# Sevcon Gen 4 size 10 controller help



## David Arthur (Sep 25, 2017)

Hi Has anybody got hands on experience who could help, pref based in the UK, with the controller above, we have 2 controllers, and they are connected to 2 new Yasa P400 motors, and as far as we know, the controllers were previously run up on a dyno and set up, so most of the info input is already established, we have also got them connected via software, via a PC to make adjustments, but it would appear, we need more info or new firmware to go forward. We can get no help whatsoever from Sevcon or from Yasa. I know there are alternatives about, but has anybody got any recommendations, and the least expensive way forward, or i have several more motors available, and could swop a motor, for say a Reinhart controller that's already set up for the Yasa, or exchange for my Sevcon, if you are familiar with these units. Despite the units pedigree, and credentials, i am so disappointed in this set up, so much so i am swopping over to a more basic system, as per say a Hyper 9 or similar, not only at a quarter of the price, but where help and information are freely available, and at least you can get a vehicle to run, somewhere it seems, i am not going any time soon.


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## cricketo (Oct 4, 2018)

"Something is wrong" Sorry to hear, but what exactly do you need from the community ?


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## David Arthur (Sep 25, 2017)

cricketo said:


> "Something is wrong" Sorry to hear, but what exactly do you need from the community ?


Hi Cricketo Hoping somebody who may have any later firmware they can offer, that we can upload into the controller, or had any practical experience working on these, and any insight, that can help to get the motors to run, prepared to pay for help, or swap barter in exchange for resolving these issues, or buy alternative controllers, to get them running. Yours Dave


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## cricketo (Oct 4, 2018)

"later firmware" is a non-deterministic ask. What is your current version ? What is your actual current issue ? I couldn't decipher from your first post what "these issues" actually entails.


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## remy_martian (Feb 4, 2019)

"Controllers were run up on a dyno"?

With the specific motors you have?


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## David Arthur (Sep 25, 2017)

cricketo said:


> "later firmware" is a non-deterministic ask. What is your current version ? What is your actual current issue ? I couldn't decipher from your first post what "these issues" actually entails.


Sorry i should say, i am not very literate regards the understandings, and workings of the controllers, and so handed it over to an expert, who although very familiar with Sevcon products, had no experience, on the size 10 units, and its only because he has hit a brick wall, with support, that i am now asking for help here. From what my man says, these are earlier units, and need updated firmware, so he can communicate, and manipulate the controller as required, as currently he is not. So it would be more correct I should say, that initially, used motors, (which i still have) were originally used and fitted and run up on a dyno, whilst connected to the Sevcons in question, to configure them, map them whatever? so a lot of the difficult settings required were already done, which was why my Engineer accepted the challenge, anticipating only needing to set the pack voltages, max min amps, BMS etc etc, and establish that they ran, before handing over to my customer. The only changes made from original, is, i swopped over the used motors, as originally fitted, out to new motors, of the same type, as requested by my customer, as he preferred new. Hope this helps. Yours Dave


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## David Arthur (Sep 25, 2017)

remy_martian said:


> "Controllers were run up on a dyno"?
> 
> With the specific motors you have?


Hi Ive just replied, to an earlier post, hope this makes things a bit clearer, but if you can shine any light on this, it would be much appreciated, or if you have a technical question, i will prompt my engineer for the correct response, as i just about grasp a very basic DC setup, and as you can see, well out of my depth. Yours Dave


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## cricketo (Oct 4, 2018)

David Arthur said:


> Sorry i should say, i am not very literate regards the understandings, and workings of the controllers, and so handed it over to an expert, who although very familiar with Sevcon products, had no experience, on the size 10 units, and its only because he has hit a brick wall, with support, that i am now asking for help here. From what my man says, these are earlier units, and need updated firmware, so he can communicate, and manipulate the controller as required, as currently he is not. So it would be more correct I should say, that initially, used motors, (which i still have) were originally used and fitted and run up on a dyno, whilst connected to the Sevcons in question, to configure them, map them whatever? so a lot of the difficult settings required were already done, which was why my Engineer accepted the challenge, anticipating only needing to set the pack voltages, max min amps, BMS etc etc, and establish that they ran, before handing over to my customer. The only changes made from original, is, i swopped over the used motors, as originally fitted, out to new motors, of the same type, as requested by my customer, as he preferred new. Hope this helps. Yours Dave


Alright, you still haven't specifically stated a problem, but I am starting to see where this is going. What you want to do is to obtain the DCF file (configuration export) for your particular motor. Such DCF file will likely require a specific firmware, which vendors often supply. So try to talk to Yasa and specifically ask if they have a Sevcon DCF for the given motor. If they don't, check with distributors selling Yasa motors especially as a kit with Sevcon. 

Motor characterization is a very complex thing, and Sevcon doesn't make it easy. They have a separate tool something-something Wizard. If you get your hands on it, you may be able to get your motor setup. It is very unlikely you will be able to get the motor to work by manually setting it up otherwise. Then on top of that firmware may be lacking features your motor requires, such as support for specific encoder parameters and what not, which is why it's best to work with the motors for which the vendor (Yasa in this case) supplies the configuration profile.


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## remy_martian (Feb 4, 2019)

David Arthur said:


> Sorry i should say, i am not very literate regards the understandings, and workings of the controllers, and so handed it over to an expert, who although very familiar with Sevcon products, had no experience, on the size 10 units, and its only because he has hit a brick wall, with support, that i am now asking for help here. From what my man says, these are earlier units, and need updated firmware, so he can communicate, and manipulate the controller as required, as currently he is not. So it would be more correct I should say, that initially, used motors, (which i still have) were originally used and fitted and run up on a dyno, whilst connected to the Sevcons in question, to configure them, map them whatever? so a lot of the difficult settings required were already done, which was why my Engineer accepted the challenge, anticipating only needing to set the pack voltages, max min amps, BMS etc etc, and establish that they ran, before handing over to my customer. The only changes made from original, is, i swopped over the used motors, as originally fitted, out to new motors, of the same type, as requested by my customer, as he preferred new. Hope this helps. Yours Dave


Aha! So the motors you are using WERE NOT on the dyno with the controller. funny how these "minor" details eventually come out.

You have to keep the controllers and used motors paired together as dyno'd. You can't willy nilly swap them..."new" is not better when it is not compatible with the controller setup and even swapping AX and BY (first letter motor, second controller) as AY and BX is verboten, let alone what you did with CX and DY where C and D were new motors.

Put the used motors back in as paired with their respective controllers. It should work. To get the news to work, you need to send everything back to the dyno shop from the sounds of the abilities you both have.


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## David Arthur (Sep 25, 2017)

cricketo said:


> Alright, you still haven't specifically stated a problem, but I am starting to see where this is going. What you want to do is to obtain the DCF file (configuration export) for your particular motor. Such DCF file will likely require a specific firmware, which vendors often supply. So try to talk to Yasa and specifically ask if they have a Sevcon DCF for the given motor. If they don't, check with distributors selling Yasa motors especially as a kit with Sevcon.
> 
> Motor characterization is a very complex thing, and Sevcon doesn't make it easy. They have a separate tool something-something Wizard. If you get your hands on it, you may be able to get your motor setup. It is very unlikely you will be able to get the motor to work by manually setting it up otherwise. Then on top of that firmware may be lacking features your motor requires, such as support for specific encoder parameters and what not, which is why it's best to work with the motors for which the vendor (Yasa in this case) supplies the configuration profile.


Hi Thanks again, as you say, its best to work with the vendors, unfortunately neither are even the slightest bit interested, and don't even return our call's, which is what brought me here, as hopefully there are enough people here on the ground, who will know, and can hopefully point us in the right direction.


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## David Arthur (Sep 25, 2017)

remy_martian said:


> Aha! So the motors you are using WERE NOT on the dyno with the controller. funny how these "minor" details eventually come out.
> 
> You have to keep the controllers and used motors paired together as dyno'd. You can't willy nilly swap them..."new" is not better when it is not compatible with the controller setup and even swapping AX and BY (first letter motor, second controller) as AY and BX is verboten, let alone what you did with CX and DY where C and D were new motors.
> 
> Put the used motors back in as paired with their respective controllers. It should work. To get the news to work, you need to send everything back to the dyno shop from the sounds of the abilities you both have.


Hi Remy
From my own perspective, yes i would agree 100% keeping the used motors coupled together seems a logical choice, and if i was doing it myself, that would be my first port of call, 1 to have the least miss match, and 2 if you screw up completely you have toasted a used motor, rather than a new. And yes without knowing the full story, its difficult to access the others skills, mine, obvious from my posts, ZERO, i only understand enough to leave well alone, but you would probably be doing a disservice to my engineer, as you are only getting the information via me, but Steve who has more than enough expertise, and fielded no less than 7 motorcycles at the electric TT. Without chapter and verse, he may have indeed tried it as in the original setup as you suggested, but which ever way, he now regards it as a firmware issue to go forward with the least inconvenience. Regards sending it back to the dyno shop, i wish, the entire project was abandoned by a large PLC and removed, and i managed to get a tiny proportion of the stock, motors and controllers, which i naively assumed i could easily incorporate into my own project, Ha Ha Ha. Yours Dave


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## remy_martian (Feb 4, 2019)

Sounds like Steve has it all under control. Good luck


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## cricketo (Oct 4, 2018)

David Arthur said:


> Hi Thanks again, as you say, its best to work with the vendors, unfortunately neither are even the slightest bit interested, and don't even return our call's, which is what brought me here, as hopefully there are enough people here on the ground, who will know, and can hopefully point us in the right direction.


Vendors don't want to babysit the DIYers and especially commercial users without a promise of good future business, and especially when we're talking used gear. But, it also depends on how you formulate your support requests. If you plainly ask them for a DCF file, that's a very specific request which will not require a lot of time for them to handle, and they're more likely to follow up than if you write to them "something is broken! please help!" In technical matters you have to be as pedantic as humanely possible, or you exhaust people's patience really fast.


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## David Arthur (Sep 25, 2017)

cricketo said:


> Vendors don't want to babysit the DIYers and especially commercial users without a promise of good future business, and especially when we're talking used gear. But, it also depends on how you formulate your support requests. If you plainly ask them for a DCF file, that's a very specific request which will not require a lot of time for them to handle, and they're more likely to follow up than if you write to them "something is broken! please help!" In technical matters you have to be as pedantic as humanely possible, or you exhaust people's patience really fast.


Hi i Couldn't agree more, and yes, that is exactly what we did, booked to pay the £100 per hour service charge they require, they quoted 8 to 16 hours, and i then made several attempts just to arrange the delivery date, ( but every day of the week was inconvenient !!!) then with no further response, or feed back from my calls, or emails from Sevcon, i then offered to pay the £100 per hour, but remotely, just so Steve could get the info or file's required, still with no response or feedback. At this point, you have to say to yourself, they are not in the remotest bit, interested in your situation, despite you being a paying customer, so look elsewhere, which is why i have prostrated myself on this site, in the belief that some very good people are out here, willing to help, with the knowledge and expertise required for these units, and could see our dilemma immediately, and as far as my engineer is concerned with the updated file, we should be good to go.


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## David Arthur (Sep 25, 2017)

remy_martian said:


> Sounds like Steve has it all under control. Good luck


Yes Thanks for all your help anyway. Yours Dave


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## cricketo (Oct 4, 2018)

David Arthur said:


> Hi i Couldn't agree more, and yes, that is exactly what we did, booked to pay the £100 per hour service charge they require, they quoted 8 to 16 hours, and i then made several attempts just to arrange the delivery date, ( but every day of the week was inconvenient !!!) then with no further response, or feed back from my calls, or emails from Sevcon, i then offered to pay the £100 per hour, but remotely, just so Steve could get the info or file's required, still with no response or feedback. At this point, you have to say to yourself, they are not in the remotest bit, interested in your situation, despite you being a paying customer, so look elsewhere, which is why i have prostrated myself on this site, in the belief that some very good people are out here, willing to help, with the knowledge and expertise required for these units, and could see our dilemma immediately, and as far as my engineer is concerned with the updated file, we should be good to go.


So Sevcon generally doesn't support non-OEMs. They make some of the most feature-loaded controllers, but they're the most difficult to use because there is no support and even the programming kit can cost one more than a [used] controller. Long story short, you don't want to go to Sevcon. Even if Sevcon theoretically could run their SCWiz to properly characterize your motor and setup other params for your use case, it's a waste of time. Motor vendor, Yasa, is the one you should be talking to. If they don't have a DCF file (and possibly firmware), or they don't want to give it to you, then you should find a distributor(s) who sells Yasa+Sevcon, they should have the files.

@remy_martian it seemed like you were suggesting the controller has to be setup for the specific motor, and not just the motor make / model. Can you elaborate a bit on that ?


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## David Arthur (Sep 25, 2017)

Hi Yes we also contacted Yasa for support, but they are also not interested in individuals, and as you say, a certain amount of expertise is required for these units, and without a little bit of support, it can make it even more difficult to resolve, ( than it needs to be ). Fortunately the actual motors are good, and there are several controllers out there which can run these, and with more support, but as far as i can see, the Sevcon units at £10k each are just very expensive door stops, and i only hope if nothing else, that it can forewarn others before they spend their hard earned cash on such a system and company, having spent most of my life, always trying to help people along the way, i find it really sad to be put in this situation by indifference, and apathy , even more than the monetary loss, which is always an issue. Anyway i am now moving on, and selling all the Sevcon and Yasa stuff, and hopefully finding a company that cares. Thanks again for your help. Dave


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## remy_martian (Feb 4, 2019)

Everybody and his dog in EVs and EV conversions is up to their eyeballs in demand. Throwing money at them is not going to set their priorities - they will always support volume buyers and large OEMs first. I suspect that there is a deep support backlog.

Best thing to do here, imo, is to punt the controller and go with another solution like Cascadia Motion - a real company. I'm a but surprised "Steve" has not suggested this, as experienced as he allegedly is, or maybe he has and there's a false economy going on here where someone's looking to spend less money behind his back than with what he'd likely recommend. Yeah...it's $10k for a sizeable controller.


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## David Arthur (Sep 25, 2017)

Hi Remy
For the sake of asking for help on our site, with just hopefully a firmware update, these units should be good to go, and at 20k for the 2, its a big chunk of money to just write off, and i don't like giving up on stuff so easily, and can ill afford to do so, but it is my fault entirely, i just didn't realise how difficult it can be, and in this area of expertise, Steve has given me an insight into the difficulties of setting up these unit's, but also the unnecessary ( as i see ) roadblocks that are put in place, which ensure you have to go down the very expensive toll roads, to get to your destination. With all the difficulty's above, we have looked at Cascadia, a unit he is familiar with, and the company are also communicative, which helps no end, but if the Sevcons can't be sorted, ime just cutting my losses, and selling all the Yasa motors on, as i am also a realist, and move on, just more slowly. My hope, and still is, with people on hear capable of designing and building their own controllers from scratch, and also others interfacing used motors and controllers via a small pcb and enable luddites like me to control them, there is no lack of expertise, and hopefully somebody can help. Its early days yet, and we may still have some positive feedback at a later date, the last call from Steve is to reboot the system, with a fresh firmware he does have, but for reasons he understands, may convert the unit a brick, or possibly now just sell on to somebody who can resolve these issues, and make use of them. Either way i will keep you all posted, including the worst case outcome. yours Dave


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## john61ct (Feb 25, 2017)

Sevcon is nigh impossible for a non-expert professional to figure out, 

Even advertising worldwide offering £1,000 per hour very unlikely to find someone willing and able to help, IMO it would be freakishly good luck.

If you had posted across the relevant forums *before* paying for them, you could have saved yourself the 20K

If I am wrong - I really would be happy - anyone please supply links to freelance experts or support firms willing to help DIYer noobs, ideally remotely.


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## David Arthur (Sep 25, 2017)

john61ct said:


> Sevcon is nigh impossible for a non-expert professional to figure out,
> 
> Even advertising worldwide offering £1,000 per hour very unlikely to find someone willing and able to help, IMO it would be freakishly good luck.
> 
> ...


Hi John
Yes as my mate used to say, retrospection is an exact science, so my next post will probably be to advertise them for sale, ie the 2 used Yasa motors, plus the 2 Sevcon controllers, as originally coupled together, as i said previously, as far as i know, both these units, have already been set up, and run on a dyno, and so all the difficult pertinent data has been inputted, so it only needs new firmware, or a few tweaks to get them to talk, and i assume to get them running, but as per my previous posts, none has been forthcoming, but then at least, somebody will have a bargain, at least, if they can't be sorted, i assume somebody is out here, who is currently developing their own controller, could use the very expensive existing Sevcon internals, and basic carcass, and output stage? and then add on, or build their own interface, either way, at £7k plus vat for the lot, its below the price of one motor alone. My lesson well learned, i have now gone over to Motenergy, and i can at least now build something, and as its only an enclosed motorcycle, and also a light weight reverse trike, it should still be a lot of fun, and hopefully later, if all goes well, eventually using a Zero SR drivetrain or similar, to give it a bit more pep, or if anybody has a running plug and play system available as an exchange, i would be very interested. Yours Dave


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## cricketo (Oct 4, 2018)

john61ct said:


> Sevcon is nigh impossible for a non-expert professional to figure out,
> 
> Even advertising worldwide offering £1,000 per hour very unlikely to find someone willing and able to help, IMO it would be freakishly good luck.
> 
> ...


I think Sevcon can be figured out just fine, but it requires access to a variety of their software which is not free and is wasteful to obtain for a single project. Additionally if a firmware update is indeed required, that's the second access challenge. On end of the day it's a business problem and not a technical one - if Sevcon weren't dicks, their products would be a great choice.


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