Paul & Sabrina's cheap DIY 144v motor controller

[MPaulHolmes]

New driver mostly finished being soldered. Started control board. one hand type baby...

[Greg Fordyce]

So I've been busy and haven't been keeping up with the forum since probably Thanksgiving.

Originally Posted by madmike8

Is there a setup information page for the revolt controller? Something that tells what settings can be adjusted, and how? Is there a way to set a motor voltage limit? So, if I ran 120v worth of batteries, can I set the motor to see like a 80v max limit?

Thanks

Read this post and if madmike8 is still around there is a built in function for this. You need to set the motor overspeed limit, dig through the forum and wiki for instructions, but basically motor voltage is directly related to motor rpm, so setting this up will effectively limit motor voltage to whatever you want. HTH.

A update on my controller. I have one of Pauls early rev C controllers. The car has been on the road since May and has over 3500 miles since then. I was having a problem in the cold with the controller not working until it got some heat into it. I also had a problem of the contactor control not working and the controller getting warmer than I liked. I found the P channel mosfet faulty so repalced it and at the same time ran the soldering iron over all joints on the control board. That has fixed my contactor control and also seems to have sorted out the cold weather problem. As for the controller getting to hot, previously I had fitted a large heatsink in place of the steel base plate, but now I've turned the controller over so the heatsink is on top. I recon that it just wasn't getting proper airflow, my engine bay is quite cramped.

Greg

[sawickm]

Originally Posted by MPaulHolmes

New driver mostly finished being soldered. Started control board. one hand type baby...

Hi Paul,

I am hoping your new driver and controller test out well, keep us up to date when you get a chance.

-Mark

[jackbauer]

Greg , interesting your cold weather issues turned out to be solder related. Seems mine might have been the same though I had suspected the crystal. Wednesday night was very cold here (-6c) and I got a call at 1am from the alarm dialer in work. Seems we got broken into by 3 guys that watched too many re-runs of point break and dressed up like the ex-presidents! so anyway I had to hammering down the motorway with the controller temp at -6c. Never missed a beat. Gotta hit the beach and watch out for any suspicious looking surfers

[mora]

I've had my controller down to -25C multiple times. Heatsink gets barely to zero celcius even after 20km of driving. I've had few sudden power downs during the winter but it was always quickly solved by restarting the controller. I suspect it was a bad throttle pot causing that issue though. It caused some jerky starts too. I've replaced the pot but haven't had a chance to drive using it yet. I had other issues with my controller lately and am waiting for new power PCB to arrive, hehe.

Does controller shut down if throttle goes way out of range during drive?

[MPaulHolmes]

Yes. There's a fault if the throttle goes out of range, which disables the PWM. And there's no clearing it until the power goes off and on again. For those who are curious, Mora's fault was similar to Joe's. They both had an etched board and somehow there was a short from the top to the bottom of the board. Maybe due to the heatshrink around the bolts?

[mora]

I have some pictures for everybody to see:

https://picasaweb.google.com/1036324...nRevoltFailure

I'm waiting for new power PCB from Paul which should be better than etched version. Mine likely had insulation failure (heatshrink wear problem). I had two-piece heatsink as you can see from the pictures and holes had some burr and sharp edges when I opened the assembly. Those might have caused excessive wear too.

[Greg Fordyce]

Originally Posted by jackbauer

Greg , interesting your cold weather issues turned out to be solder related. Seems mine might have been the same though I had suspected the crystal. Wednesday night was very cold here (-6c) and I got a call at 1am from the alarm dialer in work. Seems we got broken into by 3 guys that watched too many re-runs of point break and dressed up like the ex-presidents! so anyway I had to hammering down the motorway with the controller temp at -6c. Never missed a beat. Gotta hit the beach and watch out for any suspicious looking surfers

My car has had a layer of ice on the roof for nearly a week now and the controller is working fine since the resolder. Now the heater is another story, I'll pm you.

Greg

[BlueBlood]

Originally Posted by MPaulHolmes

I am a case study in Rivest, Shamir & Adleman too! (hehe. P.G.P.)

There are a couple problems with the current control boards that were just ordered, and that are undergoing testing. First, switch Pin 2 and Pin 3 of the LM 393. Next, the holes for Q1, Q2, Q3, U10, J2, J3, J4 are too small after the PCB company added the tinning layer. The gerber files will all be fixed soon, so anyone wanting to build their own based on the currently available gerber files may not want to send those in just yet.

I need to convert the most recent schematic to the program that I have, which is ExpressSCH. Then I'll update the changes for Pin 2 and Pin 3 of the LM393 comparator. Also, C23 and C24 should be 20pF instead of 15pF. Also, I'm going to try 20 Ohm gate resistors (0.25 watt, metal film, 1%) instead of 30 Ohm. 30 Ohm is unnecessarily large.

P/N for crystal:
FOXLF160-20 from Mouser.com

P/N for C23 and C24:
140-50N2-200J-RC from Mouser.com

So Mouser has the 140-50N2-200J-RC, but the minimum is 10,000. I found some 15pF from Digi-key. I'm not sure why they were moved from 15pF to 20pF. I have some 24pF that look just like the ones in the assembly instructions with the black top and all. Should I stay with my 15pF or use my 24pF, any advice would be appreciated.

[MPaulHolmes]

I think 24pF would be fine. I did some reading up on it, and the board has some capacitance in the traces at 16MHz. So, this one AVR Freaks guy said 24pF would be fine for a 20pF capacitor.