Paul & Sabrina's cheap DIY 144v motor controller

[64jeep]

Jack,
Looking good! How did you attach the capacitors to the bus bars? Was it difficult to get all the holes aligned and torque them all down? I had that problem on mine. You don't want the holes to be oversized since you want good contact area, but you have to torque the screws in the capacitors and IGBTs in a specific order due to space, which makes it hard to align everything. I ended up putting mine together and taking it apart a number of times before it all worked out.

Also, what dimensions did you use for the bus bars? The ones I used resulted in bars that were fairly close together. Next time I'd have used a bar that was more square to keep the spacing a little better.

[eco_generator]

One million + views of this thread!

[duncan]

This intermittent glitch I have is now getting serious!

The damn thing stopped when I was moving onto a main road - and worse there was a police car behind me!

The policeman pushed me off to the side of the road (the Device is really easy to push) - the shame of it!

It works fine - then it doesn't! - then it does

So how long before I can buy one of the new 1000amp controllers?

[mrbigh]

Happy 4th of July to all of you !!!!

[64jeep]

Duncan, I know it was a while back, but in your pics of RTD I saw you had battery amps limited to 4? I'm not sure how that would be related, but when I initially was testing my car I forgot I'd set battery amps limit to 10 and it would only go 10 mph. Setting it to 4 and using direct drive, I bet it wouldn't even move.

This seems a stupid question and I can't imagine how this would happen, but did you accidentally change the battery amp limit to 4 while you were driving? If that did happen, cycling the power without a save would restore the old settings and away you go.

[duncan]

Hi Jeep

I don't have anything connected to the controller except the battery, motor, 12v and throttle so I would have no idea how I could have changed the software
Also sometimes it glitches - and then comes right without a power off

I have been blaming the repair I did - I'm not an experienced electronics guy and when I replaced the MOSFET driver I made a right mess

I think repairing the repair would be a mistake as it would make things worse

The best thing to do would be to buy another brain board and new parts from Paul

I was hoping that the more powerful controller from Paul or Adam would be available as I really want about 700 amps

[mora]

You can get more amps to your motor if you turn VR1 clockwise. I turned it all the way counter clockwise and hardware overcurrent protection comes in at about 450A now. Schematics say that full clockwise results in 775A to the motor. I'm not sure if anyone has tested controller at those settings. Mosfet datasheet says maximum current per mosfet is 130A so 77.5A is still only 59% of maximum current they can handle, even for brief period of time. Proceed with caution anyway.

[MPaulHolmes]

that's just the hardware overcurrent trip point though. The software will still keep things at around 500 amps max. You'd have to change like 1 line of code so 700 amps would be the software limit instead of 500.

[duncan]

Hi Paul

Any idea of the timeframe for the new controller?

Also could I buy a new brainboard and the components from you (I will keep using my existing (new) powerboard) and how much would it cost?

[jyanof]

Originally Posted by duncan

This intermittent glitch I have is now getting serious!

really sounds like a loose connection somewhere, maybe even the 12v power to the controller. have you driven around with a laptop and watched the data with rtd explorer when the glitch happens? it's a great tool for helping troubleshoot. otherwise, it's more of a guessing game.