Greg , interesting your cold weather issues turned out to be solder related. Seems mine might have been the same though I had suspected the crystal. Wednesday night was very cold here (-6c) and I got a call at 1am from the alarm dialer in work. Seems we got broken into by 3 guys that watched too many re-runs of point break and dressed up like the ex-presidents! so anyway I had to hammering down the motorway with the controller temp at -6c. Never missed a beat. Gotta hit the beach and watch out for any suspicious looking surfers
My car has had a layer of ice on the roof for nearly a week now and the controller is working fine since the resolder. Now the heater is another story, I'll pm you.
I am a case study in Rivest, Shamir & Adleman too! (hehe. P.G.P.)
There are a couple problems with the current control boards that were just ordered, and that are undergoing testing. First, switch Pin 2 and Pin 3 of the LM 393. Next, the holes for Q1, Q2, Q3, U10, J2, J3, J4 are too small after the PCB company added the tinning layer. The gerber files will all be fixed soon, so anyone wanting to build their own based on the currently available gerber files may not want to send those in just yet.
I need to convert the most recent schematic to the program that I have, which is ExpressSCH. Then I'll update the changes for Pin 2 and Pin 3 of the LM393 comparator. Also, C23 and C24 should be 20pF instead of 15pF. Also, I'm going to try 20 Ohm gate resistors (0.25 watt, metal film, 1%) instead of 30 Ohm. 30 Ohm is unnecessarily large.
P/N for crystal:
FOXLF160-20 from Mouser.com
P/N for C23 and C24:
140-50N2-200J-RC from Mouser.com
So Mouser has the 140-50N2-200J-RC, but the minimum is 10,000. I found some 15pF from Digi-key. I'm not sure why they were moved from 15pF to 20pF. I have some 24pF that look just like the ones in the assembly instructions with the black top and all. Should I stay with my 15pF or use my 24pF, any advice would be appreciated.
I think 24pF would be fine. I did some reading up on it, and the board has some capacitance in the traces at 16MHz. So, this one AVR Freaks guy said 24pF would be fine for a 20pF capacitor.
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When I die, I would like to go peacefully, in my sleep, like my grandfather did. Not screaming and yelling like the passenger in his car.
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I finally reached the end of this tread, it took me a couple of days but it was worth it Thank you everybody for this educating and entertaining journey.
I now know for sure i want to convert a car too. Too bad i dont have any way to do it i dont have a job at the moment so i have to put it on hold for now and try to put my eurocent aside until i have enough to buy some parts.
Again thank you all for sharing the different controllers and Open Revolt in total. And Paul please tell those that helped you with your designs how thankful i am. At least now i know how a controller can work and i may be able to build one some day.
for now i do have a question is anyone using the ev as a main drive or is it more a second car for fun?
My EV is my main car. I never drive more than 30 km a day in a city I live in. I can go 100 km/h if I need to. I clocked 5000 km last year using OpenRevolt. There is another gasoline powered car in our family in case we have to take longer trips somewhere. I'd make another conversion for longer range immediately if I only had funds to make it happen.
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i also read that your ev didn't had problems with the cold while the diesels did had trouble.
Yes, that's true. Thanks to electrolytic capacitors selection I can drive during coldest days too. I think those capacitors are only limiting factor when it comes to cold weather. Their operating temperatures range from -40C to +105C. I talk about power board. I haven't checked if small electrolytics on control board have same low temp ranges.
I know AC is more popular here in other conversions. Inverters they use are in most cases meant for industrial use and their temp range starts from +0C or -10C. I've asked some manufacturers why it is so and they say it is because electrolytic capacitors don't withstand cold. They've tested their inverters in cold enviroment and have had all kinds of trouble. None of them recommended their inverters for outside use if temps go below 0C. Mostly because of moisture getting into casing, freezing and then unfreezing and becoming fluid again. That's no problem if inverter is kept running all day long. It stays warm enough to drive away all the moist air. But what if you left your car parked outside for a week? You might suddenly have all kinds of trouble. I believe many people haven't thought of this while making their conversions. Some have pretty airtight boxes around their inverters but it doesn't stop electrolyte from freezing.
Several people have been asking me lately how to use the revolt 500amp control board with a hall effect throttle pedal. The procedure is simple. First you need some custom software (thanks Paul!) that lets the micro use the full 0-5v input of the adc. This also allows for the throttle range and error limits to be set using RTD.
Next the hardware. Following the attached photo , remove R10 and replace R8 and D1 with wire links. Pin 5 now outputs a +5v supply for the pedal and pin 4 is now the input from the pedal. Ground can be connected to pin 2. Just a case of disconnecting the traction supply and using RTD to setup the range. My E46 bmw pedal has been running just fine the last 9 months.
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Now, Cole, when you shift the gear and that little needle on the ammeter goes into the red and reads 2000 Amps, that's bad. www.evbmw.com www.evcbr.com
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Yes. There's a fault if the throttle goes out of range, which disables the PWM. And there's no clearing it until the power goes off and on again. For those who are curious, Mora's fault was similar to Joe's. They both had an etched board and somehow there was a short from the top to the bottom of the board. Maybe due to the heatshrink around the bolts?
Now the heater is another story, I'll pm you.
