Paul & Sabrina's cheap DIY 144v motor controller

[jackbauer]

A lot of people have been asking me for some of the custom software that Paul and others put together for me over the years for the 500A controller so here it is :
http://www.evbmw.com/software_500A.zip

Download and enjoy

[sawickm]

Originally Posted by adamj12b

My wife has been in the hospital so I have been busy taking care of her, that's why I havnt been around to help answer questions. Shes making a good recovery and will be ok! -Adam

Hi Adam,

I hope and pray that your wife makes a speedy recovery so you both can get back to a normal life.

-Mark

[type2teach]

500 mostly trouble free EV miles under my belt now! I'm slowly replacing my old 6v lead acids with new ones, so I'm running my '79 VW bus @ 108v, not the 120v I am usually (I have two batteries that need to be replaced that I currently do not have wired into the main pack).
Van runs fine in and around Philadelphia. I drove approx 15 miles the other day- nothing special, just the usual- parked it for the night and charged the batteries. The next day I backed it out of the garage and then when I went to drive off, the van just lost complete power. I quickly turned the pack off, but didnt' smell smoke or hear any kind of POP or anything. So I turned the main pack back on and went in reverse. No problem. I put it in 2nd again and the van started to go forward, but then quickly lost all power. I went in reverse again and once again, she backed right up, but when I stepped on the accelerator and tried to reverse quickly, she lost all power. So I am able to creep around at less than 5mph, but as soon as I try to give her more juice, she just shuts down.
No, the e brake isn't on, and no, I don't have any sort of reversing contactor, just a manual gearbox. As far as I can tell, NOTHING had changed from the night before when she was running perfectly.
I monitor the volts on every 2 batteries, and they all are reading fully charged.
I also monitor the battery amps and that is within the range of normal. The amps even increase as I step on the accelerator, but the van refuses to move.
Everything points to the revolt controller (or maybe the motor?), which is why I posted in this forum.
Before you respond, please be aware that I am a GEARhead, not an electrical engineer and dumb your answers down accordingly. I have the RTD explorer software that happily talks with the controller and I basically know how to use it. I have hooked it up and it *looks* like everything is functioning properly as I step on the accelerator. The lines go up and down in accordance with my foot moving on the accelerator, but there are no flatlines or anything that happens when I accelerate more than the controller wants and shuts down. It keeps reading the same as if I were still accelerating.
Any thoughts?
Thanks in advance.
Joel in Philly

[MPaulHolmes]

It definitely sounds like a control board rather than a power section problem. Do you know if there's an error according to RTD Explorer? The FB (fault bits) would be something other than zero. Maybe the hcpl-4504 or mosfet driver is having issues. It sounds like if the current goes too high, then the weird thing happens. Can you save the RTD graph to show what happens?

[z_power]

I don't feel like expert but one of easy checks is 12V supply behaviour during this event...

[MPaulHolmes]

That's a good point. The controller will cut out if throttle goes out of range, or if 5v power or 12v power drops out of range.

[jyanof]

Originally Posted by FieroChris

any thoughts on going with the CD4E caps vs the SBE Part 700D10896-348 film cap???

SBE price is $233 for 1000uf at 600v.
CD4E (3x) $89*3 for 660uf at 600v.

there is a 500uf SBE for $172

thoughts ??

I've been helping 64jeep with his controller design. The SBE part is superior from a performance perspective, but is quite a bit larger - we were going for packaging and low parasitic inductance, which kind of go hand-in-hand.

I think the current 500A controller design demonstrates that the capacitor bank only has to handle the ripple current at 'sustained' conditions. 16 of the panasonic electrolyics result in a ripple current capacity of 60A straight off the datasheet. Throw on a multiplier for operating at 16khz instead of 10khz and another for cooler ambient temps, and we could probably double that to 120A.

So, these caps had very little heat generation (not enough to measure any temp difference between them and the rest of the controller parts) when cruising around at 200 motor amps. (an aside - we observed the caps getting a few deg C hotter than the other controller parts when the switching frequency was set to 8khz instead of 16khz - this would essentially double the ripple current demand on the caps, (or halve the cap ripple current rating)).

With my motor/battery voltage configuration, it turns out that cruising happens around 50% duty cycle which Adam pointed out is the worst case duty cycle for ripple current. The cap bank probably wouldn't be sufficient at 500A, but the rest of the controller can't sustain that output anyway. The caps would just heat up a little, then cool back down.


Anyway, the motor cruise amps aren't going to really change, so as long as the CDE caps have a total ripple rating greater than 100A (which 3 of them will), I think we're ok. Nevertheless, the simple thing we plan to do is to throw a temp probe on them and measure if they get hot.

[jyanof]

Originally Posted by type2teach

I also monitor the battery amps and that is within the range of normal. The amps even increase as I step on the accelerator, but the van refuses to move.

This line stood out to me... so, you're saying the controller is drawing power from the batteries but the van isn't moving? Or, is the van moving but not accelerating?

If it's drawing power, I'd say the controller is working and the problem is elsewhere...

I had a problem when I pulled my motor to balance it. When i put it back in, one of the balance washers extended too far past the flywheel radius and jammed into the bell housing and seized everything up. but, my car wouldn't even roll.

perhaps you can clarify that line a bit?

[z_power]

Originally Posted by FieroChris

...
SBE price is $233 for 1000uf at 600v.
CD4E (3x) $89*3 for 660uf at 600v.

there is a 500uf SBE for $172

thoughts ??

I bought 1000uF SBE cap for $188 at Future Electronics, their online prices can change after logging on by user; even with shipping to Poland I paid less than $233.

Just checked, regular price $211, after logging on $192.

[FieroChris]

jackbauer,

Great job on the software, I was walking through it and had some small questions,

I assume your versions numbers dont match in any way with the latest version posted in the wiki ??

also I like your code related to the RPM over rev. do you have a pin out diagram as to which ports your using for which functions ??

soon I will have my mouser parts order here and will start assembly and start writing code.