# Any AC motor with any inverter - UMC Drive 2.0



## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

Hi guys!

Some might remember my prototype of the universal AC motor controller, designed to be compatible with Toyota Prius inverters. I've been busy with making it a bit more interesting, by adding support of new inverters and making it as universal as possible. I ended up completely redesigning everything, making it more robust and safe for automotive use.

The idea is, that we all can now get powerful and cheap power electronics from our favourite car manufacturer. The market is flooded with them, and since they are generally well designed and water cooled, they don't break - therefore currently there is no market for them. 

Of course you could try to reverse engineer the whole drivetrain from a pure electric car, like the Leaf - but there are only few of those, compared to the availability of hybrid cars. Unfortunately their drivetrains are integrated with the combustion engine control units, so you cannot just use the Volt inverter with the Volt motor. Well, now you can 

*Short summary:*
- Possibility to drive any three phase motor (induction, BLDC, weird hybrid designs etc)
- Both sensor as well as sensorless capabilities
- Drive by wire dual output accelerator support
- Isolated CAN interface
- Isolated USB interface
- Very robust input protection
- Compatible with all Toyota / Lexus stuff, Chevrolet Volt inverters and several others

One of the very interesting things is a *dual motor* support. Yes, if you take a Chevy Volt inverter, you can use something like 2x 100kW motors. With peaks going even higher.

I've just sent the UMC Drive V2.0 in the production, this is how it will look like:










As you can see, everything is doubled. Two motor, fully differential PWM 3 phase control, measurement of 6 phase voltages, all currents, Vbus voltage, two throttle inputs, two temperature sensors, two encoder interfaces, several inputs and outputs.. one CAN 

As with the prototype, you can easily run a calibration routine and teach it your own specific motor, or use configuration that someone else already made.

In terms of algorithms, I'm using InstaSPIN from Texas Instruments. This is currently the most advanced motor controller library, for both sensor as well as sensorless applications. The controller consists of two parts - the main carrier board, with all analog and digital signal conditioning, and an MCU board.

I've talked with several forum members having some interesting motors/projects, and they were willing to help me with the initial testing and verification of this controller on different motors. 
They are going to get this controller, once the first batch comes from production  If everything goes well, and tests are successful, I can offer it to other people.

Even though I'm not going to publish all the schematics and source code now, everyone who will buy it will get them. Eventually I can make it completely open source. I'm not sure, if this model might work (colleagues are telling me that it's a stupid idea), but I'm willing to risk it 

What are your thoughts? What would you expect from such motor controller? What would you use it for? Any feedback welcomed!

Edit: The new company website for the UMC Drive is http://advantics.fr/


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## Moltenmetal (Mar 20, 2014)

Sounds very exciting! If it does what you promise, it would unlock a huge re-use potential for OEM electric vehicle components that is currently more or less completely untapped. As to your strategy, or design etc., I can't knowledgeably comment but do wish you the best of luck!


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## Tomdb (Jan 28, 2013)

Are the drives for the end stages, igbt/mosfet/whatever intergrated on the board? More specificaly, what kind of signals are used to control the high voltage side, as in what voltage. Since you mention prius, so 12v PWM?
Also current measurement input levels, 0-5 volts?

Also any idea on pricing for a board?


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

Tomdb said:


> Are the drives for the end stages, igbt/mosfet/whatever intergrated on the board? More specificaly, what kind of signals are used to control the high voltage side, as in what voltage. Since you mention prius, so 12v PWM?
> Also current measurement input levels, 0-5 volts?
> 
> Also any idea on pricing for a board?


Yes, idea is to reuse as much from the original inverter as possible. Therefore the IGBT drivers are reused as well. As you correctly noted, Prius uses 12V signalling, and only one signal per half bridge, while for example Chevy uses 5V and needs full differential PWM drive.

I get around the problem by using high voltage open collector drivers. Then on the output you have two resistors - depending on which one you populate, you either have 5V or 12V output drive 

Current measurement is designed the same way as the input phase voltage measurement. You have an instrumentation amplifier, where you can modify both input scaling as well as apply offset (to support LEM sensors with a fixed offset, as well as current sensors that swings around 0V and goes negative). On all analog inputs there are TVS diodes clamping an overload between differential inputs as well as to GND and power rail. So it should be almost impossible to burn any op amp. I'll post more info on how this can be connected into inverters soon.

I do have all three current measurements for both motors (therefore up to 6 current sensors). Even though you need only two per motor, some inverters have three to have redundancy and to detect a short in the winding/case, so I'm doing the same thing.

No idea about the pricing yet, will know this once first batch is manufactured and assembled.


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## Tomdb (Jan 28, 2013)

Good to hear you are keeping it very open to almost all kinds of "expensive" bits, love toying with those parts of the electronics.

Becareful you do not call it an inverter, this will confuse alot of buyers to thinking they just need your kit/board to run motors.


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

Tomdb said:


> Good to hear you are keeping it very open to almost all kinds of "expensive" bits, love toying with those parts of the electronics.
> 
> Becareful you do not call it an inverter, this will confuse alot of buyers to thinking they just need your kit/board to run motors.


Good thinking, Tom - I modified it in the original text. This is a motor controller that is designed to work with widely available automotive inverters. In theory, you can build your own power stage - all you need are current sensors, IGBT/MOSFETs and drivers for them. It can be for a bicycle, motorcycle or a drag racer - controller doesn't care. All you have to do pick a reasonably scaled inverter, and adjust the scaling once and you're done.


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## jddcircuit (Mar 18, 2010)

Resolver excitation and decoding?
The Prius uses resolvers instead of encoders.

Very exciting. I look forward to the outcome.


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

jddcircuit said:


> Resolver excitation and decoding?
> The Prius uses resolvers instead of encoders.
> 
> Very exciting. I look forward to the outcome.


Hi jddcircuit!
This is a very good question - I've spent quite a lot of time thinking how to solve this. Almost all motors that people are using are encoder based, while all the automotive motor-gearbox combos are using resolvers. (and I always go sensorless! 

At the end I decided to go for the encoder option, as this microcontroller has two dedicated HW encoder interfaces (therefore not slowing down the critical part - two FOC cores running in parallel).










There is a very nice resolver chip - AD2S1205 (among others it is used on Chevy Volt inverters). It has an encoder emulation output - so you can have a simple daughter card that fits on these headers (that's why there is +5V and +12V available) and provides resolver to encoder interface.

There is a possibility of putting it on the motor controller directly - but it would make the board more expensive for people not using resolvers. I can make the daughter card later on and offer it for the price of components (it would be very small). Or maybe I'll put those two chips (two motors, two resolvers) directly onboard in the next manufacturing run. 

What is your opinion?


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## tylerwatts (Feb 9, 2012)

Wow, I'm keen. One key interest I am currently looking at is reusing Lexus hybrid drives so this is exactly what I'm looking for. 
What software interface is needed and how 'idiot proof'or user friendly would it be? I'm not a programmer or electrician or anything so totally new to me. 
Thanks


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## tylerwatts (Feb 9, 2012)

Also, what link to bms would it have? What scope is there to operate the oem bms from this board or at least communicate between them to function as they are required to?


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## aeroscott (Jan 5, 2008)

Great news ,
I'm interested in the Chevy volt motors .They look like the most advanced drive out . But my starter project is a Ford Ranger factory ev . I would love to get this running. I hope your board would make this a better ev.
I've used the volt battery for solar and am now working with a A123 spark battery for solar .


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## jddcircuit (Mar 18, 2010)

eldis said:


> Hi jddcircuit!
> This is a very good question - I've spent quite a lot of time thinking how to solve this. Almost all motors that people are using are encoder based, while all the automotive motor-gearbox combos are using resolvers. (and I always go sensorless!
> 
> At the end I decided to go for the encoder option, as this microcontroller has two dedicated HW encoder interfaces (therefore not slowing down the critical part - two FOC cores running in parallel).
> ...


I am not sure what my opinion is yet. I am also contemplating on what features on-board and off-board for my Prius inverter controller.

For example why not make my board for one motor and then just build two boards. Right now I am controlling both motors from a single controller but not sure if that is what I should do.


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

tylerwatts said:


> Wow, I'm keen. One key interest I am currently looking at is reusing Lexus hybrid drives so this is exactly what I'm looking for.
> What software interface is needed and how 'idiot proof'or user friendly would it be? I'm not a programmer or electrician or anything so totally new to me.
> Thanks


Hi tylerwatts - user friendliness is a difficult thing. Have too much flexibility, and it gets impossible to be user friendly. Limit functionality too much, and beautiful interface will not help people get what they need.. I wish there will be some nice balance, that we manage to reach. I'll be using the word "we", as the only way how such complex and universal system can be made operational, is by cooperation of it's users. Problem is, that most of the systems that you guys will be using with this controller, I don't have. Therefore I can do my best to assure broadest compatibility, but we will have to cooperate to get your particular application up and running.

Eventually, there will be a good chance that someone already used the combination that you want to use - let's say a Chevy motor with a Chevy inverter. One guy that is getting this motor controller in the first run has this combo. If it will therefore work for him, it will for you as well 

For at least the first two runs of this controller, I will basically be cooperating with every person that buys it on making it better in terms of software and features.


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

tylerwatts said:


> Also, what link to bms would it have? What scope is there to operate the oem bms from this board or at least communicate between them to function as they are required to?


Motor controller does not communicate with the BMS - you can set a minimum voltage that reduces the max power, and one that shuts down the inverter completely. You could add a signal from your particular BMS, that is a logical level that tells inverter to shut down (external undervoltage).

Of course the motor controller has a CAN interface, that reports all the values and can be used to change many parameters - just like other motor controllers that you could buy


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## tylerwatts (Feb 9, 2012)

Hi eldis. 
Thank you for responding. Yes, please do not compromise the capabilities of the controller. Also, I think you are saying what I meant about the link to bms. So that is good. I would like to run a dual motor Lexus rwd transmission and controller power stage.

How would the controller interface with an oem controller's internals please?


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## aeroscott (Jan 5, 2008)

I was always thinking that the resolver had better resolution then the encoder . This would give the best control for motors. Any thoughts?


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## dcb (Dec 5, 2009)

yup, the prius resolver is allegedly good for 0.08 degrees (12 bits) and tells you the rotor position, not just the speed.


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## aeroscott (Jan 5, 2008)

Any idea if the volt resolver is as good.I had some high end 2hp pm motors for handling mail that had resolvers too.If seams to be a industry standard for high performance .


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## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

Resolvers are the most popular means of rotor position feedback on synchronous motors (PM or wound field) because they always provide absolute rotor position as soon as excitation is supplied to them, regardless of whether the rotor has moved while the drive/resolver was powered off. Encoders are more popular whenever absolute rotor position isn't needed (e.g. - induction motors) because they are much cheaper to make and much easier to drive/interface.

Resolvers also tend to be more robust, both mechanically and electrically, but needing a source of sine wave excitation and accurate A/D conversion of the sine/cosine AC output makes them much less fun to work with in the increasingly all-digital world of motor control.


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## aeroscott (Jan 5, 2008)

Does Tesla use encoders.


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

aeroscott said:


> Does Tesla use encoders.


I'll be able to answer that question rather soon. Yesterday I've became a proud owner of a Tesla drivetrain:










On the way home, we stopped by a Tesla superchager - the owner of the brand new white Tesla was quite surprised, to see a Peugeot with a Tesla drivetrain 










I will start a new thread for this soon, so we don't spam this one. The reason why am I posting it, is that the UMC Drive 2.0 will be eventually getting a Tesla motor + inverter on the list of supported components 


To the discussion of resolvers against encoders - Tesseract is perfectly right with his explanation of differences. When studying Texas Instruments InstaSPIN some time ago, I've seen in one of their workshops a slide about playing with Prius motors. These are PM motors with quite interesting and complicated design. They were claiming, that their algorithm can drive it very well without the need for a resolver.

To the question about how to put the UMC Drive 2.0 inside an inverter - it's a simple matter of making few cables with connectors on both sides. Here you can see a Chevy Volt inverter disassembled, with the original main control module. All that is needed is to remove this control module board, put in the new one, put different connectors instead of the black ones and add voltage feedback lugs under bus bars screws:


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## jhuebner (Apr 30, 2010)

Congratulations on this 

As for the flexibility: I've had some very good user feedback on text based configuration (plain text or JSON) + editor tool. Sane default values contribute to ease of configuration.

That way the firmware only needs to parse a simple text file and the user friendly GUI can be implemented with much more powerful PC tools. It can show or hide advanced parameters, offer config wizards etc.

Not sure if that has been discussed, is the software open source?


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

jhuebner said:


> Congratulations on this
> 
> As for the flexibility: I've had some very good user feedback on text based configuration (plain text or JSON) + editor tool. Sane default values contribute to ease of configuration.
> 
> ...


Hi Johannes, thanks for the tips! I agree with you - text interface tends to be quite powerful. Maybe it will be the way to go (definitely in the first releases)

I would like to make the firmware completely open source. This is a typical situation when you have a complex project, and even though it might run perfectly for 80% people, there will be people with problems or specific applications. Also I still hold a bit of hope, that eventually someone will want to actively participate on the firmware development. 

For now the firmware depository will be made available to anyone owning the UMC Drive - they will have an access to the latest code, schematics, they can modify it, have a support for it, but they will not be allowed to make money on it. Once there is a batch of these controllers available for people to buy, I can come up with a number, after how many sold pieces will the source code be available to anyone. Maybe there is some license template usable for this - didn't look for it yet.


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## jyanof (Nov 11, 2008)

eldis said:


> They were claiming, that their algorithm can drive it very well without the need for a resolver.


So, sensorless!? 

Very cool project, BTW!


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## dcb (Dec 5, 2009)

Very cool indeed! Though I am sceptical about a sensorless prius. Looks pretty hypothetical , I did see an instaspin tutorial about a locked rotor prius, but nothing dynamic, or in the real world (perhaps because of its size, and that it is part reluctance motor).

Also, overstating how "simple" getting all those wires sorted might be misleading too, lots of folks bound to bite off more than they can chew there.

I'm inclined to think that toyota added robust resolvers because they were needed.

Would be very pleased if an instaspin can make it all work of course (in a common vehicle like a prius or volt especially) at the production performance levels or better preferrably. It sounds like there is a whole lot to verify and sort out yet though. Please do correct me if I'm wrong of course (seriously, would love to learn that it works well in the real world).

Edit, I do have to say the spice file (dont forget to expand the support pack in the same dir) worked just fine in ltspice, and is quite interesting all the same.


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

jyanof said:


> So, sensorless!?
> 
> Very cool project, BTW!


Thanks!

Well, sensor vs sensorless is as sensitive topic as DC vs AC once was, and I do not want to dive too deep in it. First time I was offering sensorless on this forum, the general consensus was that it cannot work in a car. Fortunately nobody told that to my car 

The idea is to provide both possibilities, and who wants to use the resolver will be able to, and who wants to experiment with sensorless can as well  From the discussion I see that getting the resolver fully operational in an absolute angle mode will be important - Therefore if someone is willing to cooperate on making the daughter card that does that, I'm in.

First five boards of the controller are already manufactured and will arrive in a couple of days - I still have to order some components and assemble it, but we are moving forward.


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

dcb said:


> Very cool indeed! Though I am sceptical about a sensorless prius. Looks pretty hypothetical , I did see an instaspin tutorial about a locked rotor prius, but nothing dynamic, or in the real world (perhaps because of its size, and that it is part reluctance motor).
> 
> Also, overstating how "simple" getting all those wires sorted might be misleading too, lots of folks bound to bite off more than they can chew there.


Skepticism is perfectly justified in these cases. That's why I'm not offering those first boards for sale as a finished product, but only to few people that has motors/inverters like this already available somewhere, and can run it on something interesting to test it out.

I believe that getting wires sorted is as simple/difficult as doing any other connector job on a car. What is more difficult is setting stuff up correctly in the software.

As a matter of fact, I will have one more controller prototype to offer (basically for the price of components) to a person with an application that would benefit other people later on. So if you have a Prius, Volt, Leaf, Lexus or similar drivetrain already available somewhere, write me a PM and the controller is yours.


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## dcb (Dec 5, 2009)

I've got a 2nd gen prius and a leaf, but the prius is the most likely candidate. The ICE isn't dead yet, but it has issues.

I don't think most people are familiar with the extent of your testing so far though. Indeed your build thread has been clobbered it seems?

http://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/showthread.php?p=551754#post551754

Do you think you could post some top speed and acceleration/deceleration data vs battery volts/amps/ weight/ and we could sort-of guessitmate how well it is working in that application? 

I mean it sounds like you are asking for help (in a roundabout way) in validating a potential commercial product that you would retain full rights to. So it seems fair to be clear about how much work that could involve and what the risks are that it might not even work right.


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

dcb said:


> I've got a 2nd gen prius and a leaf, but the prius is the most likely candidate. The ICE isn't dead yet, but it has issues.
> 
> I don't think most people are familiar with the extent of your testing so far though. Indeed your build thread has been clobbered it seems?
> 
> http://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/showthread.php?p=551754#post551754


I started a thread about my conversion, but never continued in it. Guilty as charged  I'll try to fix that soon.



dcb said:


> Do you think you could post some top speed and acceleration/deceleration data vs battery volts/amps/ weight/ and we could sort-of guessitmate how well it is working in that application?


I did the testing with V1 of my controller in my first Golf, with Prius battery as a test setup (didn't have my Volt battery pack at the time). The point of these test were to verify behavior of FOC in near zero speed conditions and starting up the hill. I had smooth starts on fifth gear flat ground, and no problems starting in a very steep hill (1st, 2nd gear). My current was quite limited, as Prius battery cannot deliver that much power. Therefore I stayed in 0-50km/h speeds. Data logging was done in a debugger connected to a running car (one of the nice and scary things you can do with isolated USB)  

Now I have a new Golf that is just few weeks from being drivable with a Volt pack - I intend to collect and publish as much data as I can with this setup (for this purpose I've made a CAN<->MATLAB tool). I hope that this setup will help my case, and show that my controller is a viable option for DIY conversions.

I do realize that I started this thread too soon, but all this feedback I've got already helped me a lot - I see that almost everyone will want to drive resolver motors, that practically nobody expressed interest in industrial standard motors, or using such controller with AC motors that you can already buy in some store (watercooled Siemens etc.). 



dcb said:


> I mean it sounds like you are asking for help (in a roundabout way) in validating a potential commercial product that you would retain full rights to. So it seems fair to be clear about how much work that could involve and what the risks are that it might not even work right.


Again fair point. I still don't know where to fit with this controller. It is not a commercial product, at the best it is an assembled and tested kit. As I mentioned several times, I want it to be open source. I'm never going to make money on this, it is just not possible - All I want is not to be losing money on it. I have my low-risk electronics engineering day job that pays better than this awkward attempt to offer a controller ever will.

Original idea was to offer a cheap HW platform with a bit of software, that will enable us all to use high quality and cheap OEM market parts.

So dcb (and others), what is your take on this? How would you imagine this could work? What kind of model would you guys like to see in this? Would you prefer to just get all the codes, bag of SMD components and a PCB, or a tested board that comes with an email support to get your application up and running? Or you want me to buy a Chevy/Prius inverter, put all the stuff in, tune it for your motor and sell you a product with warranty? I'm always open to other people's ideas - let me know what you think.


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## dcb (Dec 5, 2009)

Thanks for the current status, PM sent.


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## dcb (Dec 5, 2009)

currently too shady for me, have fun.


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

dcb said:


> currently too shady for me, have fun.


I'm sorry to hear that. I understand that for now these are just empty words. I hope that once there are some videos and data available, I'll manage to convince you that shady is not my intention. Anyway, it does not really matter. I have now enough people willing to try it with their motors.


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

Just got 10 bare PCBs from the manufacturer  No idea why 10 - I did order only five, but hey, I'm not gonna complain. Next week I'll receive the solder paste mask, and I can start assembling them:


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## gustavopm57 (Apr 30, 2015)

Many times you get extra from the PCB proto houses because of the fall out. Just my memories from ordering PCB protos back in the 2000´s , Proto houses might have improved, yet should be a good advise to check as much as possible for missing or faulty traces....


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

Thanks for the warning! I'll definitely check 

Today I've received the PCB solder paste stencil (ouch!), but it is a necessary item if you don't want to solder hundreds of SMDs by hand..


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## gustavopm57 (Apr 30, 2015)

So you have access to a regular SMT oven, or just another hack with a house one?


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

gustavopm57 said:


> So you have access to a regular SMT oven, or just another hack with a house one?


Both  Just sometimes the regular one is not worth the effort (calling in favors, setting it up etc)


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## bLdC (Jan 21, 2013)

eldis said:


> Well, sensor vs sensorless is as sensitive topic as DC vs AC once was, and I do not want to dive too deep in it. First time I was offering sensorless on this forum, the general consensus was that it cannot work in a car. Fortunately nobody told that to my car
> 
> The idea is to provide both possibilities, and who wants to use the resolver will be able to, and who wants to experiment with sensorless can as well  From the discussion I see that getting the resolver fully operational in an absolute angle mode will be important - Therefore if someone is willing to cooperate on making the daughter card that does that, I'm in.
> 
> First five boards of the controller are already manufactured and will arrive in a couple of days - I still have to order some components and assemble it, but we are moving forward.


I have no doubt it can work without the resolver. The question is how good. 

From my experience I can tell that the system is very sensitive to the proper reading of the rotor angle. Several degrees misalignment make big difference in torque and performance. 
The optimal angle(advance) for Lexus/Prius motors depend not only on the speed of the rotor but also the current in the stator windings. At high currents and rpm the reluctance torque has to be dominant for obtaining optimal torque. 

Even if you implement a mathematical model of an ideal motor in the controller, in practice, some tests are necessary, especially at high power and rpm for determining the optimal settings. 

As you probably know, I develop another version of a controller board with mcu from Texas Instruments. I integrated the resolver digitizer on the same board so I can use the programming interface and the fault detection functions of AD2S1205 /10. 

It is great fun working with this platform. The debugging functionality and tools that TI implemented makes the process of development faster and more intuitive, and I am willing to continue learning to use it for future projects. 

For the tests of the controller I use a transmission from Prius fitted in a lightweight Fiat. The battery I have is low voltage(under 200V) LiFe, but I am thinking of assembling new pack instead of adding more cells, so I can keep the weight low and increase power for my next project. I will probably proceed like you do and keep the Fiat only for low speed tests and start new project with new donor car.


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

bLdC said:


> I have no doubt it can work without the resolver. The question is how good.
> 
> From my experience I can tell that the system is very sensitive to the proper reading of the rotor angle. Several degrees misalignment make big difference in torque and performance.
> The optimal angle(advance) for Lexus/Prius motors depend not only on the speed of the rotor but also the current in the stator windings. At high currents and rpm the reluctance torque has to be dominant for obtaining optimal torque.
> ...


Hi bLdC, it's nice to hear from you again. Thanks for sharing your experience with the Prius motor! I tried to search for your thread, but found only mentions of your controller in different threads. 

Indeed, Prius PM reluctance motor is an oddball.. I prefer induction machines, but those usable ones for EVs are harder to get. Unfortunately if we as a community want to move forward, we need to start using hybrid motors and transmissions from the OEM market. And the only way how to do that is to develop our own motor controllers that will allow us to use these motors. No inverter manufacturer will do this for us, because they would be losing money on it.

I've talked with a couple of people in our organization doing motor control application for similar stuff, and they also recommended me to use the full resolver interface, if already present on the motor. I have enough free pins for that, so it shouldn't be an issue.

Once I'm done with all those drivetrains piling up in my place, I'll try get myself a Prius motor as well, just to experiment with it a bit. The fact is, that it is slightly underperforming for today's EV expectations. Still, in a car under 1000 kg, it would be a good choice. 
What I would really like to play with and tune next, is the Chevy Volt dual motor:


1x 111 kW (149 hp)
1x 55 kW (74 hp)


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## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

eldis said:


> Unfortunately if we as a community want to move forward, we need to start using hybrid motors and transmissions from the OEM market.


Why hybrids? Going forward there should be more EV motors available. LEAF, Tesla, (probably two per car for the most part with the D and X), Chevy Spark, and eventually the "Bolt".


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

JRP3 said:


> Why hybrids? Going forward there should be more EV motors available. LEAF, Tesla, (probably two per car for the most part with the D and X), Chevy Spark, and eventually the "Bolt".


Why? Simple math of numbers. In the next couple of years, there will be less electric cars on scrapyard than we could use.. On the other hand you can already get hybrid drivetrains everywhere in large quantities, for peanuts. The only crashed Leaf I managed to find in Europe was actually brought from USA (and sold for ridiculous money), and the Tesla drivetrain I got here was also a totally unique oportunity. In USA this might be a bit different, thanks to very generous tax cuts. Also our market is very diluted, thanks to the fact that every country speaks different language and there is no copart or car-parts to join it.

Sure, this might change in couple of years, but I'm not a patient person.


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## bLdC (Jan 21, 2013)

eldis said:


> Thanks for sharing your experience with the Prius motor! I tried to search for your thread, but found only mentions of your controller in different threads.


I have a thread in the bulgarian EV forum about my Fiat conversion. The pictures there are from old version of the controller boards I made for initial tests. 



eldis said:


> Indeed, Prius PM reluctance motor is an oddball.. I prefer induction machines, but those usable ones for EVs are harder to get. Unfortunately if we as a community want to move forward, we need to start using hybrid motors and transmissions from the OEM market.


 Lexus/Prius motors have some specifics but nothing really complicated. 
Induction motors are well known and have some advantages too, like the higher rpm capability.



eldis said:


> Once I'm done with all those drivetrains piling up in my place, I'll try get myself a Prius motor as well, just to experiment with it a bit. The fact is, that it is slightly underperforming for today's EV expectations. Still, in a car under 1000 kg, it would be a good choice.
> What I would really like to play with and tune next, is the Chevy Volt dual motor:


I do not even know what type are the Chevy Volt motors. 
The Prius motor was easy to obtain and good platform for learning. It actually performs better than I expected. 

Anyways, many possibilities on the horizon.


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## mira9_cz (Feb 27, 2013)

JRP3 said:


> Why hybrids? Going forward there should be more EV motors available. LEAF, Tesla, (probably two per car for the most part with the D and X), Chevy Spark, and eventually the "Bolt".


All those motors are quite hard to adapt into car that used to have ICE. FWD platform is quite all right for those who care about converting FWD cars but there is no reasonable drivetrain that you could just mount to existing driveshaft, or gearbox of RWD car without extensive cutting and welding of bodywork. Except hybrid transmissions.


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## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

eldis said:


> Why? Simple math of numbers. In the next couple of years, there will be less electric cars on scrapyard than we could use..


Maybe it's my U.S. centric viewpoint but I think the DIY EV market is still pretty small. Jack Rickard seems to have a pile of Siemens/Azure systems he can barely give away.


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## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

mira9_cz said:


> All those motors are quite hard to adapt into car that used to have ICE. FWD platform is quite all right for those who care about converting FWD cars but there is no reasonable drivetrain that you could just mount to existing driveshaft, or gearbox of RWD car without extensive cutting and welding of bodywork. Except hybrid transmissions.



Most of us have adapted electric motors into ICE's, FWD and RWD, with only an adapter plate and maybe some minor fabricating. I don't see how a hybrid motor from a font wheel drive car, (Prius for example), would be any easier, but maybe I'm missing something.


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

JRP3 said:


> Most of us have adapted electric motors into ICE's, FWD and RWD, with only an adapter plate and maybe some minor fabricating. I don't see how a hybrid motor from a font wheel drive car, (Prius for example), would be any easier, but maybe I'm missing something.


I recommend reading a bit about hybrid transmissions from Lexus and similar cars. Bigmouse has a nice thread about them.


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## aeroscott (Jan 5, 2008)

The Volt is a Remy pm , the 2 motor plantary dive gives variable ratios By rotating the motors opposite each other. The earlier Mars landers used this system . I think this gear makes the most advanced dive gear . The motors can be locked together with clutch between the motors which makes 1 motor. You also have a clutch to the engine .


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

JRP3 said:


> Maybe it's my U.S. centric viewpoint but I think the DIY EV market is still pretty small. Jack Rickard seems to have a pile of Siemens/Azure systems he can barely give away.


If I can have a high power electric motor in a gearbox for a couple of hundred bucks, that can be replaced in 4 years for exactly the same model, there is not much deciding to be made.

Also I can imagine a very different price for motors that people can "barely give away". I've bought exactly the same Siemens AC motor, just not watercooled, in Germany. And it is true that the guy wanted over $2000 for it, but at the end was happy to accept $600. That's how "give away" looks like


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## psron (Jun 19, 2012)

I'm more than a bit surprised there's not more chatter re: the Toyota Highlander 2008 and later AWD as a donor. (aka "Kluger" in other countries)

Toyota (Lexus) has a real winner for their variable planetary gear ratio drive. I've seen someone who used the FWD system in his DIY project, removed the ICE and locked the input shaft to the case, using only the electric drive. I also remember someone using the RWD axle in a Saturn conversion...

Specs:
"MG2" FWD motor is rated at 123kW (165HP) @ 4500RPM, max. 333Nm (245 ft.lbf.) @ 0-1500RPM 

"MG1" FWD motor/generator (was crankshaft mounted to start the ICE) is rated for 109kW (146HP) @ 13,000 RPM, max. 80 Nm (59 ft.lbf.) @ 0-13,000 RPM

"MGR" RWD motor is rated for 50kW (67HP) @ 4610-5120 RPM, max. 130 NM (96 ft.lbf) @ 0-610 RPM actual rear wheel speed

Their RWD integrated motor assembly 'seems' like it would be a simple implementation for a small vehicle RWD. I see them for $400 on eBay sometimes. There may be a need for additional cooling if used as a full-time drive... drill holes, plumb an electric oil pump and a small radiator.

The main "catch" is that they are all rated for 650V operation, since they utilize a bi-directional Boost-Buck converter from/to the 288V battery pack. (Buck mode for regen, using the same huge inductor)

Our 2008 HiHy seats 7, 3.3L V6 ICE, electric AWD, weighs 4700 pounds, and we can average 27MPG... 30MPG if we try (under 65MPH). I'm just wishing it had a much higher capacity Li-based battery pack (plug-in), and a way to force it to use EV mode more (to higher MPH), and delete the "idle creep" and "coasting" regen... I'd like manual control over braking regen... thank you.

But, I understand Toyota... trying to make the transition "familiar" from ICE to Electric... so the driver "feels at home".

It's got such great acceleration performance for a BIG vehicle, I've often thought about transplanting a complete drivetrain from a wrecked HiHy into my classic '98 Olds Aurora... which was originally designed (by Cadillac) to be AWD, but when it got moved to the Olds division, AWD was removed for cost-sake. (powered by 4L 32V DOHC Northstar V8 - yes, I'd be willing to give that up)

...but I digress.


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

Update - yesterday I've assembled the first UMC Drive 2.0



















There are around 500 components for the full-blown dual motor configuration. Even with a proper stencil and all the SMD components ready on the table, it took me around 4 hours to assemble one board and reflow it. The next batch will be completely made and assembled professionally, as this way I could not offer you the pricing I wish to offer. And selling a kit like this IKEA style with millions of plastic bags is not a solution. People would be struggling to put it together in reasonable amount of time.

Now I'll start testing it. The priority is to have three assembly variants for inverters - Chevy Volt, Prius 2nd Gen and Tesla Model S. These inverters I use the most


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## tomofreno (Mar 3, 2009)

Very nice work eldis! This is the most exciting development in diy evs I've seen in a long time.


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## gustavopm57 (Apr 30, 2015)

Very , very nice to see. What is the red PCB on top of yours? I guess might be evident for some, not right away for me.

Best regards

Gustavo


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

gustavopm57 said:


> Very , very nice to see. What is the red PCB on top of yours? I guess might be evident for some, not right away for me.
> 
> Best regards
> 
> Gustavo


Hi Gustavo, that is a microcontroller board  C2000 series from Texas Instruments


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

So this weekend I was spinning a small high voltage induction motor for the first time with my UMC Drive 2.0 and a Chevrolet Volt inverter. All the switching and feedback works:





















I've found and fixed few small bugs that appeared in the design, fortunately nothing major. Now the next step is to repeat the same thing with the Tesla motor and it's inverter - if everything goes well, in few days I can be spinning the Tesla motor on my workbench  I'll make some nice videos of that as well.


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## tylerwatts (Feb 9, 2012)

Driving the Tesla inverter sounds great! I hope it goes well.


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## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

Sounds as if you're going to beat the EVTV team for first spin on the S motor.


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## jhuebner (Apr 30, 2010)

Awesome 
Are those current sensors? I mean the part where the motor wires go through a couple of times.


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

jhuebner said:


> Awesome
> Are those current sensors? I mean the part where the motor wires go through a couple of times.


Thanks!

Yes, those are three hall-effect current sensors (they are part of the Volt inverter). The scaling is something like +-800A fullscale, so I had to put at least 5 turns of wire, since my test motor under the table has only 500W. With a bigger motor you just have to pass once of course.


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## marcexec (Feb 11, 2009)

Awesome progress, mate!

Any progress on the Golf? We all need the occasional EV grin to keep us going, don't we


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

marcexec said:


> Awesome progress, mate!
> 
> Any progress on the Golf? We all need the occasional EV grin to keep us going, don't we


Thanks! Yeah plenty of progress.. I should revive my Golf thread, I've just been too damn busy! So just some eye candy:

I've improved a bit my adapter plate










Lowered the drivetrain in the car, made a quick angle and height test










Made some over-engineered motor supports (welding is so much fun!)



















Made the battery support from Chevy Volt scraps:










And placed the batteries in:










And tons of other stuff, like welding my new Drive By Wire pedal in place


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## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

Looks as if your brake pedal and accelerator pedal are on the same plane. Most cars are designed with the brake pedal high enough so that when the brakes are applied the pedal is still higher than the accelerator to prevent unintended acceleration if your foot is a bit off to the side in a tight foot well.


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

JRP3 said:


> Looks as if your brake pedal and accelerator pedal are on the same plane. Most cars are designed with the brake pedal high enough so that when the brakes are applied the pedal is still higher than the accelerator to prevent unintended acceleration if your foot is a bit off to the side in a tight foot well.


That's just due to the angle of this photo. In reality the accelerator pedal is MUCH lower than the brake pedal (exactly for the reasons you have described). I've actually modeled it to be on the same position and high as it was done with the original cable one.


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

For those interested in knowing how much you can "squeeze" out of the Chevy Volt inverter - the IGBTs are (if I'm reading the part number correctly): 650A, 600V. 
There are two full three phase bridges there (both motor outputs have the same rating). Note that these are the breakdown ratings! To see how much you can actually draw see my next post.


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## CKidder (Dec 12, 2009)

eldis said:


> For those interested in knowing how much you can "squeeze" out of the Chevy Volt inverter - the IGBTs are (if I'm reading the part number correctly): 650A, 600V.
> There are two full three phase bridges there (both motor outputs have the same rating).


Yes, but those values are deceptive to people who aren't really into the theory behind AC motor control. I mean, that's 390kw per IGBT but you cannot actually do that. With 600V IGBTs you'd be safe with maybe 400V at the battery pack. Now, couple in that you're generating sine waves (for an induction motor anyway) and the RMS voltage is more like 280V. And, you're not going to be able to get the full amperage out of the IGBT because of that either. It'd be stupid to run it up to the limit anyway. I'd say that someone probably isn't going to be able to do more than an average of about 400A safely with that IGBT. So, my guess is that each IGBT could be run up to about 110kw or so. I'm more of a software guy than hardware so I'm not sure how that factors into three phase power precisely but it seems like this maybe suggests you could squeeze about 150kw of power out of the a Volt three phase bridge if I'm correct with my numbers. But, I have no idea if the cooling strategy for the inverter can handle that amount of power. And, it would require a pretty careful control strategy or you'd blow the IGBTs at that power level. But, it sounds like the inverter could be pretty powerful from what I can figure. Am I way off in my estimates?


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

CKidder said:


> Yes, but those values are deceptive to people who aren't really into the theory behind AC motor control. I mean, that's 390kw per IGBT but you cannot actually do that. With 600V IGBTs you'd be safe with maybe 400V at the battery pack. Now, couple in that you're generating sine waves (for an induction motor anyway) and the RMS voltage is more like 280V. And, you're not going to be able to get the full amperage out of the IGBT because of that either. It'd be stupid to run it up to the limit anyway. I'd say that someone probably isn't going to be able to do more than an average of about 400A safely with that IGBT. So, my guess is that each IGBT could be run up to about 110kw or so. I'm more of a software guy than hardware so I'm not sure how that factors into three phase power precisely but it seems like this maybe suggests you could squeeze about 150kw of power out of the a Volt three phase bridge if I'm correct with my numbers. But, I have no idea if the cooling strategy for the inverter can handle that amount of power. And, it would require a pretty careful control strategy or you'd blow the IGBTs at that power level. But, it sounds like the inverter could be pretty powerful from what I can figure. Am I way off in my estimates?


Hi Colin,

Yes, sorry, I guess that my post was not very self-explanatory then. These indeed are the "these are the breakdown parameters" - every transistor, capacitor, resistor etc. should not be run at those levels (for example don't use 16V capacitor where you expect to have 15V, don't pump 1W to a resistor just because it says 1W on the package). I'm going to modify it in the original text, so people don't get confused. Thanks for the comment.

You are quite right about the levels. I personally would put these parts at maximum DC bus voltage of 500V, and currents should be derated as well. They will very much depend on the temperature of the package - 25 degC IGBT will put out safely much higher current than one already at 70 degC. For the power ratings, this inverter will be quite happy giving 150kW, on both outputs. As a matter of fact, the limitation with these parts is always the current. If you have 100V DC bus, you cannot have 150kW. If you have 500V, you might have even more than 150kW. I would not go over 400A with the current.

About the motor RMS voltage - you would be right if we were talking about old motor control strategies. With modern control schemes (space vector modulation), you can go in the overmodulation region and have higher phase voltage than would be possible using your DC bus


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## jhuebner (Apr 30, 2010)

eldis said:


> About the motor RMS voltage - you would be right if we were talking about old motor control strategies. With modern control schemes (space vector modulation), you can go in the overmodulation region and have higher phase voltage than would be possible using your DC bus


Still Udc/sqrt(2) is the maximum. So 400V DC translates to 280V AC.

With the straight forward scheme you loose another 15% because when 1 phase is at 100% duty cycle the other ones are at around 15% dutycycle instead of 0%. The peak value of the AC voltage never reaches the DC bus voltage. SVM fixes that.


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

jhuebner said:


> Still Udc/sqrt(2) is the maximum. So 400V DC translates to 280V AC.
> 
> With the straight forward scheme you loose another 15% because when 1 phase is at 100% duty cycle the other ones are at around 15% dutycycle instead of 0%. The peak value of the AC voltage never reaches the DC bus voltage. SVM fixes that.


Okay, we are arguing about peanuts, but since we started doing the math, then:

pure sinewave control (as you correctly stated): 1/sqrt(2) * Vbus
using the SVM overmodulation (trapezoidal waveform, basically shifting your common mode voltage): sqrt(5)/3 * Vbus

There goes the 15% increase of the phase voltage - it looks a bit weird (how can you have a transistor opened more than 100% time?), but find some illustration how the virtual common mode can be used, and it will start making sense. 

I don't know why you said that the straight forward scheme is loosing additional 15% from 1/sqrt(2). I will presume that you are talking about an intentional window inserted by inverters to provide a sampling window for the shunt measurements. This is needed if you would have only two shunt current sensors, instead of three. But since I know you are using hall effect sensors as well, you don't have to leave this window at all (even with two sensors only), as hall effect sensors don't need to "see" the ground during switching. 

Another possible use of the SVM principles is reducing the switching losses, by optimizing when to open and close each transistor. The phase voltage with respect to HV ground will look totally wrong, but when you look on the phase voltage that the motor sees, it will be a perfect sine  

Anyway, this is probably not a discussion for this thread - if you want, write me an email and we can discuss it in detail (unless you don't agree with what I wrote, then feel free to correct me here).


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## Carnut1100 (Jan 13, 2015)

any idea on pricing for this yet?
Loads of Prius taxis around where I am, and they end up in wrecking yards. 
Also a lot of the new hybrid Camry turning up as taxis...

Would one of these controllers be needed for each Prius two motor transaxle?
Thinking that a twin Prius AWD setup would be nice to have...


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

Carnut1100 said:


> any idea on pricing for this yet?
> Loads of Prius taxis around where I am, and they end up in wrecking yards.
> Also a lot of the new hybrid Camry turning up as taxis...
> 
> ...


Here in Geneva pretty much every taxi is a Prius. With an exception of one silver taxi Tesla 

Yes, you are correct - you need one UMC Drive per transaxle. The pricing will be available in approx. two weeks. Sorry for the delay - I've started this thread rather soon in the development stage, and I don't want to rush it and offer something incomplete or not up to automotive standards.

I'll be rolling out a new version - since there is bigger interest in hybrid drivetrains than I anticipated, I want to have s fully blown resolver interface onboard, so people don't have to get an extension module later. Everything on the UMC Drive 2.0 seems to work (with few small HW bugs), so I'll fix those and add the absolute angle resolver interface.

Now I'm standing on the edge of this decision - should I keep it dual motor, with a risk of higher cost, or split it in one motor controller (that is one board for each motor). I'll have to think this through well, as time is short..


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

Good news on the Tesla inverter! I've just managed to reverse engineer enough of the interface, to be able to control all the high power transistors, and read out the currents!

I have to say, it was harder than I expected (definitely much harder than cracking the Prius or Volt).. Mainly thanks to very high level of integration and extremely hard layer of conformal coating covering every PCB. I've tried the usual methods to remove this layer (heat, sanding, non-lethal chemicals) but without much luck. At the end I had to rely mainly on the knowledge of input-output topologies and clues like protection devices in the path. Probing anything was pretty much impossible (every cut I was making could break sensitive pads).

This is not a win yet - there are other signals that I need to analyze, but all the main control and feedback is already analyzed and tested  So now I can make some patch cables, plug in the UMC Drive and try to spin some motor using this inverter. During that I'll be able to reverse-engineer the remaining bits of the Tesla inverter.


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## kennybobby (Aug 10, 2012)

Glad to hear some good news--that is excellent sleuthing, and soon you will own that thang.


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## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

eldis said:


> Now I'm standing on the edge of this decision - should I keep it dual motor, with a risk of higher cost, or split it in one motor controller (that is one board for each motor). I'll have to think this through well, as time is short..


I vote single and cheaper


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## Carnut1100 (Jan 13, 2015)

Single and cheaper in nice in theory....but then you would need two complete units for a Prius transaxle yes?


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

Carnut1100 said:


> Single and cheaper in nice in theory....but then you would need two complete units for a Prius transaxle yes?


Yep, exactly. As I said, this is a decision that will have to be well thought. Since there will be a full resolver interface, I will not be able to use only one MCU for everything (not enough pins). With encoders or purely sensorless FOC it is possible to have everything on one chip. 

Unfortunately I don't have enough time nor manpower to release several versions in parallel (dualmotor, resolver, one and two boards, etc). But I've already found a good partner that will help me get this on the market ASAP. I envision two levels - barebone (assembled) board for hardcore DIY with basic email support, and fully supported and guaranteed system sold by the partner. More info on that soon.


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## PStechPaul (May 1, 2012)

I would be very interested in the bare-bones board. I have been planning to build my own inverter, but I've been involved in so many other things (like the DIY charger) that it does not seem worthwhile at this point. What I had in mind was a simplified design to start with, and then expand as I gained experience. I had planned to use the Microchip PIC18F motor control devices, with which I am more familiar, but I realize that my initial introduction to them (and a simple inverter I built) was more than ten years ago, and they are essentially obsolete.

Perhaps I can look at the schematics for the board(s) you have and see if they will meet my needs. Do you have a link for the information? It would be helpful if you put that in your sig, rather than the recursive link to this thread. 

I may even be able to use one or two of your older, unpopulated boards, as I have a good assortment of SMD components (although all are 0805 or larger, and mostly SOIC). Most of the electrical design of an inverter is fairly straightforward, with gate drivers and circuitry to monitor voltage and current, and power circuitry for low impedance DC bus supply to the IGBTs or MOSFETs. 

The real "magic" is in the software, and I suppose it would not be a huge problem for me to shift from the Microchip platform to the TI DSP or other devices you may be using. If the processor is on a separate board, as it appears to be, then it should be also easy enough to make a similar board with a Microchip PIC or even an Arduino.

Please let me know how much it might cost to get a couple of boards, bare or partially populated, and perhaps I'll place an order and get a "jump start" on my project. Thanks.


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## jhuebner (Apr 30, 2010)

eldis said:


> pure sinewave control (as you correctly stated): 1/sqrt(2) * Vbus
> using the SVM overmodulation (trapezoidal waveform, basically shifting your common mode voltage): sqrt(5)/3 * Vbus


So thats no longer a sine wave?



eldis said:


> I don't know why you said that the straight forward scheme is loosing additional 15% from 1/sqrt(2).


Hi eldis, I placed a post on the topic into "my" thread to not spam yours. Let me know whether I made a mistake.
http://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/showthread.php?p=635913#post635913


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

jhuebner said:


> So thats no longer a sine wave?


Yup, that's no longer a pure sine wave, with overmodulation its shape starts to change more, higher you go. Then depending on your motor construction and application, you have to make sure your control remains stable (no excessive torque ripple). Unless there is a good reason (motor designed for higher voltage than your DC bus and you need every volt), it is better to do pure sine wave. Once I'm not rushing so much to finish my project and Tesla hacking, I'll try to explain how this works.



jhuebner said:


> Hi eldis, I placed a post on the topic into "my" thread to not spam yours. Let me know whether I made a mistake.
> http://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/showthread.php?p=635913#post635913


Johannes, I hope that my comment about not going into details here didn't offend you. You've explained it in your thread very well, and it is correct. With pure sine SVM your phase voltage indeed is max 1/sqrt(2)*Vbus.


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

PStechPaul said:


> I would be very interested in the bare-bones board. ...


Thank you for your interest! I indeed have quite a few extra boards, I'll write you a PM to discuss what can be done. Problem is always the time - if I sell assemble-yourself kits, I'll spend more time answering emails and questions here about how to make it work and why it doesn't work (it would certainly cost me more than getting it to run myself). I've seen this in other threads (chargers, inverters), and I'm not emotionally ready for that


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## jhuebner (Apr 30, 2010)

eldis said:


> Yup, that's no longer a pure sine wave, with overmodulation its shape starts to change more, higher you go.
> ...
> Johannes, I hope that my comment about not going into details here didn't offend you. You've explained it in your thread very well, and it is correct. With pure sine SVM your phase voltage indeed is max 1/sqrt(2)*Vbus.


Ok now I understand.
In my software I use short-pulse supression which deforms the sine wave and probably raises the RMS voltage above Udc/sqrt(2). I guess if you take that to the extreme you end up with overmodulation as you state it?

No worries, no offences


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## dcb (Dec 5, 2009)

FWIW, I wouldn't consider this "overmodulation" as the phase to phase is still a sinewave, even though phase to "neutral" has a dent in the peak (to make room for a larger phase to phase).

Here was an earlier attempt I made to sort out the optimal phase to ground switching (which I learned is called SVPWM), the relationship between the legs is still a sinewave: 8/7 should probably be 2/sqrt(3)


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

dcb said:


> FWIW, I wouldn't consider this "overmodulation" as the phase to phase is still a sinewave, even though phase to "neutral" has a dent in the peak (to make room for a larger phase to phase).
> 
> Here was an earlier attempt I made to sort out the optimal phase to neutral switching (which I learned is called SVPWM), the relationship between the legs is still a sinewave: 8/7 should probably be 2/sqrt(3)


Thanks, dcb. 
The terminology is what makes my head spin.. I'm using center-aligned space vector modulation PWM generation. There are many schemes and optimizations you can do with such scheme. That's a big advantage of microcontrollers optimized for motor control and switching application - they have dedicated HW modules for center-aligned waveforms generation and precise dead time insertion (to protect against the shoot through). We should start a thread just to discuss such things - it's amazing how much did the motor control algorithms/implementations advanced in the last 10 years! (considering that at the end of it all you just have a shaft spinning in a circle..)


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## dcb (Dec 5, 2009)

just fyi, with holding one leg low and pwming the other legs high, like in the picture, you have very little opportunity for shoot through, and less switching losses.

Also having the logic in software is good for flexibility of course, i.e. adding functionality/upgrades/experiments or performance. I *think* I read in one of the tesla patents that they use a mixed mode, i.e. switching between DTC and FOC as appropriate.


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## jackbauer (Jan 12, 2008)

Is the UMC drive pcb available to buy?


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

jackbauer said:


> Is the UMC drive pcb available to buy?


Very soon. Seeing how many people actually wants a resolver interface built-in was a bit of a setback in the project. I'm currently trying to include it onboard and discussing with my new partner the way how to get this on the market. My primary target are not bare PCBs but an assembled and tested module, or even a module already inserted and cabled in a Chevy Volt, Prius, Lexus or Tesla inverter (as in bare PCB you cannot possibly include enough margin to provide the support needed to assemble and test it). 

I might offload some bare PCBs as well at the end, as I already have those.


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## jackbauer (Jan 12, 2008)

Sounds good. I'm not really interested in a bare pcb anyway but when you have them built and tested and ready to go please let me know. Also willing to help if I can.


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## coleasterling (Feb 29, 2012)

I'd be interested in a bare or assembled board, but not a whole inverter.


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## tylerwatts (Feb 9, 2012)

I'm interested in a tested board ready to put with any inverter. Keep up the good work.


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

Sorry for not replying to those who sent me a PM - will do that soon!

I've been busy getting this finished - a Tesla and Chevy Volt inverters spinning a Tesla motor


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

Now I have another really good engineer to help me roll out the final revision, as well as some money and support to push this all the way!

Thanks to everyone for your interest and help, and sorry for not having the UMC Drive available already. I really want to do this right. Everything goes slowly, when all you can invest is just your free time during evenings and weekends.

In another news, I'll be cooperating with three people having a Lexus drivetrain (one of them actually living near me), so this platform will get the full support with optimized motor parameters as well.


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## kennybobby (Aug 10, 2012)

*Re: DMOC 645*

i have the schematic for the driver board of the DMOC 645 inverters used to control the Siemens motor in the Azure/Ford Transit Connect vans. 
It has a nice liquid-cooled heatsink and compact design for the igbts.

i think the UMC may be an excellent choice to replace all that 
mess of finding the software and kvaser dongles and firmware flashing of the Azure control board, plus all the CAN hacking needed to get it to run.


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

*Re: DMOC 645*



kennybobby said:


> i have the schematic for the driver board of the DMOC 645 inverters used to control the Siemens motor in the Azure/Ford Transit Connect vans.
> It has a nice liquid-cooled heatsink and compact design for the igbts.
> 
> i think the UMC may be an excellent choice to replace all that
> mess of finding the software and kvaser dongles and firmware flashing of the Azure control board, plus all the CAN hacking needed to get it to run.


Thanks! Sure, just post it here or send me a PM. Might be interesting!

I like to reuse the drivers from original inverters, as they are generally very well designed and optimized for the used IGBT. 

A nice example is the Tesla (or Chevy Volt as well) driver stage:










Quite densely populated (components from both sides). You just cannot replace all this with an optocoupler and DC/DC brick. I tried that in the beginning of the project, and while it works in some cases, it does not provide any protection against shoot through, desaturation detection and so on. It is quite difficult to destroy the Tesla IGBTs, even with a faulty controller. The driver just shuts down immediately when you try to do something nasty. I'm still tempted to design my own drivers as well, but it would be in the similar level of complexity, so the motivation is not that strong.


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## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

*Re: DMOC 645*



kennybobby said:


> i think the UMC may be an excellent choice to replace all that
> mess of finding the software and kvaser dongles and firmware flashing of the Azure control board, plus all the CAN hacking needed to get it to run.


I'm all for a non Jack Rickard solution, because...Jack...


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

*Re: DMOC 645*



JRP3 said:


> I'm all for a non Jack Rickard solution, because...Jack...


 I like the EVTV team, some of their work is really good - for example the CAN capture devices and software. My favourite is the Chevy heater hack. That required quite higher level thinking to crack. It's true I don't agree with everything that Jack says. And I'm pretty sure he doesn't agree with me on many things 

I would say that we complement each other nicely. I'm not that interested in capturing and replaying data to devices, as I had plenty of that in the magnetic cassette times. I'm more interested in devices that will just not work as you whistle, and have so much potential - like the hybrid inverters. The Chevy Volt inverter on my table is like a swiss knife - I can spin any motors with it, it has two full 3 phase bridges, so you can use it for all kinds of crazy power grid transfer experiments..


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## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

Jack and the EVTV team have done great things and deserve a lot of credit. That doesn't change the fact that Jack is often a giant tool


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

Also I would say that the main point of UMC Drive is that you have to do everything only once. All the CAN packets will be freely available in the CAN database format, with every bit explained. You actually don't need any CAN communication at all if you don't want. Just use the drivetrain the old fashion way. Plug in the throttle, few signals to select the direction and power levels, output for the RPM and you're done. It will be the same for every inverter this becomes compatible with, and with every motor as well. At least that's the project goal.

Even with the same OEM car, the protocols change between generations. VW parts are used in the whole VW Group, but each manufacturer modifies the firmware a bit, to fit in their ecosystem.

I'm pretty sure that If I would get a Tesla Dual motor or Model X drivetrain on my table, right now, I could spin it in less than a week - without ever seeing the car running or having any data on it. It worked like that so far with every inverter.


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## kennybobby (Aug 10, 2012)

eldis said:


> ... You actually don't need any CAN communication at all if you don't want.


that's what i was thinking...and as the saying goes, i don't know jack--about CAN.


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## marcexec (Feb 11, 2009)

Just realized that you're based in Switzerland.
Are you meeting with Lebowski in the Swiss Genius Controller Designer's Club? 

What kind of license would you put this under, especially the database about inverters/motors?


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

marcexec said:


> Just realized that you're based in Switzerland.
> Are you meeting with Lebowski in the Swiss Genius Controller Designer's Club?
> 
> What kind of license would you put this under, especially the database about inverters/motors?


Haha, I've heard about this guy from a friend. The motor and CAN database will be under one of the open source licenses (didn't pick one yet). The HW documentation needed to use the UMC Drive in a new inverter (wiring schemes, voltage levels etc) will be under CERN Open Hardware license. 

For those that do not know that already, CERN is my employer.
The usual applies: "The information and views set out in this work are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of the European Organization for Nuclear Research."


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## jackbauer (Jan 12, 2008)

Great news Can't wait to see the final version


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## electricmini (Oct 21, 2008)

*Re: DMOC 645*



kennybobby said:


> i have the schematic for the driver board of the DMOC 645 inverters used to control the Siemens motor in the Azure/Ford Transit Connect vans.


Any chance you can send me a copy of the DMOC IGBT drive board schematic?

I've got a set of boards here and have just gotten them to boot up & talk to CCShell, but no power stage (yet). It'd be quite handy to know what the
signals are in that 40way ribbon cable between the gate drive pcb and the cpu...

Thanks

Richard (electricmini)


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## z_power (Dec 17, 2011)

Hello Michal!
I'm one more person interested in populated board with resolver interface (for PMSM motor) so I'm posting here to subscribe.
And my name is Michal, too


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## palmer_md (Jul 22, 2011)

How much power can I expect to get out of a 2005 Prius inverter? 30kW or is Toyota underutilizing it and it can do a bit more? If I were to use your UMC with a Prius inverter what motor would you suggest I pair with it. Would the AC35 motor from HPEVS work with it?


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

palmer_md said:


> How much power can I expect to get out of a 2005 Prius inverter? 30kW or is Toyota underutilizing it and it can do a bit more? If I were to use your UMC with a Prius inverter what motor would you suggest I pair with it. Would the AC35 motor from HPEVS work with it?


The Toyota inverter has several question marks on it even after being available for such a long time. It seems that nobody ever tried to push it beyond it's limits. They are using IGBTs of their own design/construction, so there is no part number that could be looked up.

I would estimate that the main motor output can get to 50kW, the motor generator output to 20kW and the boost circuit (changing 200V batteries to 500V for Prius motors) is rated at 20kW. I'm not sure how much more can this be pushed, probably yes, but it seems that nobody tried. Important thing to note is that the power limits are dictated by the current limits. So you get 50kW on the motor output if you have high voltage available. When you have extremely low voltage motors (100V), the max power of the Prius inverter drops, as P = V * I. In other words for the same max current you have much lower voltage.

There is no reason to presume that it would not work with AC35 - after all it is a very simple induction motor with an encoder. Should be easy to run it. It remains to be seen if you can get decent power at such low voltage motor. On the other hand it is hard to beat the price of used Prius inverter ($100).

In two weeks I'll have the UMC Drive in production (with resolver built in and so on). so then I'll finally know the pricing, and can try to burn one of the Prius inverters I have here to see what they can do (for the sake of science!)


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

For those that already saw the latest EVTV show and heard Jack saying that the Tesla inverter is aircooled, because they do not observe any temperature change on it - beware.

The inverter indeed is watercooled, and you could see the cooling channels in the beginning of my thread and in the video. Even though it would be really cool if he was right (wow 300kW inverter that doesn't heat up!) Unfortunately this is not the case.

A close up with the coolant channels and three phase busbars on the gearbox side:










The reason why they are not observing any temperature change is that they most likely put the temperature sensors on top of the inverter cylinder - which has no heat contact with the inverter.


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## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

I wonder if he just meant that they weren't running cooling fluid on the test bench?


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

JRP3 said:


> I wonder if he just meant that they weren't running cooling fluid on the test bench?


They were pumping the coolant through (I recommend seeing the video anyway). Their motor was heating up, while the inverter case was not. Therefore they made a conclusion that I have mistaken the coolant paths with the bus bars, or something like that. I did inform Jack and sent him photos showing that there indeed is coolant, and it all passes through the same loop.


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## coleasterling (Feb 29, 2012)

Have you thought about getting this running with the 2nd or 3rd gen Honda IMA inverters? They are extremely compact and have great access to the gate drives. I had one here I was playing with, but am a putz and did some damage to it without any real success. They are only air-cooled, but could be EASILY water-cooled. IGBT's are a Honda-specific design so no specs are certain, but they are rated for 600V and I would think around 300A(first gen inverters are 300A). Nothing high-power, but could be great for a bike because of the small size. 

The three IGBT's mount to a finned heatsink with the driver integrated into the IGBT mounting, then the control board mounts to the IGBT cases and the link cap forms the top cover. I'll post some pictures if you're interested.


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

coleasterling said:


> Have you thought about getting this running with the 2nd or 3rd gen Honda IMA inverters? They are extremely compact and have great access to the gate drives. I had one here I was playing with, but am a putz and did some damage to it without any real success. They are only air-cooled, but could be EASILY water-cooled. IGBT's are a Honda-specific design so no specs are certain, but they are rated for 600V and I would think around 300A(first gen inverters are 300A). Nothing high-power, but could be great for a bike because of the small size.
> 
> The three IGBT's mount to a finned heatsink with the driver integrated into the IGBT mounting, then the control board mounts to the IGBT cases and the link cap forms the top cover. I'll post some pictures if you're interested.


Sure, we can support those as well. You can post photos here, and if you have the internal wiring, I can check if it is already compatible with the current design that goes in the production soon (or send me a PM, whatever you prefer).


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## coleasterling (Feb 29, 2012)

Okay, here are some pictures. Sorry for the poor quality! 

1. Full IMA assembly minus battery
2. IGBT's with gate drivers on heatsink
3. Control Board (CAN controlled, no direct access to hi-lo lines)
4. Gate Driver
5. Gate Driver Closeup
6. Gate Driver Closeup 2 
7. Inside IGBT
8. Link Cap/Cover 
9. Control Board to Gate Driver Connections

I have not figured out what all the connections from the main board to the drivers are. There are 11 connections total. The ones I know and can measure are the +/-17V, and +5V, which takes six. That leaves five for PWM signals, driver ready signal (+5V?), and...? I don't have a scope or working car, so I'm pretty blind. The driver chip is a Hitachi ECN3082A, which was custom for Honda and there's no datasheet available. When I called Hitachi and spoke with their legacy guy, he couldn't even pull it up in the system, so no help there.


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

coleasterling said:


> Okay, here are some pictures. Sorry for the poor quality!
> 
> 1. Full IMA assembly minus battery
> 2. IGBT's with gate drivers on heatsink
> ...


Thanks. No worries, your photos are good enough to judge the topology.
The inverter control signals for shutdown, PWM and so on are definitely compatible. Of course some experimenting would be needed to find out which signal switches which phase and with what polarity. The shutdown signal will most likely be routed in parallel to all the drive boards, so it should be fairly easy to discover it.

The only thing that would have to be done to get this working (except for matching pins correctly between UMC and IGBT drivers) is to provide isolated power for the IGBT stages. That transformer on top of the control board provides isolated power supply for each IGBT (you see large separation between secondary pins). Normally this is all included on the driver side. In Honda's case they put these rather strangely on the control board. So you would have to buy several brick DC/DC converters to provide the same voltage, or leave the original board just for the sake of powering up the drivers. Then the actual control lines can be routed to the UMC. Very often there is also an IGBT temperature sense going to the control board.

Once I have the production preparation rush out of the way, I can check what kind of power levels this puts out, and if it makes sense for me to get it and help you with including it on the support list. Could be rather straight-forward.

You don't really need to see it working to crack it. I haven't actually powered any of my inverters during reverse-engineering. Static analysis is enough to understand direction of lines, their voltage and if they are power lines, analog or digital. Once you do this for a couple of inverters, it becomes rather repetitive and easy.


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## palmer_md (Jul 22, 2011)

eldis said:


> In two weeks I'll have the UMC Drive in production (with resolver built in and so on). so then I'll finally know the pricing, and can try to burn one of the Prius inverters I have here to see what they can do (for the sake of science!)


Based on this document I discovered ( http://www.engr.uvic.ca/~mech459/Pub_References/890029.pdf ), I'd say the main output for MG2 can put out 200amp. That would work for me in what I'm trying to do. HPEVS motor is good for 165 volt and at 180 amp I can get almost 30kW which is enough for what I'm trying to do (200v pack). I've already got a Prius sitting in my backyard with a damaged ICE, so all the electric components are ready to be pulled for a project.

Keep up the good work, and I look forward to your progress on the projects.


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## jwiger (Oct 18, 2014)

This may have been asked/answered already:

Is it possible to bridge the three outputs on the IGBTs of an AC controller, and use this to drive a DC motor? I'm sure there would be some rating cutbacks, but I would think you would have all of the hardware there to run something.


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

jwiger said:


> This may have been asked/answered already:
> 
> Is it possible to bridge the three outputs on the IGBTs of an AC controller, and use this to drive a DC motor? I'm sure there would be some rating cutbacks, but I would think you would have all of the hardware there to run something.


In theory, there is nothing preventing you from doing it. DC motor inverters are dead easy compared to AC inverters. Normally IGBTs don't like paralleling too much (you have less power than just the sum of two transistors). So if your transistors would normally handle 400A on one phase, if you put three in parallel you get like 840-900A. It would have to be tested.

But Tesla is doing that without any problems - they have 20pcs of 75A IGBTs in parallel to form one transistor - as long as they are on the same temperature, it's quite okay.


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## jhuebner (Apr 30, 2010)

eldis said:


> But Tesla is doing that without any problems - they have 20pcs of 75A IGBTs in parallel to form one transistor - as long as they are on the same temperature, it's quite okay.


I recently found out that it's also a matter of the IGBT type. The non-punch through types (NPT) have a positive temperature coefficient of Vcesat. So the hottest IGBT has the highest Vce and thus carries less current which in turn stabilizes the whole "pack".

It's cool to see Tesla actually uses discrete IGBTs.


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

jhuebner said:


> I recently found out that it's also a matter of the IGBT type. The non-punch through types (NPT) have a positive temperature coefficient of Vcesat. So the hottest IGBT has the highest Vce and thus carries less current which in turn stabilizes the whole "pack".
> 
> It's cool to see Tesla actually uses discrete IGBTs.


I'm preparing a detailed explanation of the Tesla inverter construction and it's components - I can give a little spoiler and tell you that they are using IKW75N60T IGBTs, 20 in parallel to form one transistor, that is 6 x 20 = 120 transistors in total.


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## PStechPaul (May 1, 2012)

They are 600V 75A, and cost about $6 each in 100 pc quantity:

http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Infineon-Technologies/IKW75N60T/?qs=nTClRYuuQBrUyI1BO9hoQg==

http://www.mouser.com/ds/2/196/IKW75N60T_2_8-77728.pdf

About 36 nSec rise/fall time and 120 nSec diode recovery time. 1.5V at 75A at 25C, 1.8V at 175C

A fairly equivalent MOSFET is about $7.73 in similar quantity:

http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail...=sGAEpiMZZMshyDBzk1/Wi5R7vBZHzT67wOnRRXfffrc=

76A at 25C but only 46A at 100C. 41 mOhm for 3V drop at 75A. 66 nSec rise/fall and 214 nSec diode.

So the IGBT seems to be the superior device at less cost.


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## jhuebner (Apr 30, 2010)

If this inverter really pushes up to 1200A RMS into the motor they make pretty good use of the rated current (20x75=1500A).

Though I couldn't quite follow that
I think DC bus is 400V resulting in 283Vac (with SVPWM). P=sqrt(3)*I*U with P=310kW and U=283V : I = 310kW/(283V*1,71)=640A (RMS) or 900A peak.


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

jhuebner said:


> If this inverter really pushes up to 1200A RMS into the motor they make pretty good use of the rated current (20x75=1500A).
> 
> Though I couldn't quite follow that
> I think DC bus is 400V resulting in 283Vac (with SVPWM). P=sqrt(3)*I*U with P=310kW and U=283V : I = 310kW/(283V*1,71)=640A (RMS) or 900A peak.


That's what is said in the official Tesla service and assembly manuals. They could have a typo, who knows. But the motor current is not equal to battery current - maybe such high current is produced only during low speed operation. Since the phase resistance is ~0.05 Ohm (don't remember exactly).


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## no_reluctance (Mar 13, 2014)

Eldis, do you have a home page or something where we could watch/await development of these controllers? you can PM if you like, so it doesn't look like shameless self promotion. I've tried to be pretty diligent about reading through the posts but I didn't catch it if you did have a page for them.

great work by the way, I hope to be good enough one day to back out the control scheme from just passive circuit analyses. Had to do that as an intern and its pretty tough...for me. would you have been able to design the same way if you had only had the control wave forms?


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## lottos (Jun 22, 2008)

no_reluctance said:


> Eldis, do you have a home page or something where we could watch/await development of these controllers?



http://ecarproject.ch/


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## arklan (Dec 10, 2012)

making a post so im subscribed to this extremely interesting thread


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## bigmotherwhale (Apr 15, 2011)

Would it be possible to connect two matched motors back to back and run one in regen mode as a generator and the other as as motor? 

the Toyota module has two outputs for motors on the same bus, so it could be very usefull for tuning motor parameters and would be able to reach very high throughput with a very small supply current (house mains) 

I think i t would be very useful if it was possible to put the UMC in this test mode.


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

bigmotherwhale said:


> Would it be possible to connect two matched motors back to back and run one in regen mode as a generator and the other as as motor?
> 
> the Toyota module has two outputs for motors on the same bus, so it could be very usefull for tuning motor parameters and would be able to reach very high throughput with a very small supply current (house mains)
> 
> I think i t would be very useful if it was possible to put the UMC in this test mode.


Hi, I'm on a vacation, so limited internet access.
Yes, you can perfectly do that. I would still recommend doing this with a battery (even if small), as mains cannot absorb energy. But you can very well just put two motors against each other. I was using a variac with an isolation transformer for a long time during my initial tests.


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## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

Things have been quiet for a while here. Any progress to report?


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

JRP3 said:


> Things have been quiet for a while here. Any progress to report?


Yup, plenty of things happening. I apologize for the lack of updates.
Thing is, that releasing that Tesla video caused more interest than I expected. Some in driving Tesla units, but mostly in a universal controller in general.

Thanks to the video, I've started cooperating with the industry on this and several other projects - so we had to take things more seriously, and currently we are starting an official business here in Switzerland.

The UMC Drive will still be released as planned, in a DIY-friendly way (assembled and tested board that you can use with many automotive inverters without re-soldering anything). I like the DIY crowd, as there is so much happening here - people are not afraid to try things that industry would simply not do as the development would be cost prohibitive for them  And people do all that with the pocket money while doing day jobs.

Now on the updates - I've taken the design to Texas Instruments (their guys offered us an access to their developers, something normally only big customers get). We got a lot of comments - so the new version is going through many changes. One of them is completely isolated HV phase and bus measurement, for maximum safety during any kind of problem (human error, failures). Resolver interface, isolated CAN, heavy-duty input signal protection (you can use 5V logic, 12V..) The same goes for output buffers. Everything is now on a single PCB.

I know that it all takes a long time, that I promised to have it already, etc. Sorry for that. Things don't always go as we plan them, and I believe that it all happened for a good reason, and the result will be worth it.


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## bigmotherwhale (Apr 15, 2011)

thanks for the update, i have been waiting a while. im glad to hear its going well.

isolation of the bus and phase voltages was one of my concerns when i planned on using a lebowski controller as its designed for lower pack voltages. 

will the board be available for people who are SMD soldering equipped? 

best wishes in this project.


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## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

Sounds like good progress. I was just afraid that something killed the project.


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## tomofreno (Mar 3, 2009)

Great news eldis!


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## piotrsko (Dec 9, 2007)

Good news? A big American company is involved? Oh crud.... good luck being rich.


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

piotrsko said:


> Good news? A big American company is involved? Oh crud.... good luck being rich.


Haha, no and no. Nothing against the good old American dream, but this is not a new app for Facebook to attract billions. And we are not in America - nobody is giving us money for free. What I meant by that is that there are companies that are genuinely interested in doing business with us. That of course doesn't mean anything on it's own. You have to first do the work for pretty much minimal wage to prove your worth. And then maybe, just maybe you get a bigger contract next time.

I don't like this modern hype with raising millions from venture capitalists, making power point presentations showing how fast you will grow. I want a small company that can pay a decent wage to it's employees. And we are still very far from that.


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

bigmotherwhale said:


> thanks for the update, i have been waiting a while. im glad to hear its going well.
> 
> isolation of the bus and phase voltages was one of my concerns when i planned on using a lebowski controller as its designed for lower pack voltages.
> 
> ...


Thanks! I'm not very convinced on the assemble-yourself idea. I admire people like Johannes, making step by step assembly manuals and providing endless support on forums. I assembled quite a few of large SMD boards by hand, and it's something that I would not want to be doing voluntarily  Plus you have high voltage on the board, so bad soldering can cause problems (not saying that you would do a bad job at it!) Okay, we will see about this when the time comes.


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## tomofreno (Mar 3, 2009)

eldis said:


> Thanks! I'm not very convinced on the assemble-yourself idea. I admire people like Johannes, making step by step assembly manuals and providing endless support on forums. I assembled quite a few of large SMD boards by hand, and it's something that I would not want to be doing voluntarily  Plus you have high voltage on the board, so bad soldering can cause problems (not saying that you would do a bad job at it!) Okay, we will see about this when the time comes.


 Save yourself a lot of headaches, farm out population of the boards to a quality shop, and sell only completed boards. Big mistake to sell kits, endless work and hand holding. And please follow a disciplined PDR (product development and release). Also please provide good documentation on using the board(s) - another reason not to offer kits, the documentation required is far greater. Good to see you are getting some quality input from some in the profession. Should make a more bullet proof product. The more knowledgeable minds the better. Good luck!


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## bigmotherwhale (Apr 15, 2011)

eldis said:


> Thanks! I'm not very convinced on the assemble-yourself idea. I admire people like Johannes, making step by step assembly manuals and providing endless support on forums. I assembled quite a few of large SMD boards by hand, and it's something that I would not want to be doing voluntarily  Plus you have high voltage on the board, so bad soldering can cause problems (not saying that you would do a bad job at it!) Okay, we will see about this when the time comes.


Thats a fair point really, working with SMD can be hard work and im not claiming to be some soldering guru. soldering hundreds of things the size of a grain of salt isnt appealing, I was just becoming concerned that this was getting expensive and i want to keep cost down to a minimum.


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## kennybobby (Aug 10, 2012)

An interesting video by SKF about their ceramic bearings for tesla motor and gearbox. There is a shot of the motor bearing exposed, not sure which end.
http://insideevs.com/tesla-model-s-makes-use-skf-ceramic-motor-bearings-video/


i have been reading discussions about bearing damage due to currents thru the bearings from VFD harmonics--supposedly ceramic bearings is a countermeasure for this damage. 


Would the UMC detect any unbalanced phase currents that might induce a return path thru the bearings? Would any controller?


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## PStechPaul (May 1, 2012)

bigmotherwhale said:


> Thats a fair point really, working with SMD can be hard work and im not claiming to be some soldering guru. soldering hundreds of things the size of a grain of salt isnt appealing, I was just becoming concerned that this was getting expensive and i want to keep cost down to a minimum.


As a point of reference, I recently ordered 20 pieces of a 4"x6" PCB with 174 SMT components and 10 THT parts. The total cost, including setup and shipping, is about $1700, or $85/board. This does not include components, which I supply, and they cost about $50/board. The boards themselves were re-ordered from pcbcart.com in China, with 30 boards costing about $180, or $6/board.

I hand-assembled the first one or two of these boards, and it took me probably about 4 hours. There are only a couple of fairly fine pitch parts (probably 0.7 or 0.8mm), and they were a challenge. Otherwise, I mostly use 0805 or larger resistors and capacitors, and 1.27mm SOIC ICs. Here is a picture showing about half of the board, assembled:


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

kennybobby said:


> An interesting video by SKF about their ceramic bearings for tesla motor and gearbox. There is a shot of the motor bearing exposed, not sure which end.
> http://insideevs.com/tesla-model-s-makes-use-skf-ceramic-motor-bearings-video/
> 
> 
> ...


Interesting, thanks for sharing! I also don't know which end that is..
I've heard about this bearings issue for the first time in one of the EVTV videos - there was an embedded advertisement for company claiming that you should have brushes on your shaft, so the currents don't go through your bearings. Still not sure how critical this is, but I can imagine that with very high power small motors this might be significant.

The way how UMC operates is that it is automatically compensating for any voltage offsets in measurement between phases (by applying 50% duty cycle to all coils, therefore current is not flowing while coils are floating at 1/2 Vbus). This offset is recalculated every time you start the car, and it relaxes the need for low drift op amps and tighter tolerances, summer-winter etc. The current offsets are recalculated the same way. Also the coil resistance is continuously measured during driving, so even without temperature sensor inserted in the stator you know your winding temperature (very critical parameter for people running the system in sensorless FOC). Don't ask me if any of it helps also on the bearings life. I have no idea


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

PStechPaul said:


> As a point of reference, I recently ordered 20 pieces of a 4"x6" PCB with 174 SMT components and 10 THT parts. The total cost, including setup and shipping, is about $1700, or $85/board. This does not include components, which I supply, and they cost about $50/board. The boards themselves were re-ordered from pcbcart.com in China, with 30 boards costing about $180, or $6/board.


Thanks for a nice example, Paul. It illustrates well why people should not be that worried about having their designs assembled externally!

Sure, there are problems from time to time (chinese companies likes to replace branded chips with their cheap copies, sometimes make assembly mistakes and you have the added difficulty of shipping rare parts to them). But most of the time it is worth it.


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

kennybobby said:


> An interesting video by SKF about their ceramic bearings for tesla motor and gearbox. There is a shot of the motor bearing exposed, not sure which end.
> http://insideevs.com/tesla-model-s-makes-use-skf-ceramic-motor-bearings-video/


Okay, watched the video and it is clear to me that this is the rear view (not the gearbox side). What you see there is an exposed shaft where encoder and cooling passage goes.


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## PStechPaul (May 1, 2012)

eldis said:


> Thanks for a nice example, Paul. It illustrates well why people should not be that worried about having their designs assembled externally!
> 
> Sure, there are problems from time to time (chinese companies likes to replace branded chips with their cheap copies, sometimes make assembly mistakes and you have the added difficulty of shipping rare parts to them). But most of the time it is worth it.


Just to be clear, only the bare PCBs were purchased from China. The assembly is being done by a company in Chicago, www.aapcb.com, and they specialize in small quantities and can accept parts loose and on cut tape. They are probably not the cheapest, but I think their prices are reasonable, and I have used them before. They are very good at checking the board against the part outlines to identify issues (DRM), and they provide a PDF showing the parts as they will appear on the board, along with identification of each part when you hover the cursor over them. Note that the green areas show where there is a mismatch of component leads and PCB pads.










http://ortmaster.com/pictures/B55496_SMT.pdf (PDF of board shown above)

http://ortmaster.com/pictures/B55496%20Kit%20Labels_KitLab.pdf (Kit Labels)


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## sholland (Jan 16, 2012)

I have a Toyota MGR ordered and arriving next week, so please put me on your list of customers


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## AlexanderB (Nov 14, 2014)

Quite interested in this, as I need something like this to get an affordable road legal (AC) conversion over here. (By using a motor and inverter from an existing electric or hybrid car, and cramming a controller like this in somewhere.  The alternative is getting new parts plus get them EMI certified, which makes it VERY pricy.  But you probably knew that already..)

I was all set to start developing something like this myself, but why reinvent the wheel when someone is already much further along.  So I'll keep a close eye on this as it develops.


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

Yesterday I've got some nice toys - they will be used for the pilot program of the new UMC Drive (got 5 Chevy Volt 2014 inverters). The rest of the stuff is for development purposes and some of it will be available for resale in Europe. Unfortunately my 700kg box ended up as Class 9 hazardous goods, so shipping wasn't exactly cheap.

Eventually I'll offer some of the stuff in the Classifieds section (chargers, DC/DCs, inverters with the UMC). I don't know what will the price for individual things be, as I still have to go through the shipping costs breakdown. But if you feel like placing some bets already, you can write me a PM.


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## bigmotherwhale (Apr 15, 2011)

Hi Eldis
i wanted to ask a few questions regarding the controller, what does it plug into? i have a bare Lexus IPM power module unboxed without any other pcb.

like this http://hybrids.com.ua/images/badIPM2.jpg

will these work together? 
Thanks


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## okashira (Mar 1, 2015)

PM'd you Michal, and emailed.


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## DAINe (Jan 20, 2009)

gustavopm57 said:


> Very , very nice to see. What is the red PCB on top of yours? I guess might be evident for some, not right away for me.
> 
> Best regards
> 
> Gustavo


http://www.ti.com/tool/LAUNCHXL-F28069M#2


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

bigmotherwhale said:


> Hi Eldis
> i wanted to ask a few questions regarding the controller, what does it plug into? i have a bare Lexus IPM power module unboxed without any other pcb.
> 
> like this http://hybrids.com.ua/images/badIPM2.jpg
> ...


Sorry, completely missed out the last few messages. Lexus is quite simple inverter - unlike the newer stuff from Toyota, they still put silkscreen description of pins next to the main connector. Can you make a shot of that text next to the input connector to confirm?

The connection in Lexus should be open collector (with 5V pullup) for the PWM signals (there will be 12-14 of them, depending on if the boost is mounted directly on the board), couple of enable signals, three temperatures, at least three error outputs.. It should be compatible.


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## bigmotherwhale (Apr 15, 2011)

eldis said:


> Sorry, completely missed out the last few messages. Lexus is quite simple inverter - unlike the newer stuff from Toyota, they still put silkscreen description of pins next to the main connector. Can you make a shot of that text next to the input connector to confirm?
> 
> The connection in Lexus should be open collector (with 5V pullup) for the PWM signals (there will be 12-14 of them, depending on if the boost is mounted directly on the board), couple of enable signals, three temperatures, at least three error outputs.. It should be compatible.


This is a shot of the Silkscreen and the connector.
Thanks eldis


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

bigmotherwhale said:


> This is a shot of the Silkscreen and the connector.
> Thanks eldis


Yup, simple enough. This one still uses only one signal per phase (both high and low, deadtime insertion done internally). For example:
MUU - Motor U phase PWM
MWU - Motor W phase PWM
If there is "G" in the front, the same for Generator.
MSDN - Motor shutdown
GSDN - Gen shutdown
MIVA, MIVB - doubled current sensor for Motor V sense, swings positive and negative (+-3V)

And so on


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## sholland (Jan 16, 2012)

Awesome work... It's great to see some updates...


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## bigmotherwhale (Apr 15, 2011)

eldis said:


> Yup, simple enough. This one still uses only one signal per phase (both high and low, deadtime insertion done internally). For example:
> MUU - Motor U phase PWM
> MWU - Motor W phase PWM
> If there is "G" in the front, the same for Generator.
> ...


Excellent, this is also the conclusion i reached with some help from google.

when will we be able to buy the boards? 

also you mentioned connections for boost, does this mean the UMC supports the boost converter?


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

bigmotherwhale said:


> Excellent, this is also the conclusion i reached with some help from google.
> 
> when will we be able to buy the boards?
> 
> also you mentioned connections for boost, does this mean the UMC supports the boost converter?


One more note actually - these units with external ECU still used 12V open collector signals with internal pullups (thought it's worth mentioning it before someone tries to use 5V tolerant logic on this one).

Since the UMC platform got a bit more "popular" in the business as well, we had to re-think our planning. There is only so much few guys can do at the same time. I'm not making any promises on the dates anymore, because it seems I'm really bad at estimating stuff. I hope that the DIY version of it will go to PCB manufacturer during Christmas holidays.

We kept all the industry's requirements and suggestions in the DIY version as well - that means every single component on the board is automotive rated, with extended temperature ranges. It supports only one motor - since all inputs and outputs are really complex and multistage, making the board virtually impossible to burn by shorts or overvoltage. But I have no doubt that someone will find a clever way that we didn't foresee  For multi-motor inverters you can use two boards at the same time (they can communicate between each other), and there is a small accessory motor control output for future use - for example Volt dual motor gearbox needs to have the electric oil pump spinning for cooling, so it had to be controlled as well.

For those that wants to buy only bare PCBs of projects for self assembly, and like through hole components, I recommend the controller from Johannes. He did a great job at providing very low-cost solution with minimalist bill of materials for such purposes. The UMC Drive with all the isolation stages and buffers would be bigger than the inverter itself, if all the components on it were through hole.


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## postmann2002 (Jan 28, 2013)

Hello,
I'm a long time reader here in diyelectriccar... and especially interested on this thread.
I'm from Germany, so sorry for my bad english.

A few years ago I had the idea to build an electric car and therefore I collected some AC-Stuff for this project. But due to lack of time I give it up.
Maybe I will continue this idea of a selfmade-electric-car in a few years more, when my son becomes 18... and able to help me
But, if someone is interested to buy this stuff, I will sell it.

Here are the electric components from a 10t Hybrid-Bus:

Motor/Generator PMSM/BLDC 1FV5139 85kW (rated)... I think able of >200kW peak.

2 x Driver-Boards from Elfa-Duo-Inverter
(one Driverboard is damaged (two of eight Driver-circuits are smoked by a shortcut or overcurrent... the corresponding two IGBT's were also damaged).
The Bards have also onboard a Isolated Voltage measuring circuit and connectors for two amp-sensors and one Temperature-Sensor (temperature-control of IGBT's)
4 x Big Capacitors Epcos 2100µF 385V (in the original Inverter were two in series... so 770V rated)
6 x Big IGBT
2x Current-Sensors
Temperature-Sensor
Brainboard (I don't know if someone can reuse it)
Some Stainless-Screws
Multilayer of stainless metal-sheets with Isolators (Busbars and Phases U, V, W)

Throttle (original from the Hybrid-Vehicel)

IMA Battery NIMH 144V and 6,5Ah (Honda Insight) capable of 10kW (maybe more for shorter periodes) for experiments.
Selfmade Charger (350mA)
Please note, that a Inverter-Box is not included.

all together 3000€ pick up (interesting for the european ev-community)

I think, that this combination, (UMC or Homebrew ac-controller from jhuebner) with my stuff, would be a easy way for somebody who has time and knowledge to build his/her high power Inverter/drivetrain.

Imagine... the AC-Power-Stage powered a 10-tons-bus to a velocity of ~80km/h... what would it do with a 1.5t electric car?

Here is my advertisement in Germany:

www.ebay-kleinanzeigen.de/s-anzeige...lektroauto-motor,-inverter/397342132-223-4863

or here on "marketplace":

www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/showt...er-components-166874.html?p=708746#post708746

Regards Peter


Here is a picture of all ev-stuff I have.
More pictures you will find here in "marketplace"


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## EcoFactor (Feb 28, 2015)

Hello!
Good work!
I am writing to you in person, but that does not reach message ...


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

EcoFactor said:


> Hello!
> Good work!
> I am writing to you in person, but that does not reach message ...


I've already replied there


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## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

eldis said:


> ..Seeing how many people actually wants a resolver interface built-in was a bit of a setback in the project. I'm currently trying to include it onboard and discussing with my new partner the way how to get this on the market....


Did you end up implementing a resolver interface, and how are you presenting the position data from the resolver to the FOC algorithm (e.g., as actual rotor position or as a quadrature encoder emulation)?


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

Tesseract said:


> Did you end up implementing a resolver interface, and how are you presenting the position data from the resolver to the FOC algorithm (e.g., as actual rotor position or as a quadrature encoder emulation)?


I'm using directly the position data, not just the emulation. I tried different options, and even though the quadrature encoder emulation would work (provided you magnetize the coils as a part of the start sequence to assure magnet alignment), it is rather impractical. So full-blown resolver interface it is.


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## bigmotherwhale (Apr 15, 2011)

eldis said:


> I'm using directly the position data, not just the emulation. I tried different options, and even though the quadrature encoder emulation would work (provided you magnetize the coils as a part of the start sequence to assure magnet alignment), it is rather impractical. So full-blown resolver interface it is.


Excellent news.


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## Jeremyfc1 (Feb 5, 2016)

Are these for sale?


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## Ai! (May 9, 2014)

now I need to control 3(or may be 4) motors...

If UMC can control 2 motors, I think an option to control 4 motors will be a nice one and I would love to buy at least 3 or more of these.


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

Yes, still alive 
Here are some renders of (hopefully) final UMC Drive 3:



















Some more placement, some more routing still to be done. Proper HV isolation with beefy connectors (top right), true resolver interface etc.

We've been having a lot of fun with prototype of another interesting project lately - can't wait to share that one too!

For now the UMC morphed into fully-featured single motor solution, or dual motor for less demanding applications (like if you want to run a 3 phase oil pump together with the drive motor). In true dual motor inverters, you would want to use two boards.


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## Fairlady-E (Mar 6, 2016)

Bumping this thread because the work you're doing is awesome and I want to buy one as soon as you're ready to sell them!


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

Fairlady-E said:


> Bumping this thread because the work you're doing is awesome and I want to buy one as soon as you're ready to sell them!


Thanks for the interest. Design is at the PCB manufacturer, they will send it to the assembly shop here in Europe during next week. 
We are making 22 PCBs, 6 as a test assembly, 14 more assembled once we check then it all works.

And then tons of software works! We've added a lot of things on this release. Since using just the resolver to encoder proved to be a bad solution, we had to put the full resolver interface onboard. Plus there are plenty of things that had been modified, added.. It's always the same, when you are not pushed by deadlines, you keep on adding and adding features. It's finally in the state that I find acceptable.










6 layers, I've hidden the power and ground planes so the routing is visible

EDIT: The software used for PCBs is Kicad - colleagues of mine here at CERN are now participating on Kicad development, I highly recommend trying it out for your next projects!


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## PStechPaul (May 1, 2012)

I tried Kicad probably 15 years ago and some things didn't seem to work right, at least for my purposes. I have been using PADS since the early versions for MS-DOS on floppy discs with a parallel port key, and now I use PADS2004sp2 although I also have PADS9.2. I don't do a great deal of PCB design, but I use the schematic capture program a lot, and often for non-PCB schematics. There is usually a steep learning curve for CAD, and I'll probably stay with what I have, but I should try Kicad again and maybe use it for some future designs. It does have a huge advantage of being free and open-source, and thus great for collaboration among hobbyists and small business users.

That PCB looks quite impressive. I am also interested in buying one of the boards and whatever support documentation you might have. 

Good job!


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

PStechPaul said:


> I tried Kicad probably 15 years ago and some things didn't seem to work right, at least for my purposes. I have been using PADS since the early versions for MS-DOS on floppy discs with a parallel port key, and now I use PADS2004sp2 although I also have PADS9.2. I don't do a great deal of PCB design, but I use the schematic capture program a lot, and often for non-PCB schematics. There is usually a steep learning curve for CAD, and I'll probably stay with what I have, but I should try Kicad again and maybe use it for some future designs. It does have a huge advantage of being free and open-source, and thus great for collaboration among hobbyists and small business users.
> 
> That PCB looks quite impressive. I am also interested in buying one of the boards and whatever support documentation you might have.
> 
> Good job!


Thanks, Paul!
I've seen your recent successes with inverters, congratulations! I have to catch up with all the new-ish threads around.. A lot is going on.

I've used PADS as well couple of years ago in my last job, also I regularly have to use Cadence, sometimes Eagle.. There is no ideal CAD tool that would fit all my needs. Would have to merge them together somehow.


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## Tony Bogs (Apr 12, 2014)

The Kicad project founder did an impressive job, but for some reason or other Kicad didn't get the finishing touch until a few years ago. 
I guess the CERN guys gave Kicad the last push that it needed to become the great tool it is now. 

For simple two layer prototype boards I prefer less sophisticated tools. 
Drawback: there isn't a simple way to port designs between tools. 
But still a lot easier than the tape and film method that I had to use for almost a decade.


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## PStechPaul (May 1, 2012)

A while ago I worked on a Delphi application that could read the ASCII export files of PCB designs and part/decal libraries. I got some of it working, but not very well, and it was only for the PADS2004sp2 version. It would be good to have an application that could convert between PADS and Kicad, and perhaps also with LTSpice. It should not be immensely difficult, as Kicad is open source and LTSpice is at least free, while PADS exports and imports using a well documented ASCII text format. It is rather complex, however, and as I was not doing very many PCB designs, and I already had the PADS suite that more than met my needs, I lost interest, enthusiasm, and time.

I made a couple of other utilities for PADS. One was an enhanced Autosave utility that saved designs in an ASCII format, and it also used a VBA method that circumvented the PADS protection dongle that disallowed normal save functions. I also made something called "PADSreuse", which could take a portion of a design, such as a gate driver, and replicate it in an X-Y grid with various numbers of rows and columns, or in a radial fashion. It would also renumber each subcircuit with reference designators like 101, 201, ... 

I'd be happy to provide the source code if anyone is interested.


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

PStechPaul said:


> A while ago I worked on a Delphi application that could read the ASCII export files of PCB designs and part/decal libraries. I got some of it working, but not very well, and it was only for the PADS2004sp2 version. It would be good to have an application that could convert between PADS and Kicad, and perhaps also with LTSpice. It should not be immensely difficult, as Kicad is open source and LTSpice is at least free, while PADS exports and imports using a well documented ASCII text format. It is rather complex, however, and as I was not doing very many PCB designs, and I already had the PADS suite that more than met my needs, I lost interest, enthusiasm, and time.
> 
> I made a couple of other utilities for PADS. One was an enhanced Autosave utility that saved designs in an ASCII format, and it also used a VBA method that circumvented the PADS protection dongle that disallowed normal save functions. I also made something called "PADSreuse", which could take a portion of a design, such as a gate driver, and replicate it in an X-Y grid with various numbers of rows and columns, or in a radial fashion. It would also renumber each subcircuit with reference designators like 101, 201, ...
> 
> I'd be happy to provide the source code if anyone is interested.


Nice! Sounds like you were having a lot of fun with PADS 
Kicad has apparently quite good scripting interface. Once I have a bit more time, the design reuse script is also on my TODO list.. One day hopefully.

The problem with porting schematics is in what people expects from it. If it is supposed to also copy the symbols and create new ones, it usually creates a mess - the same goes for grounds, voltages.. I just redraw everything in new environments. (The UMC Drive 1 was actually in Orcad). The most work for me always comes from creating good custom symbol and package libraries and maintaining them. Drawing itself is quite fast (at least in Kicad). The slowest and most painful thing I have to deal with is Cadence. The interface is like a time machine (to the past obviously).


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## dcb (Dec 5, 2009)

someone needs to write a delphi converter first 

here is a python utility, just a quick google search, no idea if it works:
https://github.com/upverter/schematic-file-converter


```
The converter can import and export in the following popular open and closed source formats.

Upverter OpenJSON
KiCad
gEDA
Fritzing
RS274-X Gerber (see note)
NC Drill
Eagle
Eagle XML (in testing)
ViewDraw / DxDesigner (in testing)
DSN (in testing)
PNG Image
Bill of Materials
CSV Netlist
Altium (in development)
Telesis Netlist (in development)
Gerber Export Note: Gerber export requires the arial.ttf font in the working directory the converter is run from.
```


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## N-zo (Feb 14, 2012)

eldis said:


> .. I have to catch up with all the new-ish threads around.. A lot is going on...


Subscribed and interested for dual-motor configuration on RWD car and application of our own torque vectoring system


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## mxecari (Jun 14, 2016)

I'm also very interested in your UMC controller. 

For a point of reference, there is an open source SDR (Software Defined Radio) hardware board that was designed and built in the last couple years.
https://greatscottgadgets.com/hackrf/

The designer sells the fully functioning board as a product through various channels, and they also released the schematic and manufacturing files, so anyone can build the same board. At least one other group has also built and released the board to educational organizations as a project. 
http://hackrfblue.com

I'm sure there are other copies floating about as well. 

I'd love it if you chose to pursue the same type of model. Everyone in the SDR world knows who did the original, and the design can spread anywhere without constraint, which makes it great for education, experimentation, and integration into other projects and other products. 

You could pursue a dual-licensing model, where commercial applications need to pay you a fee for use in commercial EV's, and non-commercial users can use for free. Your design would probably become very popular very quickly.

Good luck in sorting out the business decisions, and add me to the list of people that wants one! Thanks.


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

mxecari said:


> I'm also very interested in your UMC controller.
> 
> For a point of reference, there is an open source SDR (Software Defined Radio) hardware board that was designed and built in the last couple years.
> https://greatscottgadgets.com/hackrf/
> ...


Thanks, mxecari! This is definitely an interesting approach, and we might go for it eventually.
What I personally have a problem with is safety. Some people are not afraid of anything, build devices that are dangerous enough to kill you in many unpredictable ways. This is of course perfectly safe in the SDR world, arduinos and other DIY electronics (in the worst case you burn your USB), but voltages and currents EVs are using are a different level.. I'm afraid that if we open source everything, first thing that will happen is that all the HV isolation will go, and protection circuits will follow. You can save a lot of money by doing that, and it will still work.

So to do an update, we've received 6pcs of assembled UMC Drive 3 units. I'm quite happy how they turned out - the silkscreen, mask.. At the end we went for six layers. You can easily see that it was not produced by Dirt Cheap Dirty Boards and similar companies  The production and assembly was done here in Europe.

Now we are testing all the functionality - most parts are working (hooray!), with some of them like the HW resolver, eeprom etc not being tested yet.
I hope that we will have the rest tested soon, and start spinning some motors


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## mxecari (Jun 14, 2016)

Great photos and thanks for the update.

Ah, I understand your concern. It's a good point. If you do release the manufacturing information and plan, I suppose the best you could do is include information and warnings about what's dangerous, what you highly discourage, and let people do what they will. You can't stop people from making their own mistakes.

I'm a mechanical engineer, and I learned to be a machinist when I was young. Machine tools are obviously extremely dangerous, and I was taught by good people how to handle the machines safely. The point is, by the time people are handling high voltages, they'd be foolish to even think about it without proper training and safety precautions, and if they decide to do something foolish or harmful, it certainly won't be your fault.

I don't know the laws in Europe or what liability you could incur, but I'd guess it would be none. You're only offering a package of information. (IANAL)

The internet if full of dangerous information, and people can choose all sorts of ways to harm themselves. It's not the information's fault if they do.

I hope you do choose to release the design. I'm so excited by the potential for EV and the ways they will change the world. 

I went to grad school with the CTO of Tesla, and he was driving around Porsche EV conversion at the time and having a blast building all kinds of EV related things. 

It's so exciting! I'd love to see a really diverse set of super refined and affordable control and power electronics for EV conversions. If the conversions were easier and cheaper, and standardized, we could get to EV dominant vehicle fleets world-wide much faster than simply replacing ICE vehicles with EV when the ICE's get too expensive to continue operating.


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## kennybobby (Aug 10, 2012)

Looks like a lot of connectors on that board--is all that needed in order to run a motor, or is that for options?


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## AntronX (Feb 23, 2009)

Wow, the board looks nice! How much would it cost to buy?


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

kennybobby said:


> Looks like a lot of connectors on that board--is all that needed in order to run a motor, or is that for options?


I'm glad you asked - there are so many connectors in order to be able to support every type of inverter we encountered, without major HW modifications. Also some people need resolver, but then they don't need encoder and HV phase feedback - you get the idea. I would say that a typical use will not utilize more than 30% of this system. But that is the price to pay for having one unified system instead of one type of board per inverter.

Also the outside interfaces are rather rich. There are tons of inputs and outputs that can be used for cabin switches, ext temperature and throttle inputs, emulation of original analog or digital clusters..


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

AntronX said:


> Wow, the board looks nice! How much would it cost to buy?


We are aiming at 650 USD end price, for majority of inverters and uses. This will give us around 40% margin on each unit.
In such low volume market this margin is far too low to actually pay off the support and development, so the users of more "luxury" inverters (Tesla for example), and companies will have pay much more than that. But in exchange they will get a better support and possibility to get specific requests in much faster. This will allow us to continue purchasing different inverters and motors on the market, and adding them on the supported list.
Over the time if there is more commercial interest for example, the economy of scale will come into play and make everything cheaper (making 10-20 devices like this doesn't give you very good pricing at the factory).

Sounds fair? Do you guys have a better idea?
I want to be very open about all this, so let me know what do you think.


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

It's bit of an off-topic, but this is my thread, so I guess that's okay.
Dave Jones from EEVblog made recently very nice video on his blog - The economics of selling hardware:
https://www.eevblog.com/2016/06/03/eevblog-887-the-economics-of-selling-hardware/

I recommend watching it, if you're thinking about selling HW. Very interesting.
Personally I think that his 2.5x the manufacturing price rule is a bit too high for things that costs more (more than arduino shields for example), as the cost can quickly get prohibitive for the buyers. But he has some good points there.


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## palmer_md (Jul 22, 2011)

eldis said:


> We are aiming at 650 USD end price, for majority of inverters and uses. This will give us around 40% margin on each unit.
> In such low volume market this margin is far too low to actually pay off the support and development, so the users of more "luxury" inverters (Tesla for example), and companies will have pay much more than that. But in exchange they will get a better support and possibility to get specific requests in much faster. This will allow us to continue purchasing different inverters and motors on the market, and adding them on the supported list.
> Over the time if there is more commercial interest for example, the economy of scale will come into play and make everything cheaper (making 10-20 devices like this doesn't give you very good pricing at the factory).
> 
> ...


This sounds really good. Thanks for the update.


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## Carnut1100 (Jan 13, 2015)

That price sounds good. 
I'd potentially like to use it on a Leaf motor down the track a little. 
I know the whole system can be used from a Leaf but the ability to use selected components without all of the Leaf electrics opens up possibilities....


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## PStechPaul (May 1, 2012)

I read Dave Jones's blog and video on the 2.5x sale price / cost ratio, and I agree that it seems about right. Much depends on the product itself, its complexity, expected lifetime, customer support, and possibility of having it copied and sold under your price. Reputation is also important, and perhaps it is wise to offer a simpler product at low cost initially to get a toe-hold on the market, and then offer more high-end items. You may also need to continue making improvements and developing new products to remain viable.


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## mxecari (Jun 14, 2016)

I'm still excited to see your board come to life. I ran across the Sevcon controllers recently and the technology is over 8 years old, and the programming setup costs are fairly high.

I'm hoping that your will have an open programming platform. 

I'd like to make one comment though. In the next revision, would you consider trying to consolidate the connectors on one side of the board (maybe stacked), or two opposite sides? I'm thinking of the next level of integration where this will need a case, and I think most automotive components that are electronic have connectors on one face of the case. 
Do you have someone working on a case? Do you want help with that?

Lots of the current motor controllers on the market for the EV conversion crowd have all connections on one side.

Thanks again. Give us some more updates when you have time.


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

mxecari said:


> I'm still excited to see your board come to life. I ran across the Sevcon controllers recently and the technology is over 8 years old, and the programming setup costs are fairly high.
> 
> I'm hoping that your will have an open programming platform.
> 
> ...


Thanks for your comment!
Yes, we want to leave freedom over motor learning on the user side, as well as experimenting with all the parameters. So the programming setup cost is zero (of course there will always be people/companies that prefer paying for motor tuning in order to get it just right). For example IPM motors can be quite complicated sometimes.

Connectors on all sides - the primary use of this platform is inside of an existing inverter, that provides casing. Since each inverter is slightly different, there are a lot of signals that you need to have on the board available (also different voltage levels for example). Therefore there is a need for really dense pinout (even though only a small part of it is used in each case).

We already have some uses for it where it is actually outside of an inverter, and therefore will need a case. To tell the truth we didn't have time to look into that yet. I can imagine something like a plastic sealed box with Ampseal connector on the side would do fine.

I'll post the exact dimensions and hole positions this weekend, so if you have an idea about some decent enclosure, let me know afterwards


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## mxecari (Jun 14, 2016)

Hi, any updates? Thanks.


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## camosoul (May 23, 2016)

...[deleted]...


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## UBCFormulaElectric (Dec 7, 2015)

Eldis, what is the best way to contact you?


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

UBCFormulaElectric said:


> Eldis, what is the best way to contact you?


Sorry, saw your email now and wrote back.

In other news, we've got the Smart 55kW compact drive unit to run with the UMC - will post some video of that soon. Everything good so far. No updates means that there is a lot happening 










Some fun with Tesla drive units and CAN bus as well


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## kennybobby (Aug 10, 2012)

Wow how did you get root access on the tesla IC and monitor--any help from the whiz kid Jason?


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

kennybobby said:


> Wow how did you get root access on the tesla IC and monitor--any help from the whiz kid Jason?


Sorry, not going to share the method. Tesla would just block that in the next release. All I can say that Tesla devices are nothing magical, they are just embedded computers.
History of rooting and jailbreaking taught us that eventually you can always find a way, if you own the physical device.


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## iak78612 (Jan 2, 2017)

UBCFormulaElectric said:


> Eldis, what is the best way to contact you?


Hey Eldis, 

I PM'ed you a couple days ago. I am planning my project out. Your UMC will really simplify things if I can get it.


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## wakinyantanka (Apr 8, 2008)

This looks very promising. Any recent progress?


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

People are doing pretty cool stuff with the Tesla and our UMC Drive 3 

www.facebook.com/onpointdyno/videos/840019829469591

Full CAN emulation at high power. Not like Jack's EVTV unit, being stuck in the 80kW limp mode..


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## foxr (Apr 16, 2015)

So If I source a tesla drivetrain, what else is needed besides my own custom install work into the car?


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

foxr said:


> So If I source a tesla drivetrain, what else is needed besides my own custom install work into the car?


Not much.. You'll need the throttle pedal, the UMC Drive, a suitable current sensor to monitor the battery current, and that's pretty much it. A way to shift would be nice, so either a couple of switches or send the shifter command over CAN.

Documentation and manuals.. Something I definitely need to work on a bit.


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## Tomdb (Jan 28, 2013)

Hello Eldis,

So the board replaced the inverter board in the drivetrain? Or are you driving the tesla OEM inverter board over can bus?

By can bus emulation do you mean it behaves nearly the same as the original OEM tesla from the can bus out?


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

Tomdb said:


> Hello Eldis,
> 
> So the board replaced the inverter board in the drivetrain? Or are you driving the tesla OEM inverter board over can bus?
> 
> By can bus emulation do you mean it behaves nearly the same as the original OEM tesla from the can bus out?


We've done both. What you see there is a full CAN emulation of the vehicle side, so the Tesla Drive Unit is not modified in any way. The only exception is that people have to send us the controller that sits in the inverter, so we can flash it with a new firmware and unblock the immobilizer. Without it will just be stuck in limp or sluggish/incompatible. Thanks to this, we don't need to stock the Drive Units and ship them across the pond.

So to sum it up, on this example the UMC controls the Drive Unit over the original CAN, emulating the rest of the car.


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## kennybobby (Aug 10, 2012)

So does this mean a controller chip is de-soldered and sent to you, then it is reprogrammed and returned, then re-soldered back onto the board?


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

kennybobby said:


> So does this mean a controller chip is de-soldered and sent to you, then it is reprogrammed and returned, then re-soldered back onto the board?


No soldering. Just take out the controller board from the inverter. It's 6 screws and few connectors to disconnect.


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## dcb (Dec 5, 2009)

eldis said:


> We've done both. What you see there is a full CAN emulation of the vehicle side, so the Tesla Drive Unit is not modified in any way. The only exception is that people have to send us the controller that sits in the inverter, so we can flash it with a new firmware and unblock the immobilizer. Without it will just be stuck in limp or sluggish/incompatible. Thanks to this, we don't need to stock the Drive Units and ship them across the pond.
> 
> So to sum it up, on this example the UMC controls the Drive Unit over the original CAN, emulating the rest of the car.


just curious, how does the dual motor controller instaspin processor play into the canbus approach? Or is that overkill for this? 

any notable differences in the approach having done both? (i.e. it was rumored tesla used DTC instead of FOC, hence those impressive current sensors)?


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

dcb said:


> just curious, how does the dual motor controller instaspin processor play into the canbus approach? Or is that overkill for this?
> 
> any notable differences in the approach having done both? (i.e. it was rumored tesla used DTC instead of FOC, hence those impressive current sensors)?


Sure, you don't need so much processing power and all the advanced peripherals. Most of the work comes from the software and firmware side.

I don't see any problem in doing FOC with Tesla. When things settle down a bit, I'll take some phase samples on the motor itself.


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## wakinyantanka (Apr 8, 2008)

Impressive!!! I'm super excited to start my next build now. 
Will be ordering soon. 
Thank you for your hard/excellent work!!


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## palmer_md (Jul 22, 2011)

eldis said:


> People are doing pretty cool stuff with the Tesla and our UMC Drive 3
> 
> www.facebook.com/onpointdyno/videos/840019829469591
> 
> Full CAN emulation at high power. Not like Jack's EVTV unit, being stuck in the 80kW limp mode..



I did not know you were selling anything yet. Is it available or just in testing for now?


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

palmer_md said:


> I did not know you were selling anything yet. Is it available or just in testing for now?


We are selling things already. For now for testing mainly, as there is no documentation  But things are improving.


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## riba2233 (Apr 29, 2015)

Wow this thing with hacking tesla inverter brains is brilliant! Nice work man, you are genuis!


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## Yabert (Feb 7, 2010)

eldis said:


> We are selling things already. For now for testing mainly, as there is no documentation  But things are improving.


Brilliant!
My bet is you will sell many unit and the scrapyards will sell many Tesla drivetrain


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## foxr (Apr 16, 2015)

I would save up for a future build into something if I had a goal of what I'm looking at spending for this thing as I don't waste time and would expect start to finish to be 6 months or less. Can you send me prices?


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## coleasterling (Feb 29, 2012)

Eldis, how do we get a hold of one of these? I still have IMA projects going.


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## mfox (Feb 3, 2013)

Hello , that's great news and progres.  This works with both motors on the axle? , or is it sutable for one motor ? 
Tnx


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## palmer_md (Jul 22, 2011)

mfox said:


> Hello , that's great news and progres.  This works with both motors on the axle? , or is it sutable for one motor ?
> Tnx


Tesla only has one motor per axle. One front and one rear. The other half of the motor/gearbox assembly is the inverter, not a second motor.

For a dual motor you'll need to find a Rimac in the wrecking yard. haha.


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## mfox (Feb 3, 2013)

Oh , that's great , when I read about tesla motor, it is mentioned one motor, and when you see the picture it looks like it has two motors. .. so i was confuse. I thought then , where is inverter then. .
Tnx


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## foxr (Apr 16, 2015)

So pricewise if I get the tesla drive train for around $7k how much in total cost are we looking at here not counting my shell of a car.


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## Batterypoweredtoad (Feb 5, 2008)

I apologize if my logic is wrong, but I assume by replacing the stock board with this board in whichever inverter you are using you gain control of most of the safety limits like amperage and voltage? If that is actually the case does anyone have any idea what the stock limits are on some of the more common inverters like the Volt and Leaf? Then of course I would be curious what they might reasonably be pushed to for short bursts.


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## piotrsko (Dec 9, 2007)

You actuall gain control of the devices that operate the power sections. Limits do not change, and are controlled by physical parameters like thermal radiance and physical size


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## Batterypoweredtoad (Feb 5, 2008)

piotrsko said:


> You actuall gain control of the devices that operate the power sections. Limits do not change, and are controlled by physical parameters like thermal radiance and physical size


I understand that the actual limits are based on construction and components but those limits are based on factory use, desired lifespans, and warranties. I guess my question is better stated as several separate questions: 

1) Do you gain control of the _settings_ that limit amperage max, battery amp minimums, max/min motor voltage, max/min battery voltage etc? 

2)Does anyone here have some knowledge of the factory limits (through controller settings) for each of those parameters? 

3) Does anyone here know the ratings of the typically limiting internal components of either of the controllers, which could be used to make your own decisions how far you want to derate the limits you chose to use?


I understand that deviating from factory settings often shortens lifespans, but these parts are comparatively cheap in the DIY world and turning up the wick a bit for short durations could be an easy ticket to fun. Besides, if you aren't breaking stuff in you race car every once in awhile you aren't pushing hard enough.


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## kiwifreeenergy (Apr 22, 2013)

Hi There I am interested in your system to help modify my 2000 honda insight.I am currently going through the options to replace nimh batteries with lithium,upping the IMA boost levels or doing a full electric conversion.what is the cost involved for the board & what level of support is available? I appreciate that it is in the pre production & testing phases.


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## Ron P (Oct 12, 2016)

Would this be compatible with a Leaf power train? Thanks ronp


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## Jaesin (Mar 6, 2011)

I noticed this on youtube. Powered by UMC.


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## foxr (Apr 16, 2015)

Can I buy this UMC controller for a leaf motor to put out at least 200kw or what motor will it control? Im either going to build my own or buy one that will do what I need.
I also have a spark ev I drive I'd be willing to help with testing etc.


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## gustavopm57 (Apr 30, 2015)

I think is a follow up to the video that Jaesin posted:

They spend a little more time tlaking about the UMC:







https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDu9HpPD8VY[/URL]


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

Hi guys,

Sorry for the lack of updates! As you correctly pointed out, the UMC 3.0 is used by our friends at OnPointDyno in Canada in that Lotus Evora Tesla motor conversion.

I've updated my signature with the new link to contact us. Soon there will be a FAQ section and guides what can be or can't be done, too.


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## Caballus (Apr 2, 2017)

eldis,

I had an idea of using an OEM inverter with a controller like UMC to use as a CHADEMO charger/inverter.

So the idea is to combine a 3-phase CHADEMO charger and a 3-phase CHADEMO vehicle-to-home generator, by taking advantage of bi-directional nature of the typical vehicle inverter.

In one mode, it would operate like a charger to provide DC fast charge for the battery. It would be powered by 3-phase 60hz 208v commercial power. This would be similar to one of these http://www.electway.net/product/15KW_Portable_Fast_DC_Charger_for_Electric_car.html

In the second mode, it would operate similar to the CHADEMO generators that seem to exist by are very rare. Like this https://www.chademo.com/portfolios/honda-9kva/
or
https://www.homepower.com/articles/vehicles/all-electric/use-your-electric-car-power-your-house

I would like to be able to fast charge my LEAF on 3-phase. Once charged, I would like to be able to drive to a remote job site and provide 3-phase power running off the LEAF battery.

Do you think this is feasible? It seems like mostly a CANBUS/CHADEMO programming project (once the connectors and safety electronics is designed).


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## Caballus (Apr 2, 2017)

Sending this again since post disappeared. Sorry if duplicated.

I have this idea of using the CHAdeMO port on my LEAF for both charging AND backup/location power.

I found these devices that seem to exist, although very pricey
Chargers
http://www.electway-store.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=90
http://www.andromedapower.com/products/orca-mobile/#

Generators
https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/hondas-power-exporter-9000/
https://www.homepower.com/articles/vehicles/all-electric/use-your-electric-car-power-your-house

My question is: Can a salvaged inverter typically found in cars like the LEAF, Volt, etc. be controlled (by a device like UMC) to use the CHAdeMO port in a bi-directional manner? I would like to be able to charge the car on 3-phase power (at least 208v, 60hz, 20kw). I would also like to use some of that power out of the battery to provide 3-phase power at a remote site.

I am assuming that in addition to the usual inverter signals, interfacing with the CHAdeMO protocol would need to be in the mix.


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

Actually we have been working on this technology for a while now.
We have a modular system consisting of different power converters (isolated, non isolated, uni and bi-directional). Each module is 25kW, based on high-efficiency Silicon Carbide (SiC) switching technology.

It's sort of like LEGO, and allows people to do funny things like what you've mentioned (power transfers, fast charging, battery to battery).
Non-isolated stages have overall efficiency around 99%, isolated modules 98%, combined two stage (like a uni-directional three phase to CCS/Chademo charger) have around 97%.

The testing is still ongoing, most variants will be on the market around autumn. It is not appearing on our website yet, but it will soon. I'll just leave a photo of one of the DC/DC modules here:



















Thanks to the efficiency figures, it will be a fraction of size and weight of the stuff you've sent  Gotta love the technological progress.
To your question about using inverters for this - I wouldn't recommend it. It is doable, we've made a prototype of 3 phase in, 3 phase out, intermediate battery system out of a Prius 3rd Gen inverter, and the principle works, but it's a lot of mess to put together and it ended up being expensive and complicated anyway.

This is a bit of an off-topic. I'll start a thread about this soon in the technical section. 




Caballus said:


> Sending this again since post disappeared. Sorry if duplicated.
> 
> I have this idea of using the CHAdeMO port on my LEAF for both charging AND backup/location power.
> 
> ...


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## Caballus (Apr 2, 2017)

That is awesome. I figured someone had to be working on this. That CHAdeMO port is very underutilized.

Very interested in your projects. Still catching up on them and others since I have a lot of EV work in the near future than can use this stuff.

Paul


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## Jaesin (Mar 6, 2011)

Nice! Thanks for letting us know about it.


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## Bowser330 (Jun 15, 2008)

Bumping this up for updates....is this for sale to the public yet?


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## Caballus (Apr 2, 2017)

Yes, I would throw money at this if I could get a working device (or at least components). The Chinese are selling CHAdeMO chargers and generators at the $2k to $3k price point. Would love to see both in the same device at that price.


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## Kevin Sharpe (Jul 4, 2011)

Caballus said:


> Yes, I would throw money at this if I could get a working device (or at least components).


Keep an eye on Damien's open source Tesla charger project... we expect that to eventually deliver a device that will support multiple DC charging standards


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## Bowser330 (Jun 15, 2008)

Any one have any details on when the UMC drive will become available to the general public?


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## Kevin Sharpe (Jul 4, 2011)

Bowser330 said:


> Any one have any details on when the UMC drive will become available to the general public?


Have you tried contacting Advantics?

http://advantics.fr/about-us/


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## itchyback (May 28, 2014)

yep its available, i have one. 
its not in the car yet  but soon enough


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## Batterypoweredtoad (Feb 5, 2008)

How computer savvy do you have to be to install one in a Leaf inverter?


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## trseven (Dec 9, 2008)

Any News? I'd like one of these for a Chevy Volt inverter. Sent a few emails, haven't heard back. Thanks!


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## aeroscott (Jan 5, 2008)

I also want a chevy volt board


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## Kevin Sharpe (Jul 4, 2011)

If you guys are struggling when you want to hand over money imagine what will happen when you need support 

I'd recommend working with Johannes on an open source solution... the days of the closed controller has passed 

http://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/showthread.php/another-homebrew-ac-controller-45909.html


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## Romankaminskiy (Jan 13, 2018)

Hello, I ordered My Chevy Volt in IAAI auction after small road incendent with RUN and Drive condition. but when it arrived to me in Ukraine, it's have full discarded +12v battery. After we loaded battery and clear all errors only one left one P0ABC. Cars not drive and all HV system not work. I found dead fuse in MSD. It look like have short circut inside. I removed HV battery and unbolt it. I found two HV Panasonic 120A contactors dead in on position ( allways short). I ordered in ebay used parts, but I don't know why it happened. I worry about hybride motors drive controller/invertor 12643810, if when I install battery with new relays and try to on the car i received same short circut. I checked HV battery conector on module and input impedance +- only 80 ohm. This connector have direct wires with lower connector to AC etc. Maybe anyone want check to me this impedence ? any ideas ? thanks. Roman


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## Romankaminskiy (Jan 13, 2018)

Any ideas? maybe someone have inside pics or diagrams of controller/invertor 12643810?
It's look like battery have direct connection to Bi-Polar Transistors and for me 80 ohm it's so very lowe inpedance.


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## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

Not really the right thread for your questions.


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## Romankaminskiy (Jan 13, 2018)

I need know battery connector input impedance+- in controller. Its look like have Smoothing capacitor direct connection and impedance measured maybe incorrect. but i nee know input impedance from another controller, if anyone will measure it. thanks


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## Romankaminskiy (Jan 13, 2018)

i killed today second set of contactors and MSD. thanks for no help.


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## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

You're welcome


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## Romankaminskiy (Jan 13, 2018)

f-ck off, i must remove battery now


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## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

I *told *you this was the wrong thread for your question, you decided to ignore that advice.


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## Kevin Sharpe (Jul 4, 2011)

Romankaminskiy said:


> f-ck off, i must remove battery now


I appreciate you're upset Roman but very few people on DIY Electric are repairing OEM cars. My suggestion would be to try asking your questions on a site dedicated to the Volt/Ampera and start by finding out how to obtain the diagnostics data for the car. It's possible the car is reporting the fault codes if you know how to find them.

With regards to DIY Electric the thread that seems most relevant, and where I suggest you ask your question, is here;

Chevy Volt / Opel Ampera Inverter


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## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

If he can't be bothered to do 30 seconds of searching on the forums and then subsequently lashes out at others because of his failures I don't think this is the right forum for him.


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## Romankaminskiy (Jan 13, 2018)

JRP3 said:


> If he can't be bothered to do 30 seconds of searching on the forums and then subsequently lashes out at others because of his failures I don't think this is the right forum for him.


I lost lot of time for find info, I posted in few forums and in Volt same/ nobody help me/ I wait two weeks/ but it's my problem/ controler it's bad look pics


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## arber333 (Dec 13, 2010)

Romankaminskiy said:


> I lost lot of time for find info, I posted in few forums and in Volt same/ nobody help me/ I wait two weeks/ but it's my problem/ controler it's bad look pics


Check here for used inverters: https://www.proxyparts.com/car-parts-stock/result/make/opel/model/ampera/part/inverter-(hybrid)/

or here: https://www.ebay.com/itm/13-15-CHEV...ash=item25ebd8dc71:g:fb8AAOSwpLNYBnI-&vxp=mtr

and dont be rude if we re trying to help you by dissuading you from something. If you ignore warning $$$ are on you.

A


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## palmer_md (Jul 22, 2011)

Romankaminskiy said:


> I lost lot of time for find info, I posted in few forums and in Volt same/ nobody help me/ I wait two weeks/ but it's my problem/ controler it's bad look pics


UMC is not going to help get this back to running. The used inverters mentioned above are your best route at this point I think.


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## Romankaminskiy (Jan 13, 2018)

thanks. i ordered one other used.


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## arber333 (Dec 13, 2010)

Romankaminskiy said:


> thanks. i ordered one other used.


If there are some broken connectors or water pipes i suggest you cannibalise them from your inverter. Dont try to take apart inside inverter though, its too much work and risk. I have one inverter at home and besides making a new I/O connector front plate i will not change anything!!! I will just add my brainboard and try to run it.

EDIT:
Maybe you could send me cable connectors for sensor and driver cables with connectors from your busted main/driver board? Also two current sensors? Those are usefull things for making DIY inverter .

A


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## Romankaminskiy (Jan 13, 2018)

arber333 said:


> If there are some broken connectors or water pipes i suggest you cannibalise them from your inverter. Dont try to take apart inside inverter though, its too much work and risk. I have one inverter at home and besides making a new I/O connector front plate i will not change anything!!! I will just add my brainboard and try to run it.
> 
> EDIT:
> Maybe you could send me cable connectors for sensor and driver cables with connectors from your busted main/driver board? Also two current sensors? Those are usefull things for making DIY inverter .
> ...


no problem, send me your email in personal ms. and stay in touch. i need pics what you need and i send my parts pics


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## arber333 (Dec 13, 2010)

Romankaminskiy said:


> no problem, send me your email in personal ms. and stay in touch. i need pics what you need and i send my parts pics


Thank you for your contribution to DIY side. I got the packet. 

A


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## SLEI (Sep 9, 2010)

How much UMC Drive 3.0 Universal Motor Controller cost?
If used in Tesla drive unit and Lotus Evora it seems to be expensive.


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## Kevin Sharpe (Jul 4, 2011)

SLEI said:


> How much UMC Drive 3.0 Universal Motor Controller cost?


I think it's a dead product 



SLEI said:


> If used in Tesla drive unit and Lotus Evora it seems to be expensive.


You can build an open source Tesla motor controller for a couple hundred Euros or buy a fully assembled and tested one from Damien for 1500 Euros (see project details here).


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## SLEI (Sep 9, 2010)

I don't have tesla parts, I was thinking using this for Toyota/ Lexus controllers.
Version has at least evolved to 3.0?


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## Kevin Sharpe (Jul 4, 2011)

SLEI said:


> Version has at least evolved to 3.0?


Why not try contacting them?

http://advantics.fr/about-us/

Last update on here was May 2017 (see here) and the website has not changed for many months afaik.


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## trseven (Dec 9, 2008)

Always optimistic, I checked the web page again. They have added more boards to their products but still not prices or way to order. No idea why no one replies. I haven't tried again after the last 3 attempts. 

Gerry


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## SLEI (Sep 9, 2010)

Haven't got any answer either from the Company.


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## Adharps (Oct 27, 2018)

Yes I tried too, the same looking for pre built controller running SVPWM code for a Toyota / Lexus Hybrid Inverter and the UMC drive 3 from Advantics.fr looked like a good fit, but no Response from the company. Ow well at least I know I am not going crazy. Looks like I may have to go down the open source path and reverse engineering of the inverter which I know peaple on this forum have already done for this type of inverter unless somebody has any better ideas. 

Link to Bigmouse BMW build using Lexus Hybrid Inverter and Lexus GS450h e-CVT transmission
https://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/showthread.php/bmw-330ci-conversion-142946.html


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## Jack-Lee (Mar 29, 2019)

Hello,


could youre UMC work with the BMW I3 Drivesystem?


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## Emyr (Oct 27, 2016)

Jack-Lee said:


> Hello,
> 
> 
> could youre UMC work with the BMW I3 Drivesystem?


UMC project is dead.


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## jlcortex (Nov 29, 2012)

Emyr said:


> UMC project is dead.


Are you sure?, They have a new UMC 3.0. In my opinion it is very interesting product because it is Instaspin based and in my experience Instaspin is 
one step ahead of any motor controlller, i think it is better than the original tesla firmware, more modern at least because tesla is aslo based on TI technology.


They have this pictures of new board in the website:


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## Emyr (Oct 27, 2016)

jlcortex said:


> Are you sure?


Well, that was my opinion when I posted that 9 months ago, given several members reporting no responses to any communications and the website not being updated.


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## jlcortex (Nov 29, 2012)

It definitely seems like there is no answer. So i am working on similar project as UMC2.0, with instaspin development board:









and directly attachment to FF600R06ME3 modules with SCALE2 drivers:









I think it is very easy way to start with high voltage projects, It is inspired on Marcos Chaparro's Axiom project, but with instaspin controller.


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