Paul & Sabrina's cheap DIY 144v motor controller

[MPaulHolmes]

One was nice and smooth for a little while and blew up earlier, but it was at around 163v, so that could have contributed to it. Another had all bars out the same side, and is behaving erratically. I think it was a design problem for the optocoupler to be on the control board, and the output to travel to the driver board. It is a signal with a tiny tiny current, and is more susceptible to noise. Even if it works perfectly well for flores, I've already made some changes and just need to get the new boards made. The new way has a much shorter path from caps to diodes to mosfets back to caps. Maybe 3 times shorter than before, and takes advantage of the backs of the mosfets and diodes for carrying current. The only time the current goes through the legs of the diodes is when it goes through 2 legs at a time. Each mosfet and diode has its own milled out little island on a 1/4" x 1" bus bar. I'm going to heat the mosfets up to around 140 degC in one oven, and the bars just to soldering temp in another oven, and then take out the mosfets and place them in their little islands, raise the whole thing back up to soldering temperature (around 180 degC) and then let it cool. I've done some tests and it works pretty well. The bus bars will squashed against a large heat sink, with the electrical isolation pad between the 2. This will mean much more heat can leave the mosfets/diodes, since there will be no more pad directly between them and the heat spreader.

It's going to use 12 gigamos mosfets. It has a driver board that's 4 homemade isolated supplies. This is based on Fran's recommendations. Each isolated supply drives 3 mosfets. There's also an RC snubber for each mosfet on the driver board. It uses ceramic 2W resistors for snubbers since their inductance is so low.

Edit: The 500amp version is so radically different, that I don't know a good way to upgrade it. I'm not sure when we'll get rid of the $500 price. Maybe in September.

[electricstorm]

Thanks Paul.

I may just go ahead and get the 500 amp version then. I am converting a 92 Geo Storm and will most likely use a 120v pack. My thinking was if I got the 1000 amp controller, I would have lots of leeway if I wanted to go to a 144v pack. Or, maybe later, transfer the 1000 amp controller to another vehicle if I wanted to build another ev.

I think the 500 amp controller will probably work for me just fine since it will just be driven around town with very liftt, if any, highway use. What are anyone's thoughts on having more leeway as far as amperage or have the majority experienced ample power from the 500 amp controller? Just wanted some feedback before dedicating funds. I do know that the Open Revolt charger is the best deal around. Guess you can tell I'm sorta new to all this.

Jim

[prensel]

@Flores,
Got your pm but cant sent you one back because of having less then 10 postings. My girlfriend lives in Almere so i know where that is ;-) you can reach me on paul at rensel dot nl, might be interested in the D&D.

I looked at and contacted Kostov and they seems to have a nice K9 144v motor. They also have batteries for a good price.

So i received the P&S kit this wednesday and thursday evening decided to put everything together. After a peek at Paul's instruction video and some hours of soldering the job was done. After hooking up the unit to a 12v battery both green en yellow LED went solid on. (oh BTW you seemed to have switched your LED's somewhere early in your instruction video because my D4 is green en D5 is yellow and it appears on your video D4 is yellow and D5 is green...). You also forgot to drill the hole for RT1 in the cooling bar and the small screw to fix U1, not a big problem.

I hooked up the pc and launched RTD Explorer and everything seems to be working. After giving the command restart it says "Cougar OS controller firmware 1.11b" and after command config some settings and values are presented.

So I assume everything is working from the controlboard ?
Are there any other tests I can do ?
Can i just hookup a 12V motor and 12 battery and control it with a 5k potmeter ?

Regards,

Paul

[MPaulHolmes]

Hi Paul, another test you can do is hook up the 12v power to the control board, and turn a 5k pot from 0 Ohms to some non-zero ohms. Don't hook up any power to the bus bars though. Put the positive lead of a volt meter on a gate resistor hole (GR1 through GR10), and the negative lead on PH1 or PH2. At 0 Ohms, you should see 0 volts. After giving it some throttle, the voltage should jump up, and then the LED should start blinking fast, indicating a fault. At that point, the voltage should go back to zero. It's a fault because there was maximum PWM duty and zero current.

As a side note, I never drill RT1, since it doesn't require any precision. I just do all the stuff that requires a mill. Pretty much everything that can be done with normal tools I leave to people to do. I also have never included a screw for U1, but that was just because I have never thought of it. Thanks for mentioning that!

[prensel]

Paul,

I did the test and when measuring the output on GR1-GR10 on the control board side the voltage drops indeed when the yellow leds start flashing so i assume the whole unit is working fine.

I did notice one thing, when hooking up the volt meter on the powerboard side of every GR1-GR10 the voltage stays up. I guess it has something to do with the voltmeter causing a 'disturbed' signal to the powerboard ?

[harlequin2]

Originally Posted by electricstorm

Thanks Paul.

I may just go ahead and get the 500 amp version then. I am converting a 92 Geo Storm and will most likely use a 120v pack. My thinking was if I got the 1000 amp controller, I would have lots of leeway if I wanted to go to a 144v pack. Or, maybe later, transfer the 1000 amp controller to another vehicle if I wanted to build another ev.

I think the 500 amp controller will probably work for me just fine since it will just be driven around town with very liftt, if any, highway use. What are anyone's thoughts on having more leeway as far as amperage or have the majority experienced ample power from the 500 amp controller? Just wanted some feedback before dedicating funds. I do know that the Open Revolt charger is the best deal around. Guess you can tell I'm sorta new to all this.

Jim

A 1000A controller is actually better around town!
It gives more acceleration because of more torque, but the top speed is the same. Remember, amps = torque = acceleration while volts = rpm = speed.
A 144V battery will give the same top speed with either a 500A or a 1000A controller, but the 1000A controller will get there much faster.
I have screwed my 500A controller up to do 625A by altering the current sensor and it has been doing that just fine for a couple of thousand kms now. The acceleration is 0 - 50 mph in a bit over 10 seconds while it took 12 seconds when limited to 500A (actually 512A). I used to have a 1000A controller (LogiSystems) and that did the job in about 8 1/2 seconds until it blew up. I have a set of boards from Paul for his 1000A controller, but haven't gotten around to building it yet.

[MPaulHolmes]

Hi Paul! Yes, I think it sounds like everything is working like it should be.

[badfishracing]

Ah, just the mod i was searching for. Got the controller running on the pulling tractor. Gearing was way off, so it hung at 500 motor amps the whole way down the track. Real low motor volts. Going to change final drive from 5.13:1 to 10.16:1.
Also to pump up the current a bit, sounds like I need to:
A) turn up the harware overcurrent pot
B) change the source code - compile with something - download with the bootloader
Or is there another easier mod by 'altering the current sensor' as you say?

Thanks,
Darin

Originally Posted by harlequin2

A 1000A controller is actually better around town!
It gives more acceleration because of more torque, but the top speed is the same. Remember, amps = torque = acceleration while volts = rpm = speed.
A 144V battery will give the same top speed with either a 500A or a 1000A controller, but the 1000A controller will get there much faster.
I have screwed my 500A controller up to do 625A by altering the current sensor and it has been doing that just fine for a couple of thousand kms now. The acceleration is 0 - 50 mph in a bit over 10 seconds while it took 12 seconds when limited to 500A (actually 512A). I used to have a 1000A controller (LogiSystems) and that did the job in about 8 1/2 seconds until it blew up. I have a set of boards from Paul for his 1000A controller, but haven't gotten around to building it yet.

[electricstorm]

Had a question.

I was looking through the Wiki for the Rev. 2D controller.
All the archived info by Iluminateddan gives a server error.
Are these files no longer available? If they are, where
might I find them?

Thanks,

Jim

[ianbartie]

I have copies of all the 2D files. Send me a PM with your email address. Don't know what happened to Dan.
Cougar 2D is the AU version of the controller. There have been about 6 made that are on the road with a couple more in various stages of building. It had a couple of design changes over the US version & some extra features but no firmware to support them at this stage.
There are no control or power boards available either.