Paul & Sabrina's cheap DIY 144v motor controller

[ChedMpls]

mine was sent to me by paul. can i check those parameters? one thing i thought was odd was that the contactor closes even if i'm holding the throttle down. there is no power applied until i release the throttle and then depress it again.

[Weisheimer]

OK, it probably has those fuses set properly then.
So far as I know,you would need a programmer and related software to read that data from the microcontroller chip.
I don't believe it can be read via Cougar Explorer.
Is your microcontroller chip in a socket, or soldered in?
If it's in a socket, it might be just as easy to swap in a known good one to test with.
How long ago did you get the microcontroller and do you know which version of software it is?
You are going to want to calibrate your throttle pedal using Cougar Explorer, so you're going to want to set up the serial port anyway.
You can read the firmware version from that if you aren't sure what you have now.

[MPaulHolmes]

That's the high pedal lockout. Do you mean you have the contactor timer set to something, and then when the time runs out, it closes whether or not the throttle is down? That's how it's suppposed to behave. But it makes you release the pedal to zero before clearing the high pedal lockout fault. Are you sure the high pitched noise is coming from the controller? I verify each chip before sending it, and it was running at 16MHz, so I'm not sure how it could be doing a lower PWM frequency. Maybe with the emergency brake on you could VERY GENTLY press the throttle so that the motor doesn't turn. Does it make a high pitched whine?

When did you get it?

[ChedMpls]

high pedal lockout is good then.
my chip is socketed i believe and i would have gotten it, holy smokes- it's been 2 years!!! i think i got it spring of 2010.
I tried some throttle with the brakes locked and i got no noise. i gave it a little spin in neutral and got no noise. i'm pretty confident that the whine and the squeal are from the controller, i've driven more than my share of mechanically questionable cars and i've never heard anything like this. To clarify, the noises are not constant but they are very frequent, occuring off and on in every gear/speed i tried, but not always, not predictably. It rarely made any noises during 0-10mph acceleration. This is the only ev controller i've ever used so i can't make any comparison to other controllers.

[MPaulHolmes]

Hmm... It's not related to the pwm duty being at too low a frequency. That's good. What current sensor are you using? Is it the LEM Hass 300-s? It may be some sort of overcurrent protection coming on. But it doesn't sound like you are drawing hundreds of amps, so one possibility is a wrong sensor that is more sensitive than the lem hass 300-s.

[MPaulHolmes]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdkeNKj9VRM

[isaac_alaska]

Originally Posted by Weisheimer

Those parameters are set when doing the programming of the microcontroller for the first time before it is installed on the control board.
A Ponyprog is a device used to program the AVR microcontroller.
Did you buy a pre-programmed microcontroller from Paul, or was yours programmed by someone else?

Explorer works fine with a USB to serial adapter.

i would like to add that i'm pretty sure RTD explorer only works with a very few usb to serial adapters. i tried 3 of them (ones that look like a usb cable with a bulky serial connector on one end) and none of them worked at all. but adam (and me, but i can't remember the number on it) has one that works very well.

hope this helps

[Weisheimer]

EVAL232R FTDI, Future Technology Devices International Ltd | 768-1023-ND | DigiKey

is the one that Adam uses and could be counted upon to work.

I only use USB to serial adapters that contain the FTDI chip set.
I use one that is similar looking to the one in Paul's video in the post above this one.
It has a blue molded connector on a USB cable. It cost $9.95 on Amazon as I recall.

I probably have 3 different USB to serial adapters and they all work with RTD explorer.
I can see where you would be concerned about which one to use since you had so much trouble!

[Frxdy]

WOOOHOOOOO!!! Paul, You did it! It's a thing of beauty. A 1000 amp mondobeastus! Yowza..... Thanks for sharing. I mean it!

Gee... I put power to my just soldered control board today & got a blinking yellow light. I thought THAT was exciting, but, this show of yours....makes me all honkyodle. You take the cake!

[MPaulHolmes]

lol