SimonK vs. BLHeli firmware vs. T-Motor 10A Air ESC

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Both SimonK and BLHeli firmwares are getting updates, new features and I was wondering which of these is better for my quadcopter. I have always used SimonK firmware and I am still happy with it. Here I will try to find out, if BLHeli performs better. I will also test the T-Motor 10A Air ESC, which has its own multirotor firmware.

On four different ESCs I flashed the following versions and features of the firmwares:

  • SimonK 2014-09-30
  • SimonK 2014-09-30 comp_pwm enabled (here is how-to enabled it)
  • SimonK 2015-04-19 comp_pwm enabled (“OneShot125” support)
  • BLHeli 13.2 damped light enabled (“OneShot125” support)

There is a significant difference between the SimonK firmware with comp_pwm feature enabled or disabled. The motor on the ESC without the comp_pwm stops probably a second later. On the other side the ESC with the BLHeli 13.2 and damped light stops even faster than the one with SimonK and comp_pwm. I haven’t enable the “MOTOR_BRAKE” feature on SimonK, so the comparison is not exactly right.

Then I decided to compare the BLHeli 13.2 and the SimonK 2015-04-19, as both support the “OneShot125”. I found the SimonK a bit better and smoother. The motor on the SimonK ESC was much quieter too. Note: I used the standard settings on BLHeli.

The T-Motor 12A Air ESC with its stock firmware doesn’t have features like comp_pwm and damped light, so it behaved like the normal SimonK firmware. The motor was very responsive and quite. It performs great, but can’t stop the motor as fast as a SimonK ESC.

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I only tested one type of ESC (BlueSeries 12A) and one type of motor (T-Motor MN2206 2000kv) on a 3S battery. The results could be completely different on other configurations.

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4 Comments

  1. Felixrising

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    You should try modifying the motor timing to see if you can achieve a similarly quiet motor from BLHeli.

    Reply

    • Sergey

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      Hi, thank you for your comment. I have noticed same great performance with the new LittleBee 20A BLHeli ESCs. So either the BlueSeries 12A or the motor timing was the problem for that behavior.

      Reply

      • Felixrising

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        The Littlebee 20a has a Silabs MCU which has a specialised 16bit 3 channel PCA targeting motor control and power control applications. Atmel 8bit 328p can’t compete with that. Still, BLHeli has a stack of settings that might see the Atmel MCU get some better results (closer to tgy achieves on its native Atmel MCU) than you’ve seen in your testing thus far.

        Reply

        • Sergey

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          Is this the way the F330 MCU target the gate chips?

          Reply