Paul & Sabrina's cheap DIY 144v motor controller

[thingstodo]

April 11 update

Wired the throttle pot correctly (I managed to connect the two terminals that do not change when the pot is twisted)

Also upgraded to a 20 turn pot for better control

Logging is working nicely ... but if the throttle does not reach 0 ohms or close to 0 the controller never gets out of initialize and it just sits there not communicating with no indication as to why.

I think I may add an LED or two to show 'powered up' and 'initialized' .. or something like that.

Is there a rule in New Zealand or maybe Australia that requires a visible or audible indication that the car is ON? I think I read about there somewhere on this site .. but I can't locate it.

[MPaulHolmes]

I made a ton of software changes, but unfortunately they were all toward the AC controller. It's all adaptable to the DC, but in the next few days I won't have a DC controller on which to check the code. I can make changes and email them to you, but they will be untested. But if I don't change too much at at a time, it won't be so bad.

[thingstodo]

Originally Posted by MPaulHolmes

I can make changes and email them to you, but they will be untested. But if I don't change too much at at a time, it won't be so bad.

If you have the big change - the PW<512 change - done then please send that one and I'll get it loaded .. hopefully .. later tonight and do a couple of quick tests. I will need to replace my 80A breaker with a contactor, but that's the only change I should need to my setup.

If that is stable, I'll get .. hopefully .. the AC testing completed this weekend.

The rest of the changes/upgrades can wait until after the AC testing is complete.

I need to sit down and figure out where to stick a couple of LEDs - Green for powered up .. and maybe yellow for initialize is done ... and it blinks at maybe 1 Hz for OK .. MORSE CODE for errors?

[MPaulHolmes]

I sent the 512 fix last night! bam!

[thingstodo]

The new code works fine on a quick test (a day late, but I got it loaded and tested tonight)

I'm still running on 72V (down to about 60V)

I plan to do another full test Saturday .. hopefully the last required to finish testing the AC controller

[thingstodo]

Hey Paul - I've had a discussion with Adam about RTD Explorer. It seems that AH=xxx.x in the log from the controller is messing up RTD Explorer. So I found the code to change that in UART.c

//x = RTData.battery_ah / (unsigned long)351562;
//if (x > 9999) x = 9999;
//u16_to_str(&RTDataString[60], x / 10, 3);
//u16_to_str(&RTDataString[64], x % 10, 1);
TransmitString(RTDataString);

I think I'll change it to this, since I don't want to mess with battery_ah but want the logging to work

//x = RTData.battery_ah / (unsigned long)351562;
//if (x > 9999) x = 9999;
//u16_to_str(&RTDataString[60], x / 10, 3);
//u16_to_str(&RTDataString[64], x % 10, 1);
x = 420;
if (x > 9999) x = 9999;
u16_to_str(&RTDataString[60], x / 10, 3);
u16_to_str(&RTDataString[64], x % 10, 1);
TransmitString(RTDataString);

I think that will print out AH=42.0 .. the answer to Life, the Universe, and EVERYTHING ...

I wanted to check that my system puts out the same code yours does .. so I'll build the code you sent and see if it matches. The old DOS fc.exe will compare the hex files and show if there are differences ... but I think that you are running a really old version of the compiler and we were not successful getting my laptop running it ... last year?

Anyway - I'll be doing that *AFTER* my testing is done on the AC controller!

[thingstodo]

I also talked to Adam about adding more data to the log

If the data is not formatted as RTD Explorer wants to see it, it will be ignored! So I can take your AC controller code for logging data with commas between (CSV format) and print out the data both ways.

This change will likely be made shortly after the AH change ... if the AH change works.

[Bela]

Paul when you have a chance could I get a copy of the PW < 512 fix? Or if it is easier to just post the changes to the forum that works for me. I have customized the code quite a bit and will need to manually merge the fix into my code.

[thingstodo]

Update for April 27

The attached logs show DC throttle, PWM, etc.

DC1 shows PWM hit 511 and stay there - no move to 512 - check!
DC2 and DC3 don't go quite that high

The AC logs are also attached - just in case there is something there that is interesting

I'm working on the video - it will be posted when I get done

[thingstodo]

Umm - if anyone can think of more tests to do, please speak up

I will be dis-assembling this test setup in about a week ...