Paul and Sabrina's Cheap 3 Phase Inverter (AC Controller) with Field Oriented Control

[wootwootman]

Hmmm anyone have any tips on wiring up the resolver-to-encoder board (v1.4) to the Leaf's motor?

I used a DMM to find out which leads pair together (!ex/ex, sin+/sin-, cos+/cos-) and I know the lower resistance pair is !ex/ex. This leaves two issues:

1. I don't know which of the two remaining pairs is sin and which is cos

2. For all three pairs, I don't know which is + and which is -

I don't have access to a scope at the moment, but I can order a cheap one online if necessary. I know I'll have to get one eventually Any advice would be great

[MPaulHolmes]

One thing you can do is, just guess (but get the ex/!ex right) and then stream poscnt like this:

stream-poscnt 1
data-stream-period 100

then move the motor shaft by hand (or with a wrench or something that gives you sort of fine control) and see if the angle changes in a nice continuous way, from 0 to 511 and then wraps around to 0 again (or backwards if it's turning the other way)

I found that the 58 and the 61 PM or whateber they were called had different colors for the wires. But for my motor the colors were:
LEAF motor resolver colors... (for my 2012 motor).

SIN+ ----------- RED
SIN- ----------- black
EX ----------- white
!EX ----------- green
COS+ ----------- BLUE
COS- ----------- YELLOW

[wootwootman]

Hey Paul, thanks for the super quick response!

I saw that list of color/signal pairs in the board documentation, but it didn't match mine (I think I have a 2011) :shrug:

Hmmm okay, I'm fairly confident I have the ex/!ex pair right (discounting polarity), so it shouldn't take more than a few tries (8 possible combinations). I've crimped the connector leads onto my wires, but luckily I haven't stuffed them into the connector housing yet. I think I'll try alligator clips until I get a working setup.

And this might sound like a dumb question, but where does the resolver's GND wire go to? There are two more wires coming from the motor that I think are for a temp sensor, surely it's not one of those?

[MPaulHolmes]

The resolver ground wire is just an optional thing if you have the resolver cable shielded. You send the shield to ground. It works fine though to just twist ex/!ex, and then twist sin/!sin, and twist cos/!cos.

Also, what I did was in the middle of the resolver cable just have a bunch of insulated quick disconnects (the male/female spades) which makes it easy that way to swap them if necessary too.

[02BMW02]

Hi Paul,

Just a thought, would it be possible to connect your Ac controller directly in the leafs invertor system, this would save building the power stage which the invertor already has built into it.

Do you think in the future you will design drop in board in to the existing leaf invertor....I hope you will ;-)

[thingstodo]

Originally Posted by MPaulHolmes

Try "run-pi-test2". This works better, and I think it's implemented in what you have. if it's not I can implement it. It basically lets you get a visual inspection of the convergence rather than letting the computer see if it's converging.

Hi Paul,

run-pi-test2 is not a valid command for my firmware.

Can you send me a link ... and is it time for an off-site backup?

When I ran

run-pi-test

it ran the first time for about 30 minutes and the battery on the controller died. No results

Second time, with a different 12V accessory battery ... after 30 minutes ... it had gotten to up ratio 67 by the time I pressed enter and stopped it.

So I tried just running it with the parameters from the Siemens motor. And the motor did not respond to the throttle signal. The output of the AC controller did not seem to go up. I'll post later tonight with the logs. It's sort of strange.

More to come later tonight

[thingstodo]

Originally Posted by 02BMW02

Hi Paul,

Just a thought, would it be possible to connect your Ac controller directly in the leafs invertor system, this would save building the power stage which the invertor already has built into it.

Do you think in the future you will design drop in board in to the existing leaf invertor....I hope you will ;-)

That would also be interesting for me.

I have a couple of the AC controller boards that are waiting to be transplanted into older industrial Variabel Frequency Drives, as the new brains. That may work for the Leaf inverter as well .. not sure. But I don't have a leaf to play with, so I won't be finding out anytime soon.

I'll post about the brain transplants into the industrial VFDs when I get any progress to report.

[wootwootman]

I hooked up the ex/!ex wires and tried the 8 different combinations of sin+/sin- and cos+/cos- while streaming "poscnt" and manually turning the shaft. No luck, it was all zeros

I think I'll just bite the bullet and buy a cheapo ebay scope; I don't think I'll need a ton of bandwidth. From what I understand, with none of the resolver leads connected, I should be seeing a voltage on the ex/!ex outputs (normally 3.6 Vpp centered around 2.5V but I don't have the board docs in front of me rn so cant calculate actual voltage at the pins). Then, connecting the leads, I should be seeing sinusoidal outputs on the sin+/sin- and cos+/cos- leads, and due to their names I'm assuming the cos one lags 90deg behind the sin signal.

I've got the heat sink, cap "sandwhich", battery, etc. all ready, they're just waiting for a resolver to start testing

[MPaulHolmes]

thingstodo, did you get the updated software I sent a couple weeks ago (april 11)? It's the updated code, but with the through-hole board incorporated into it.

Yes I would very much like to do nissan leaf board. I have a leaf board, and have been figuring out the pinouts, and am almost done. I could get a board working pretty quickly. I just need to do a prototype. I'll do that this month. Well, next month. it's the 30th haha.

[thingstodo]

Originally Posted by MPaulHolmes

thingstodo, did you get the updated software I sent a couple weeks ago (april 11)? It's the updated code, but with the through-hole board incorporated into it.

I read the email ... but didn't download or install the firmware or source code

I will do that! Likely tomorrow.

Still a bit confused by why the controller did not use the old settings to try starting the Polaris motor though. All I should need to do is power up and hit the throttle ... right? The encoder pulses rise to 3.9 VDC and fall to 0.2VDC .. that should be good for a 5V input?

I didn't get the logs loaded last night. Will get that part done tonight - hopefully