Originally Posted by
crimsonsnake0
hi you can use any controller from ebay etc for your motor 36v 48v if you got battery of same volts. all connections are usually the same but if it does not work correctly first time then turning around the hall and phase wires will get it working. phase wires are the three thick wires blue yellow and green. hall wires ere the five wires in the smaller plug. red black blue green and yellow. connecting to your motor as is may not work right away but some wire rearranging will get it going. their are 36 combinations i think. ask if you need more help cheers.
See, this answer is
wrong -- voltage is not the only thing to keep in mind. Amperage is important as well, but more fundamentally I'm thinking of sensored vs. sensorless.
There's two classes of brushless motors -- sensored and sensorless. You've just described a sensored setup.
The three wires are for the motor itself, and the five wires are for the sensors. If your motor has three wires, it's sensorless, if it has eight (three fat, five thinner), it's sensored.
Brushless ESCs (electronic speed controllers) come in two main flavors -- sensored and sensorless. Again, they either have three fat wires coming out (sensorless), or three fat wires + five thinner wires (sensored).
Modern stuff is generally (but not always) sensorless, as it has several advantages -- fewer wires, the timing of the motor is controlled by the ESC itself rather than having to adjust the sensors in the motor, the motor can be reversed by swapping any two wires (it really is that easy), etc.
The only advantage that sensored has is that the ESCs required less "smarts", but considering how much you can cram into a $1 chip, that really doesn't matter any more.
One more thing to mention -- a sensorless ESC can be used with a sensored motor. Just don't hook up the five sensor wires, only hook up the three motor wires. There's no downside to this setup besides some extra wires you might want to cut off or push out of the way. The opposite does not work, however -- sensored ESCs require sensored motors.