DO NOT BUY ANYTHING FROM EMAX WITH A CHIP IN IT

by: Hal

We've had some experiences building our first drone with EMAX parts. It's been a journey.

We will never buy anything from EMAX with a chip in it again.

Case in point.

This ESC went through the following:

• Refused to work in OneShot125 mode.
• Refused to work in DShot600 mode.
• Got programmed with our ELRS TX (it did not want to exit program mode).
• Got stuck in bidirectional mode and could not enter program mode again.
• Refused to be programmed through the flight controller's passthrough mode.
• Refused to be programmed over the 1-wire interface using an Arduino.
• Failed to be programmed by the Arduino in "4-way interface mode".
• Exploded after 2nd powerup.

Turns out, these say they're BLHeli ESC's, but if we look at the datasheet...

This is a complaint we've seen highlighted on forums after the fact. These are not actually running BLHeli_S firmware and are instead running some sort of proprietary EMAX firmware that acts like BLHeli.

This is all the documentation available for the ESC's. The grand library of knowledge that EMAX will grace us with.

You might be asking yourself, Hal, if programming was so difficult, why did you keep trying to force this ESC into submission?

BECAUSE WE GOT FUCKING TWO OF THEM AND THE OTHER ONE WORKS PERFECTLY IN DSHOT600 MODE WITH FLIGHT CONTROLLER PASSTHROUGH

Best guess is that they shipped with two different firmware versions out of the box. We've read about this in several forums. The boards are identical down to the date codes on the silkscreen otherwise.

We also purchased EMAX servo's which had centering issues in two of the 3 batches we got, but we are unsure if we got counterfeits or not. Fuck EMAX anyway.

In any case. Don't buy anything from EMAX with a chip in it.

Their motors are pretty good though.