Paul & Sabrina's cheap DIY 144v motor controller

[bennelson]

Originally Posted by MPaulHolmes

6 isolated supplies. Unnecessary? Yes! hahaha. But I can use the driver boards unchanged in an AC controller too.

I like the thinking ahead in that!

Paul and I have been talking for a while about designing an everyman's plug-in hybrid.

I started a thread on that in the Hybrids forum (or just CLICK HERE. )

That whole project may end up getting based on an Open ReVolt AC controller.

[MPaulHolmes]

Hi Ben! And also, I got pretty much all the details worked out now for an AC controller's driver and power section (including high voltage IGBT) based on cheap TO-247 packages. It's almost IDENTICAL to dc controller. Just have to group the packages into phases. Literally change just a couple lines of isolation and it changes from brushed DC to AC, and the drivers are the same. You just stack 2 driver boards and then a control board, rather than just a driver board and then control board. It's all done! Well, for high voltage like 300v, you would need something other than those bootleg Electrolytic caps. A single $100 film cap would be good enough for a small car. But you would need to be able to bend the copper like Adam did!:
hahaha


What's this? A sheet metal bender thing in my room next to my son's toilet because there's no room in the garage? hahaha

[DJBecker]

Originally Posted by sawickm

Do you have to worry about vibration cracking the solder joint from the soldered source pin - copper strip - busbar connection? I might not be visualizing that correctly?

It doesn't look as if we took any pictures that show the finished result. We were trying to get the same same effect as PowerTab or SuperTab part -- a wide, flat tab for both the source and drain connection.

The copper strips are soldered the whole length of the pins with a generous amount of lead solder, so I don't expect enough mechanical stress to cause cracking.

[MPaulHolmes]

I sent in a new one off updated control board and driver to go with the left over power board. The new control board will have the extra safety features, and the driver board is completely different 1from before. I'm very interested to see how it goes. One driver per mosfet. One optocoupler per 2 mosfets. 6 isolated supplies. 110010 (My son just typed that).

I am added a help command to the software so you can figure how to use each command, and understand it. You can also now edit a variable called "max-current", which strangely enough is the maximum current at full throttle. If you want a granny mobile, set it to 100. haha. If you want it to blow up, set it to 2000. I ain't nobody's pappy, sep'n my sons.

Also, the hardware overcurrent trip can be set from about 50 amps up to 1250 amps or so.

Also, for now overcurrent sets a fault until the pedal is lifted all the way.

I'm also making the hardware overrev protection enabled by default. I've tested it on one motor, and I'll check my new crappy motor. I'll also be checking the minimum pwm required for some amps to go through, and also the minimum current required for the mtoor to start spinning. Then I'll assume the rest of the motors in the world are the same. haha. It would be nice to get a collection of values.

I think overrev protection hasn't been used much, and part of the reason is peopje just don't know the commands, and how to use the commands, and don't know what they mean. So I also changed the command names so they are very intuitive. Also, to stop rtd-period from scrolling, now you just hit any key. Before you had to type "rtd-period 0" while it was still scrolling by, and it was really awkward.

The help feature is this:

help <command>

Then it walks you through the syntax, an example of the usage, the meaning of it, and what units the number is in that goes with the command.

I'll probably switch to an ATMega328 because they are CHEAPER! And 32 kb of program memory instead of 16. they are pin for pin identical.
Basically the same dang chip, except for more program memory and cheaper.

I ordered the parts for populating the new driver and control board (except for a couple items), but not the power section yet since I have to wait until the 25th. anger...

[adamj12b]

Originally Posted by MPaulHolmes

I am added a help command to the software so you can figure how to use each command, and understand it. You can also now edit a variable called "max-current", which strangely enough is the maximum current at full throttle. If you want a granny mobile, set it to 100. haha. If you want it to blow up, set it to 2000. I ain't nobody's pappy, sep'n my sons.

FINALLY! ive been wanting this feature for a long time. I kept bugging fran, but he hasn't had time to work on it. How are you mapping the 2000A to the 9 bit loop?

Originally Posted by MPaulHolmes

Also, for now overcurrent sets a fault until the pedal is lifted all the way.

I'm also making the hardware overrev protection enabled by default. I've tested it on one motor, and I'll check my new crappy motor. I'll also be checking the minimum pwm required for some amps to go through, and also the minimum current required for the mtoor to start spinning. Then I'll assume the rest of the motors in the world are the same. haha. It would be nice to get a collection of values.

I think overrev protection hasn't been used much, and part of the reason is peopje just don't know the commands, and how to use the commands, and don't know what they mean. So I also changed the command names so they are very intuitive. Also, to stop rtd-period from scrolling, now you just hit any key. Before you had to type "rtd-period 0" while it was still scrolling by, and it was really awkward.

The help feature is this:

help <command>

Then it walks you through the syntax, an example of the usage, the meaning of it, and what units the number is in that goes with the command.

The help thing seems great! BUT! changing commands and how the RTD-function works is a major letdown. RTD-Explorer will no longer work without the RTD string always active. and it will not be able to talk to the controller with different commands.

You are a MURDERER for you have killed RTD Explorer!!

-Adam

[flores]

Is the RTD explorer not maintained anymore?

I believe it is a .net c# app right? Since I am a C# .net developer i'm willing to fix this.. does somebody has the source?

[adamj12b]

Originally Posted by flores

Is the RTD explorer not maintained anymore?

I believe it is a .net c# app right? Since I am a C# .net developer i'm willing to fix this.. does somebody has the source?

RTD is still actively maintained, but without some consistence between firmware, its going to be a PITA to keep making changes. Currently there is nothing in place to distinguish different firmware versions and use appropriate regex strings to filter the bad data passed in.

We have plans to add plug in functionality to RTD, but haven't made it there yet. The would solve some of the problems.

The source is written with VB.NET.

Send me an email (you can get my address through my profile) and maybe you can help us out updating some stuff.

-Adam

[sawickm]

Originally Posted by adamj12b

The help thing seems great! BUT! changing commands and how the RTD-function works is a major letdown. RTD-Explorer will no longer work without the RTD string always active. and it will not be able to talk to the controller with different commands. -Adam

Hi Adam,

Can RTD-explore be changed to work with Paul's new command updates?

Could the help function be moved to RTD-explore ? It would be wrong to see RTD-explore obsoleted. I think it is a plus having a real time data acquisition program for the open source ReVolt motor controllers.

The trend for the popular EV motor controllers on the market today is to have a graphics display interfaced to the controller to monitor and control it.

-Mark

[adamj12b]

Originally Posted by sawickm

Hi Adam,

Can RTD-explore be changed to work with Paul's new command updates?

Could the help function be moved to RTD-explore ? It would be wrong to see RTD-explore obsoleted. I think it is a plus having a real time data acquisition program for the open source ReVolt motor controllers.

The trend for the popular EV motor controllers on the market today is to have a graphics display interfaced to the controller to monitor and control it.

-Mark

Well anything can be changed to work. But you change to work with the new controller and its possible to break it for an older controller.

The help function more belongs in RTD explorer then in the controller its self.

Also, without RTD telling the controller to re-enable the rtd stream, no logging can happen.

Currently, RTD-Explorer sends commands in between the 10 rtd updates each second. This way, you get real time data stream with logging while being able to send commands.

-Adam

[sawickm]

Originally Posted by adamj12b

Well anything can be changed to work. But you change to work with the new controller and its possible to break it for an older controller. -Adam

Would you have to make it compatible with the old controllers?

Why couldn't it just be an enhancement for the new controllers? The old ReVolt controllers use the older version of RTD, and the new ReVolt controllers Yours and Paul’s use the updated RTD?

Users would just have to buy the new controllers to get the updated features?

-Mark