[RESPONDED] Touchpad unusable with VESC connected

I have a strange problem that I haven’t fully debugged but I want to throw it out to the community in case this rings a bell.

I’m trying to get an e-bike running that I failed to complete. It has a VESC 6 Mk V speed controller. I haven’t touched it for awhile. Getting a good battery for it was a problem and I finally got one that I think I can mount.

I connected the battery, connected the USB, spun the wheel, and…could no longer use my touchpad. Weird. I tried for awhile and then turned off the VESC. Touchpad restored. Power up, same problem. I twiddled with this for awhile. It was consistent. It happens even if I’m not running VESC-Tool; it happens as soon as I plug in the USB cable.

Eventually I swapped for another VESC that had been configured the same way. Same problem.

Next I pulled a fresh VESC out of the packaging. I was able to bring it up, load new firmware, configure it, and then work on it for awhile before the same problem appeared.

Last time I was working on the VESC, I used a Toughbook. I’m going to dig it out and see if it still works.

It’s hard for me to imagine that the USB is getting overwhelmed with this relatively low-rate data. Maybe it’s out of spec? I don’t see any issues in dmesg output. I’m running Linux 6.2.0-26-generic. I might try 5.* to see if it’s something new.

Thanks for considering.

–kyler

Not sure I can offer much help here, but one thing you can do to catch events in real time is journalctl -f with an open terminal - see if you notice specific errors happening as things stop cooperating.

Might be electromagnetic interference? How about using an isolated USB connector?