Fuel Economy, Hypermiling, EcoModding News and Forum - EcoModder.com - View Single Post - Paul & Sabrina's cheap DIY 144v motor controller

Tired2 · 10-25-2010, 11:16 PM

OMG, I cannot say how happy I am to see the word "Today" on the most recent post. Almost at 400 pages! I think it was 250 when I started reading a few months ago. I felt like in swim lessons, when the teacher kept walking backwards in the pool while you tried to swim to them.

Thanks Paul for your help via email. Now that I read the whole thread I won't end up posting ideas for stuff that has already happened.

Paul - Did you already get a replacement scope? I have an extra analog 2 channel 20 year old one laying around. It works. It's yours if you want it, if not I'll hang on to it :P

I'm currently in the process of making my own rendition of the control circuitry.. point to point soldering the prototype

.

I'll be driving large IGBT's in parallel in the final setup... more info on that later. I hope to post a sub-thread when I get a few more things ready to post.

I have some features in mind that are "extra" for my controller for drag racing purposes, and I refuse to learn PIC, so I'm basically borrowing some ReVolt concepts and putting my own "spin" on it.

Keep up the great work.

Oh, one feature request for ReVolt that I have come to love on my prototype controllers... I use a piezo buzzer to sound out various errors, for instance if throttle goes out of spec, it sounds 3 beeps on a loop... like:
___-_-_-______-_-_-______-_-_-___

I can easily tell what went wrong by looking at my error code file... This eats up a PWM channel, but I'm sure it could be done with something simple like a 555 you toggle power to, etc. Since the controller shuts down anyway, you can probably dedicate the cpu to run the piezo on an endless loop...

Anyway, my point is to have the error LED flash the number of times that denotes which error is active. It might already do that, but i do not recall people's "error report" posts including the number of blinks. Its easy to pass an error code to a function and use that as the counter for number of blinks. It might help with new users troubleshooting issues. With all the extra I/O coming up in the SR controller, you could dedicate 3 outs to a RGB LED so your errors could have pretty colors. I think phillips has a patent on denoting status via PWM RGB LED, but they don't enforce it. Bit Angle Modulation works and would not take a PWM chan, and avoids patent issues.

10-25-2010, 11:16 PM	#3902 (permalink)
Tired2 EcoModding Lurker Join Date: Feb 2010 Location: Texas Posts: 7 Thanks: 3 Thanked 2 Times in 2 Posts	OMG, I cannot say how happy I am to see the word "Today" on the most recent post. Almost at 400 pages! I think it was 250 when I started reading a few months ago. I felt like in swim lessons, when the teacher kept walking backwards in the pool while you tried to swim to them. Thanks Paul for your help via email. Now that I read the whole thread I won't end up posting ideas for stuff that has already happened. Paul - Did you already get a replacement scope? I have an extra analog 2 channel 20 year old one laying around. It works. It's yours if you want it, if not I'll hang on to it :P I'm currently in the process of making my own rendition of the control circuitry.. point to point soldering the prototype . I'll be driving large IGBT's in parallel in the final setup... more info on that later. I hope to post a sub-thread when I get a few more things ready to post. I have some features in mind that are "extra" for my controller for drag racing purposes, and I refuse to learn PIC, so I'm basically borrowing some ReVolt concepts and putting my own "spin" on it. Keep up the great work. Oh, one feature request for ReVolt that I have come to love on my prototype controllers... I use a piezo buzzer to sound out various errors, for instance if throttle goes out of spec, it sounds 3 beeps on a loop... like: ___-_-_-______-_-_-______-_-_-___ I can easily tell what went wrong by looking at my error code file... This eats up a PWM channel, but I'm sure it could be done with something simple like a 555 you toggle power to, etc. Since the controller shuts down anyway, you can probably dedicate the cpu to run the piezo on an endless loop... Anyway, my point is to have the error LED flash the number of times that denotes which error is active. It might already do that, but i do not recall people's "error report" posts including the number of blinks. Its easy to pass an error code to a function and use that as the counter for number of blinks. It might help with new users troubleshooting issues. With all the extra I/O coming up in the SR controller, you could dedicate 3 outs to a RGB LED so your errors could have pretty colors. I think phillips has a patent on denoting status via PWM RGB LED, but they don't enforce it. Bit Angle Modulation works and would not take a PWM chan, and avoids patent issues.