Afro ESC -- SimonK/Timecop/HobbyKing Collaboration

A lot of people have been wanting for quite a while an easily accessible source of SimonK flashed ESCs for their multicopters.  A smaller group of people have been wanting I2C interfaced ESCs, so the flight control board could monitor the state of the ESC (and know when a blade had stopped spinning, for example).

In collaboration with timecop and HobbyKing, here it is.  I've got a set on order and will update this post when they arrive and I can try them out.  For those not familiar with SimonK, he's the amazing gentleman who wrote his own open source firmware for ESCs that bumped the refresh rate to 400 Hz.  HobbyKing notes that this is a licensed product, and that both SimonK and timecop (a.k.a. Hamasaki) are receiving royalties.

• Afro ESC 30Amp Multi-rotor Speed Controller (SimonK Firmware)

timecop notes that this USB linker is compatible:

• Turnigy USB Linker for AquaStar/Super Brain

Some useful links:

• Afro Manual
• Timecop's afrodevices page on google code
• SimonK's tgy firmware page on github
• RCGroups thread on SimonK firmware and flashing

Some interesting timecop comments culled from the HK page:

This is an ESC for Multirotors. You don't need 4A of 5V for servos or flight control boards. 0.5A is more than enough for any modern FC. 

It uses MikroKopter I2C protocol, so pull the shrink off (see 3rd pic), solder GND, SDA (D), SCL (C) and connect all these together to MK-FC. You will need to build and load (via USB Linker) firmware for different motor number, because default is motor #1 (I2C address 0x52).