works well (survived few short circuts).

Why use soldering iron when you have hot air soldering station?

In additional to all of the excellent advice others have posted about SMD soldering, I would like to add that you should solder and inspect while using an eye-loupe * try 1.5X or 2X magnification). At age 78 with lousy eye sight I still can solder 144 pin TQFP's with 0.5mm pitch - it's a great age-leveler! 🙂 That said, I would still buy a commercially available ESC, unless I need one that has specs that are not available in the market.

I would definitely suggest spending the extra $7 on a stencil in future. Anything with less than 1mm pitch is generally worth it to me, especially with that sort of component count. Then you would have the option of hot air, hand soldering...or if you're making SMD PCBs often getting a T-962 for ~£150-200 (they work well so long as you only use the middle of it).

thank you sir, for your sharing the information about ESC.

You should practice soldering more, this way you can avoid such a hassle. Just pretin the pads, put the component on with tweezers and hold it while heating it up with the heat gun. Works perfectly fine. Don't forget flux of course.

Great video ! Keep up the good work !

You need a wave tip for your soldering iron - it's easy to solder IC's with it. Stencil form jlcpcb can be useful

This kind of video is great help to me dont try the same thigs that dont work well.

Use plenty of flux (ideally jelly flux) and drag soldering method on big ic's and you can forget about hot air. you have to clean the boards afterwards with IPA or acetone. Keep up the good work!

I do PCB design and bringup. You’ll have a much easier time with a microscope, quality tweezers, smaller solder, a flux pen and a quality iron with a micro tip. Everything on this board can be done without reflow. You really have to take your time under a microscope and make everything perfect for this to be worth it. Also that 3 hour time estimate is mighty conservative!

Very informative video. Impressive work

Hi Scott, nice video. Soldering smd components surely need different tools. I am sure this only seems to be soldering problem. May be you can to solder it with someone who can solder it properly or Getting a stencil would be really helpful and you can also use your home otg oven for soldering. But it was really nice to see this. I would surely give it a try. Thanks.

Surprisingly it was not so hard to assemble these, just a more accurate soldering and checking with microscope. Worked the first time:) But it indeed is more costly and time consuming way to do it. Can stretch a little bit of the cost by using different fets, but not so much.

You could have tried to make some nicer welds in the first place, but yeah it's pretty tough to get it right! Mad props for trying it! Please let us know how that maytech VESC is holding up

I like this alot. Thanks for showing this

Great stuff, If you can heat the pads and use flux a good brand the parts will line up with the surface tension of the solder. a bargain tip cleaner also is the steel sink scrubbers from the dollar store.

I really love your videos

Always love your videos. But I would hope this would encourage you to try getting a stencil and using a toaster oven to use for reflow for your future SMD projects.

maybe try again with solder paste , a stencil and a reflow (toaster) oven? that also gives me an idea for a video, DIY reflow oven with stuff that the pro ones have like ramp up and down times maybe an arduino with some mosfets to make a timer and dimmer circuit?

great video. when you use soldering paste , you need to clean the board after soldering.

It's quite sad that you spent so much money and nothing worked. I thought about building that vesc too, but now i see that it is too complicated, thanks for the lesson, keep going with the channel!

Things are so compact in there. You can just created your own pcb layout using their schematic. By that you can alter the board size and parts placement. By the way great video...!

A simple tip before first powering up any new circuit, first measure resistance between ground and Vcc! If you have lets say 2 Ohm you know it will release the magic smoke if you power it up without current limitation.

getting close to 1 million!

Greatscott please make an electric mountain board with custom cnc motor mounts with your x-carve!!!! Love your channel!!!!

Yikes! I was hoping it would work... I always wondered if anyone would DIY their own VESC. And when I saw this video come up, I immediately clicked it :) Thanks for the great video as always!

Yeah... If GreatScott! can't succeed, I'm not even gonna think about trying. lol. Thank you for posting this! Probably save a few ppl many hours of frustration XD

Please make a video for troubleshooting it, I want to see how you do it! Also I think you should've ordered SMD stencils for it and reflow solder it.

fair and honest conclusion ;-) liked it

Awesome video! Been watching the channel for a while now it was so cool to see my right up about the bootloader installation in there! And also be careful with those AliExpress FET's I've personally only ever received fakes from China. And another great source of legitimate components I use lot is Arrow.com they have great prices. P.S. just bought a VESC for $63 on RCMOMENT but there still on sale on banggood for like $65.

Please do the same with an e bike controller.. so much thing you can learn us also the e bike community needs this flexibility a lot.. there is so much limits and obsolescence cases on that subject.. Anyway thanks for your existence man!!!!!! Keep those coming.

Consider using additional flux during soldering. Any gel flux is usually at least "all right".

Awesome and interesting video !

Use a reflow oven! I have a modded t-962 and it’s great. Using a solder paste stencil with the reflow oven would make this much easier.

Thanks for the wonder video on ESC'yer . 😆

Hey Sccott, you should have asked for stencil along with PCBs. It would have been easier to apply the right amount of solder when using heat gun.

I really enhanced by the content you make. Чёртово искусство схемотехника с щепотью научпопа

I suggest you buy some liquid flux. When you bridge pins on surface mount IC add flux, then place the solder braid over the flux, then heat with the iron, works well for me.

Hey Scott, I got a question regarding brushless motors: I know that the KV velocity constant is retrieved by measuring the back EMF at a given RPM. My question: is it possible to run a motor at a given voltage with more RPM than voltage multiplied by KV?

have you tried some isopropanol and a toothbrush? it seems like you have a lot of spent flux there!