LOL. Well, it has all the safety features of the regular old 500 amp version. I just added a few extra things to the newest one like disabling the PWM if the microcontroller latches up. I tested that circuit, by the way, and it works perfectly!
As far as touchy throttle goes, there are a number of things that we could do to fix that. I'm thinking that part of the problem is trying to fit 0 to 1175 amps in the same range as 0-500 amps. On the Zilla, Otmar doesn't use a linear throttle if I recall correctly. We could first try slower ramp up, and if that's no good, then we could make it something like this:
We could transition from a throttle that feels proportional to 500 amp of max current near zero throttle, and a smooth transition to a throttle that's proportional to 1000 amps at max throttle.
I may need to mail you a little programmer for it, since it doesn't have a bootloader. boohoo. They are pretty cheap though.
EDIT: Something like this:
currentReference = 500*(x*x + x), where x is the throttle position, and is [0,1]. For x close to zero, x*x is very small, so it behaves like 500*x. For x near 1 (full throttle), x*x + x is close to 2, so it behaves like 1000*x.
I think Otmar uses a cubic, so maybe something like:
500*(x*x*x + x). That would be like 500 amps for longer, and a more severe transition near the end of the throttle.
The top line is what the throttle is right now, next one down is 500*(x*x+x), the next one down is 500*(x*x*x + x), and the next one down is the throttle for the regular old 500amp controller. Notice how the 2 bend to mimic the 500amp throttle on the low end, and catch up to the current 1000amp throttle.
If those friggen algebra sudents tomorrow tell me that there's no use for parabolas, I'm going to whup them and show them this.