BeagleConnect QuadESC: Open Hardware for Four BLDC Motors

Driving one brushless motor well is a craft; driving four in tight coordination is the foundation of every quadcopter and many robots. BeagleBoard.org's new BeagleConnect QuadESC tackles that job with fully open hardware: a compact four-channel brushless DC (BLDC) motor controller built around the new BeagleConnect Torque system-on-module. CNX Software detailed the pair on October 29, 2026, and the design files are already public.

• Size and power: a 60 x 48mm board for 3S to 6S batteries (9 to 25.2V), with design targets of 40A continuous and 70A burst per motor, pending thermal validation
• Sensing: 12 phase-current and 12 phase-voltage measurements, four temperature sensors and battery-voltage monitoring
• Brains: the BeagleConnect Torque module with a Texas Instruments AM13E23019 Arm Cortex-M33, trigonometric math unit and TinyEngine neural-network accelerator
• Open design: KiCad files, firmware sources and documentation on GitHub; pricing and availability not yet announced

What Is the BeagleConnect Torque Module?

The Torque system-on-module is a 25.4 x 38.1mm board that can also be dropped onto custom carriers. According to CNX Software, it pairs the TI microcontroller with 128KB of SRAM and 512KB of flash, three 12-bit ADCs, motor-control PWM, CAN-FD through an onboard TI transceiver, and UART, SPI and I2C. It also supports secure boot, secure debug and cryptographic acceleration, and adds a Qwiic connector for plug-and-play I2C sensors.

The TinyEngine accelerator is the forward-looking piece. A small on-chip neural-network engine sitting right next to the motor control loop opens the door to edge AI features such as detecting bearing wear or a damaged propeller from current signatures, without a separate processor.

How Does the QuadESC Handle Field-Oriented Control?

Each of the four motor channels gets its own TI DRV8323 gate driver, three half-bridge power stages and a dedicated PWM time base. BeagleBoard.org explains that each motor's three phase-current inputs are spread across the three ADCs so firmware can sample all three simultaneously, which is exactly what field-oriented control (FOC) needs for smooth, efficient torque. An 8-pin flight-controller connector carries four DShot signal routes plus telemetry, current and battery-voltage reporting, so the board can slot into a drone stack, while CAN-FD suits robot arms and wheeled platforms.

Who Should Build With the QuadESC?

This is a board for developers who want to learn and own their motor control stack. The QuadESC does not ship with ready-made motor firmware, so you bring the FOC code, gate-driver setup and fault handling. In return you get TI's AM13E2X SDK with FOC tools, a ROM bootloader that loads firmware over CAN, I2C or UART, SWD debugging, and planned Zephyr RTOS and OpenOCD support. That makes it an excellent teaching and research platform for robotics labs, drone builders and anyone curious about how switching waveforms turn into torque.

It joins a growing wave of open motor-control hardware, from the HPMicro HPM5100 RISC-V motor-control MCU to the ARK Just a Pi CM5 carrier for drones and robots. Keep up with more boards in our mini computers section.

Sources: CNX Software — October 29, 2026; BeagleBoard.org QuadESC page — accessed October 29, 2026; QuadESC on GitHub — accessed October 29, 2026.