How to Delay the Index Search

mikemontauk · August 18, 2026, 10:55pm

Hello,

I am implementing a precharge circuit for 12 Odrive Pros. It is manual; I press a button to close the circuit and there is a 3 Ohm resistor between the 14s battery and the Odrive Pros. Next, I flip a switch to energize a contactor and close the main power circuit and take my finger off of the precharge button, opening the precharge circuit.

The issue is that I don’t want the Odrive Pros to start the index search as soon as I press the precharge button; that’s more amperage than I want to pass through my precharge circuit because some of the servos will need to overcome siginificant breakaway torque for the index search. Is there an efficient way to delay the index search? For example, add a 5 or 10 second delay so that I can precharge for 5 seconds, then close the contactor at t=5s and then the index search starts at t=10s.

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solomondg · August 19, 2026, 5:04pm

No way to do that as-is. But that’s a good idea for a feature. I’ll make a PR to our firmware but it may be a week until it’s available on devel.

I am going to say the following

It looks like you’re using CAN, why not just use it and kick off the index search and closed loop state over CAN? This also lets you stagger index searches so you don’t have the draw of 12 ODrives immediately entering lockin spin
Having a precharge circuit that isn’t manually actuated might be nice (maybe an arduino and some relays could do your button-press-then-switch-flip?)
If you use a DPDT contactor switch, you could have a second pole going to an ODrive endstop pin, which (when held high) will inhibit the axis from movement (incl. startup sequence). (and also increase axis0.config.startup_max_wait_for_ready so it doesn’t time out during however long it takes for you to precharge → run)

Also, as an additional note, you said:

that’s more amperage than I want to pass through my precharge circuit because some of the servos will need to overcome siginificant breakaway torque for the index search

Lockin spin (used for index search) is a fixed, open-loop current. You have that set to 10A. With your 0.095 ohm phase resistance, the bus power draw will be:
((10A)^2 * 3/2 * 0.095ohm) / (14*3.7 V) == 14.25W / 51.8V == 275mA per ODrive → ~3.3A overall. Still not something you want going through your 3ohm resistor, but not the end of the world.

mikemontauk · August 22, 2026, 11:54am

Thanks for the reply.

I did not know that could be done. I will definitely look into it.
Nice idea for the future. I’m eager to get things up and running for now, and I have the button press hardware inplemented, but may revisit this.
Another good solution; I like item 1 best, and this is a good backup option.
I didn’t know that the encoder search was a fixed current; I will probably have to increase that current because it will likely not be enough torque for some of the nodes to index search.
Thanks!

solomondg · August 24, 2026, 5:55pm

Oh, yeah if you can easily just kick everything off over CAN, that’s 100% the right way to do things

And yup, index search is fixed current at calibration_lockin.current amps (“calibration lock-in current” in the GUI setup flow)