This guide is to walk you through the first-time setup on a known functioning board. If any of your parts are broken or fail, this guide will not help with that; that's an entirely separate realm of troubleshooting. This guide purely touches on the software setup from start to end in order to get your board on the most recent firmware and functioning relatively normally.

This guide can also be used to completely start fresh on a previously working board that for one reason or another is now giving you issues or has become unrideable. VESC can be buggy sometimes and it may be better to just start over than try to fix it.

What Do I Need?

  1. Some way to elevate your board and keep it somewhat level and allow the motor to be completely free-spinning. (Nothing touching the motor/tire) I personally recommend using a Milk Crate or 2 chairs facing each other.
  2. An Android Device, a Windows device connected over USB, or a Bluetooth-enabled Linux computer. (There are other methods to do this but these are tried and true).
  3. A completely built board, you can’t do this with missing parts unless you want to severely complicate it.
  4. A bubble level with a flat edge.
  5. About 45 minutes to 2 hours of free time depending on how good you are at following instructions.

Updating your Firmware (Flashing or ReFlashing Firmware)

  1. Open VESC Tool on your device of choice (Using any device not recommended above poses a threat of bricking your board or making your life miserable in countless other ways.
  2. Scan for BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) devices nearby.
  3. If this is your only VESC-based device nearby there should only be one option available (possibly 2 depending on your choice of BMS and/or use of an external Bluetooth module).
  4. Connect to your board using the on-board Bluetooth.
  5. You may receive a warning message about old but mostly compatible firmware. This can be ignored. Just press OK if you get this pop-up.
  6. Go to the Firmware tab located at the top of VESC Tool.
  7. Here you should see a Hardware and Firmware drop-down that will hopefully have your controller listed under Hardware and VESC_Default.bin under Firmware. (If your controller requires custom firmware your controller manufacturer will tell you otherwise, and you will not update your controller from the standard menu)
  8. Press upload. (Not Upload All)
  9. You will receive a warning message. Press OK
  10. A progress bar should now be visible. VESC Tool is uploading the most recent available firmware to the memory of your controller. Once that is finished the controller will go through a check and then boot cycle where it will then install the firmware.