# EVNetics Soliton1 - customer review thread



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

Guys, since Soliton1 is no longer a prototype, but a real product available for delivery today, I figured it would make sense to start a customer review thread, where we can share the info about this controller.

I am one of the first customers of EVNetics and I was lucky to be a beta tester of Soliton1 for past 2 months, but couldn't share all the info under non-disclosure agreement. As of last night, I am a proud owner of the final product, my lips are no longer sealed  , so I can start bashing this piece of c.... , nah, just kidding.... 

I will be posting in this thread as I go, I will be installing it and wiring it today, then configuring and testing, I will share the info as it comes up. If you have any specific questions post them here, whatever I can't answer I'm sure EVNetics team will jump in to the rescue.

First off, the link where Soliton1 can be purchased http://rebirthauto.com/soliton1byevnetics.aspx

I'm not going to repeat all the features, those are listed on the linked page. Here is what my unit looks like.









More info to follow....


----------



## RKM (Jun 9, 2008)

Dimitri,

Great specs on that contoller...1000A continuous with liquid cooling! 

Unique appearance as well, prettier than most. Makes the blocky green Zilla look pretty dated. I know... it's function that is really important, but eye appeal helps to make sales. I think I saw one of these units regulating the flow of dilithium crystals in the new Star Trek movie.

I hope quality/reliability prove out for this new controller. Good to have another option. Competition is good.

Rob


----------



## FarFromStock (Mar 16, 2009)

Good idea dimitri. I'm very interested in hearing your thoughts about it as I will soon take delivery of my BMW that Seb has been converting.


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

Yes, 1000 Amps continuous is quite impressive, isn't it? Can't wait to actually apply 1000 Amps to my Warp9 

Soliton1 comes with 2 cooling options, air and liquid. The unit has 2 integrated fans for basic air cooling and has 1/8 NPT threaded liquid cooling loop. To get full power from the controller its recommended to use liquid cooling, although you may get away with air cooling only for smaller power levels, but then why would you buy this controller in the first place if you don't plan to take advantage of 1000 Amps? 

My EV has been setup with 12V electric water pump from one of German diesel cars, I found it on Ebay for $50. I like that its quiet and has rugged construction for automotive application, so it should be very reliable. Unfortunately it uses 3/4 inch hoses, so I had to step up quite a bit from 1/8 NPT, which resulted in a bunch of brass fittings, those alone set me back $30 or so . You could use any suitable 1-2 GPM pump, it doesn't need too much flow. 

I routed my cooling loop thru my heater core, this serves 2 purposes, removes heat from the controller and provides a little extra heat to the cabin when needed in those rare chilly days in Tampa. For those of you in colder climates, I would recommend getting a small radiator from ATV or a motorcycle, there are plenty on Ebay.


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

Soliton1 has 2 terminal blocks on the side for low voltage connections. There are plenty of extra connections for future features, such as inputs and outputs to drive various control circuits, which will be implemented in future software releases. For my EV needs I just use throttle control and error output light connected to old "check engine light" in my instrument cluster.

Soliton1 comes with integrated contactors and precharge circuit, so technically you don't need any external contactors at all, although I have one contactor just because I put it in before I settled on my controller choice.

I just finished wiring my low voltage side and battery connections, have not done motor connections yet. I connected my laptop to Soliton1 Ethernet port via regular Ethernet cable.

Open the browser and navigate to http://169.254.0.1 , you will see following main config page:


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

I set my Minimum Battery voltage to 104 volts, which corresponds to 2.6V per cell in my 40 cell LiFePo4 pack. Once my pack is discharged to this voltage level Soliton1 will force current reduction limit to maintain this minimal voltage and allow me to "limp" home, rather than abruptly cut power as some other controllers do when they sense LVC event. IMHO, this is excellent safety feature, protecting both your battery and your life.

I set my Maximum Battery current to 600 amps, since I have 160AH cells and I don't want to accidentally exceed 4C discharge rate , which is not very difficult when you combine Soliton1 power with my wife's lead foot 

I left Max Motor voltage and current settings as default. You would need to change Max Motor voltage to something higher than your fully charged pack voltage, but less than max safe voltage for your motor. This way controller will limit PWM duty cycle to protect the motor if your pack is higher voltage than motor can handle. This is very useful for racers who can build high voltage pack to overcome back EMF at higher RPMs. Its also useful if you build high voltage pack to store more energy for better range, but don't want to burn your motor out. I think this is the same feature that is present in Zilla controllers.

My pack is fully charged at 147 Volts, so having this setting at 150V is perfect for me.


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

I have no idea what is "Throttle deadband" which is set to 0% by default.

EVNetics team to the rescue, please....


----------



## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

dimitri said:


> Soliton1 comes with integrated contactors and precharge circuit, so technically you don't need any external contactors at all, although I have one contactor just because I put it in before I settled on my controller choice.


Do you have a precharge on your existing contactor?


----------



## Qer (May 7, 2008)

dimitri said:


> I have no idea what is "Throttle deadband" which is set to 0% by default.
> 
> EVNetics team to the rescue, please....


*ta-ta-daaa*

Ok, it's like this. When you press the "Calibrate min throttle" versus "Calibrate max throttle" button the controller register the values for the throttle pedal when you press either button and then adjust the value with 3% to give some margin (ie "deadband", not a clue why it's called that but I wrote as I was told  ) for, for example, mechanical variation.

This should work in most cases but there's a popular brand (starts with the 11'th character in the alphabet...) that makes a hall effect pedal that has a somewhat noticeable temperature drift that could result in zero throttle being only almost zero after some driving, which could prove, err, interesting at a red light. Thus you can add some extra deadband to be SURE zero throttle is really zero, even after an hour or so...

Edit: If you come up with a better label, I'm all ears.


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

JRP3 said:


> Do you have a precharge on your existing contactor?


I don't need it, since controller will start precharge after my contactor closes on the ignition key signal. Internal precharge only takes 2 seconds, during which time the "check engine" light is on, then light goes off, you hear contactor inside the controller click and you are ready to drive.

If there was no external contactor, then precharge would begin after ignition circuit sends 12V to the controller and controller starts up.


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

I just finished wiring the motor connections, calibrating throttle range and making the motor spin while wheels are still off the ground, woohoo!

Throttle calibration is easy, you press Disable Controller button on the Web page, which opens another page with Min and Max throttle values. You press Min button while throttle pedal is high, then floor the pedal and press the Max button to record the max value, piece of cake.

Since I have automatic transmission and my own idle control trimpot in series with main pot, I also had to recalibrate my idle speed trimpot, which was expected, so no issues there.

I still need to do some cleanup while the car is off the ground, so not ready for road test until later tonight. Will report progress as I go...


----------



## azdeltawye (Dec 30, 2008)

dimitri said:


> I have no idea what is "Throttle deadband" which is set to 0% by default.
> 
> ....


You can also think of deadband as hysteresis which will allow a little wiggle room in the input of a given system without changing the output. Hysteresis or deadband can improve immunity to noise or variations due to temperature and other variables beyond your control...


----------



## Qer (May 7, 2008)

dimitri said:


> If there was no external contactor, then precharge would begin after ignition circuit sends 12V to the controller and controller starts up.


Actually no. At power on the controller initializes itself, checks some vital parts of the hardware, makes sure the power (both 12 Volt and pack voltage) are within specs, engages precharge and finally activates the contactors when the voltage has stopped to rise (provided throttle is in zero position). Your external contactor makes no difference as long as it engages fast enough, if it doesn't (which probably would mean it's broken) the engine lamp will never go out and the web page will say "Current controller mode: Battery voltage too low".

So it takes a little more than 2 seconds for it to start up. Just turn the power on before you put on your seat belt and you'll never notice the delay.


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

Just did a first run to pick up my son from school. I thought default slew rate of 600 Amp/sec would give me good acceleration, yet not too crazy so I won't get a whiplash injury . Well, not so much... it freaking burned rubber from the start....so I will be changing it to 500 Amp/sec and maybe even lower. I'd like to find a good balance between acceleration that I can be proud of and yet not screeching tires every time 

More info to come....


----------



## CroDriver (Jan 8, 2009)

dimitri said:


> Just did a first run to pick up my son from school. I thought default slew rate of 600 Amp/sec would give me good acceleration, yet not too crazy so I won't get a whiplash injury .


Probably because of your low voltage.

Btw. Why did you purchased 40X160Ah? You cold go with a much higher voltage and smaller cells


----------



## 280z1975 (Oct 2, 2008)

dimitri said:


> More info to come....


Forget info, I want video! ... at the moment there is only the Rebirth video of the controller in action ... would love to see one of these on a drag car!

Keep the updated and reviews coming.


----------



## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

dimitri said:


> Just did a first run to pick up my son from school. I thought default slew rate of 600 Amp/sec would give me good acceleration, yet not too crazy so I won't get a whiplash injury . Well, not so much... it freaking burned rubber from the start....so I will be changing it to 500 Amp/sec and maybe even lower. I'd like to find a good balance between acceleration that I can be proud of and yet not screeching tires every time
> 
> More info to come....


Hey, don't turn it down yet! Lets see some smoke


----------



## edsammy (Jun 15, 2009)

this controller looks amazing. i was wondering what the advantages are over the zilla?


----------



## Bowser330 (Jun 15, 2008)

280z1975 said:


> Forget info, I want video! ... at the moment there is only the Rebirth video of the controller in action ... would love to see one of these on a drag car!
> 
> Keep the updated and reviews coming.


+1

Video please!!


----------



## lottos (Jun 22, 2008)

dimitri said:


> First off, the link where Soliton1 can be purchased http://rebirthauto.com/soliton1byevnetics.aspx



You may want to update that link to this one as it includes another place:
http://www.evnetics.com/wheretobuy.html


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

To all those asking for videos of burning rubber, sorry, this is not a race car and I didn't sink 20K in it to break something just so you can enjoy the video of me cursing Soliton1 and its damn power 

This is a commuter vehicle with automatic transmission, so it will behave as such. Although I admit that original Protege5 wasn't as peppy as the one I have now 

After few tests and adjustments I settled on slew rate of 400 Amps/sec, which gives me excellent acceleration just short of tire screeching. I also reduced max battery current to 450 Amps, because dumping 600 amps from the battery didn't turn out as much fun as I expected. After few tests of full throttle runs, I got too excited and didn't notice how low my battery got.

Good news is that I got to test LVC protection from both the controller and my BMS, bad news is that I limped home for half a mile at 20 mph and my lowest cell was resting at 2.6V  . I immediately started charging and few minutes later all cells were north of 3.0V , whew, I hope there is no long term damage.

LVC works great, as soon as my pack hit 104V controller started pulling back to maintain voltage sag and keep it at 104V. Few seconds later my BMS started beeping and also cutting the throttle in half, so together those 2 systems provided battery protection and allowed me to limp home and get out of traffic. However, I would rather avoid this kind of thrill in the future and watch my SOC 

I also noted that drawing 500-600 amps from the battery makes those copper links and terminal bolts quite warmer than ambient temp, although the battery casing didn't get noticeably warmer. So I chickened out and reduced my max battery current to 450 amps, better safe than sorry...


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

CroDriver said:


> Probably because of your low voltage.
> 
> Btw. Why did you purchased 40X160Ah? You cold go with a much higher voltage and smaller cells


It was mostly budget restriction, I bought my cells before EV Components offered bulk prices, so I paid more and couldn't afford more than 40 cells. I believe that minimum cell size should not be less than typical cruising current, so I picked 160AH for that reason, to maintain below 1C cruising rate and get a decent range from 40 cells. Looking back, I probably should have gone with 45 cells. I couldn't go much higher voltage since at the time these controllers weren't available, things change so fast in EV world  don't they?



edsammy said:


> this controller looks amazing. i was wondering what the advantages are over the zilla?


I have not used Zilla myself, so I can't judge, but Soliton1 uses 2 industrial size IGBTs instead of bunch of small IGBTs in Zilla, and most importantly, you can have Soliton1 today, while people wait for their Zillas for months and months.


----------



## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

Do you know how low your lowest cell got under load? Did you notice a lot of imbalance after the low discharge? I don't think a temporary shot to 2.6 or so should hurt the cells.


----------



## Bowser330 (Jun 15, 2008)

dimitri said:


> To all those asking for videos of burning rubber, sorry, this is not a race car and I didn't sink 20K in it to break something just so you can enjoy the video of me cursing Soliton1 and its damn power
> 
> This is a commuter vehicle with automatic transmission, so it will behave as such. Although I admit that original Protege5 wasn't as peppy as the one I have now
> 
> ...


Can you expound upon "excellent acceleration" ?


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

JRP3 said:


> Do you know how low your lowest cell got under load? Did you notice a lot of imbalance after the low discharge? I don't think a temporary shot to 2.6 or so should hurt the cells.


2.6V was resting voltage on one cell, which is one of a few cells I have with lower capacity than the rest ( 165ah vs. 175ah ), next couple cells were 2.7V-2.75V resting and the rest of the pack were 2.9V-3.0V. Under the load they were getting to 2.0V-2.1V very briefly.

I wouldn't call it an imbalance, since we know that cells have different actual capacity, so its normal for them to discharge at different levels. Once on a charger, they all quickly got to 3.1-3.2 and now are sucking in current as normal, so hopefully no damage was done.


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

Bowser330 said:


> Can you expound upon "excellent acceleration" ?


Sorry, today I wasn't very organized, playing with settings and killing my pack  , etc. Tomorrow I will try to do more formal 0-40 and 0-60 and time them. Again, keep in mind, this is Mazda Protege, not Formula1


----------



## Bowser330 (Jun 15, 2008)

dimitri said:


> Sorry, today I wasn't very organized, playing with settings and killing my pack  , etc. Tomorrow I will try to do more formal 0-40 and 0-60 and time them. Again, keep in mind, this is Mazda Protege, not Formula1


Any data would be a great contribution to the community. The more data the better!

what will you be using for the timing?


----------



## danimal (Apr 24, 2009)

Dimitri, I was wondering how many " a few times of full throttle test" it took to discharge your batteries. I'm sure having fun reduces range but I was wondering how bad it is with a lead foot.


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

danimal said:


> Dimitri, I was wondering how many " a few times of full throttle test" it took to discharge your batteries. I'm sure having fun reduces range but I was wondering how bad it is with a lead foot.


Its a simple math, with 1C rate you can drive for one hour to 100% DoD. Yesterday I was pulling 3C-4C , which would only last 15-20 minutes to 100% DoD. Also, I did not start with fully charged pack since I used the car prior to controller upgrade and didn't have a chance to charge up, so I started with about 70% SOC. It took about 20 minutes to drain the pack, which makes perfect sense considering that I only occasionally let go of the pedal . So, it all adds up, and that is one of the reasons I set controller to limit battery current, because I want to enjoy decent range/speed balance despite my better half's lead foot


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

OK, so my pack charged up over night, all looks good despite deep discharge yesterday.

I just did a quick run to time 0-40 and 0-60 and get some data from controller.

Controller comes with a little logger program, you connect the laptop to Ethernet port, run the logger and it will display live data, while saving 100ms samples to a text file. Later I import the data into Excel and make a graph.

My 0-40 test came out to 11 seconds and 0-60 to 25 seconds. OK, stop laughing people  , I told you this wasn't Formula1 

Here is the graph, you see 2 parts where full throttle was applied and held. First part was 0-60 acceleration, then I let go of the pedal to mark it on the log, then floored it again just to run to the first stop sign about a mile down the road. By the time I let go of the pedal I was cruising at 75 mph.

Left axis on the graph shows throttle and motor current, right axis shows duty cycle in %, battery voltage and controller temperature in Celcius.

As you can see, controller is limiting motor current to maintain my preset limit for battery current, that's why you don't see full 1000 motor amps.

Maybe one day I will remove the limit and do another test just to satisfy this forum's hunger for high power


----------



## Qer (May 7, 2008)

Fancy, you did your own graph! Good job! 

What program did you use?


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

Those peaks and valleys you see in first part of the graph is where my transmission shifts, which results in RPM drops and current rise, then as RPM increases current drops, etc. 

Second part of the graph was all in 4th gear, so you see only one gradual line as RPMs rise.


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

Qer said:


> Fancy, you did your own graph! Good job!
> 
> What program did you use?


Thanks 

I used MS Excel 2007


----------



## Qer (May 7, 2008)

dimitri said:


> I used MS Excel 2007


Good, then that works as intended. I did the data comma separated hoping that someone would try to use Excel or OOo Calc.


----------



## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

What might be neat is to have different profiles that you could easily access, so you'd have one profile for the lead foot wife to limit her, then you could switch to "power" profile when you wanted to play  You could also have an even slower "teen" mode for the irresponsible types. Sometimes I wonder how I survived my early driving years


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

We drove the car about 60 miles today and I have to admit that I hate my throttle control. This stupid Curtis potbox is a non-linear taper pot, so all the action is within first 10%-20% of the pedal movement range and the rest is useless. Having low slew rate makes this situation even worse, because it creates hysteresis and makes it nearly impossible to keep a steady foot with desired discharge rate. Ammeter needle jumps up and down like crazy, very frustrating.

Its not the controller's fault of course, its just not appropriate to use taper pot when controller expects linear input. This issue has been described by numerous Logisystems users with Curtis potbox.

I will be replacing my pot box as soon as I decide whether to build my own or buy from someone. Stay away from Curtis pot box, unless of course you have Curtis controller 

This issue was not as noticeable when beta controller had limited power range, but with full available power it became more apparent.


----------



## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

Are you sure it's a non linear pot as opposed to just a faulty pot? I would think a non linear or log pot would have less action on the first part, unless it's a reverse log, which wouldn't really make sense for EV use. I've heard lots of complaints on the Curtis pot, you may just need a new, better quality, pot.


----------



## Bowser330 (Jun 15, 2008)

JRP3 said:


> ...you may just need new, better quality, pot.


I completely agree, high quality pot is a must have...


----------



## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

dimitri said:


> We drove the car about 60 miles today and I have to admit that I hate my throttle control. This stupid Curtis potbox is a non-linear taper pot, so all the action is within first 10%-20% of the pedal movement range and the rest is useless.


Yep, and you need the action to either be linear or have the exact opposite taper (and you can't change the taper without physically flipping the pot, and if you are going to do that you might as well change it to a linear taper and use the old 1:6 resistor trick on it). 

You may want to monitor the voltage presented to the THROTTLE terminal by your FrankenPot and have your wife/son slowly press on the pedal and see how much the voltage changes, especially in the first half of the movement. Depending on your max throttle calibration value, half throttle is going to be somewhere around 2.3-2.5V (full throttle is usually just shy of 5V, usually around 4.8V).

The THROTTLE terminal is heavily filtered so it isn't particularly sensitive to a jumpy or dirty pot. You still need to use the SIGNALGND terminal as the 0V connection. I know you can't stand the idea of not grounding the pot to the vehicle frame but that really is a naughty-no-no in electronics.




dimitri said:


> I will be replacing my pot box as soon as I decide whether to build my own or buy from someone. Stay away from Curtis pot box, unless of course you have Curtis controller


You can be the first person to try out the EVnetics "pot box" featuring a waterproof, automotive throttle position sensor and cnc-machined billet aluminum mounting bracket (of course... nothing exceeds like excess  ). Chris ought to get that done early next week (tues or weds - it's a high priority otherwise we can expect the same problems with the Soliton1s we just shipped to a guy converting two Porsches).

Eventually the code will allow you to remap a linear throttle input to a log response... in the meantime, you can make a MUCH better simulacrum of a log taper pot by connecting a fixed resistor between the pot wiper and the terminal that goes to +5V in the ratio of 1:6. For example, a 3.3k resistor and a 20k linear taper pot. 

NB: we designed the Soliton1 to specifically NOT be compatible with the infamous PB-6. The throttle input is meant for Hall-effect pedal assemblies or linear pots, not variable resistors. For example, the Kelly Hall-effect pedals, despite their pedigree, seem to work really well AND have the right taper - the first half of the travel results in relatively little change in output voltage compared to the last half. You can saw the actual foot pedal part off and attach the throttle cable to the remaining lever.

Or you can just wait a few more days for the exercise in wretched excess that is our throttle transducer...


----------



## Qer (May 7, 2008)

One thing you can do while waiting for a better solution is to dial down motor Amps since that will affect throttle range as well. If you, for example, dial down the motor amps to 700 Amps (which you seldom exceed anyway) it means that those 10-20% at least will be 15-30%. Still not good, admittedly, but at least less bad and since you never get those 1000 Amps anyway... 

Edit: Except that the Curtis pot box isn't linear so it won't be 15-30%. Doh. Oh well, at least it'll improve in the right direction, question is only how much (or how little).


----------



## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

So you guys are telling me the Curtis uses a REVERSE taper pot? That's insane  It makes no sense for an EV, being the opposite of what you'd want, and it's a less common part than a linear or audio taper pot.


----------



## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

JRP3 said:


> So you guys are telling me the Curtis uses a REVERSE taper pot? That's insane  It makes no sense for an EV, being the opposite of what you'd want, and it's a less common part than a linear or audio taper pot.


Perhaps... I only got a brief look at a PB-6 about 6 months or so ago, but you can't really argue with results... Audio taper pots are usually made by fusing two different resistance films at the midpoint of rotation, split 20% to the CCW side and 80% CW. If Dimitri sees an 80% change in voltage over the first half of the pedal's travel then it is wired/mounted backwards or else it's an anti-log pot (rare though they are).


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

Guys, thanks for all suggestions. I can't tell if this is a bad pot or if its by design, but this is approximately how my throttle input voltage is mapped across the entire operating angle of the PB6 arm. 









So, while I am waiting for EVNetics throttle assembly, I followed Qer's suggestion and reduced motor current limit to 700 amps. I also fooled calibration routine to set max value at 85%, rather than 67% which it was detecting before ( I jumped 5V to throttle terminal and ran calibration  ). Also, I set slew rate back to 600 A/s to reduce hysteresis.

All these changes combined made significant improvement in pedal range. Its now behaving similar to what I am used to in the past, wider movement range and better response. I am able to maintain any desired running current again.

I still want to replace PB6 with better solution though...


----------



## kek_63 (Apr 20, 2008)

Maybe I'm misunderstanding things here, but I thought that the PB-6 was only good for 0-5k throttle input signal

Keith


----------



## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

kek_63 said:


> Maybe I'm misunderstanding things here, but I thought that the PB-6 was only good for 0-5k throttle input signal


It is - only two wires are brought out from the pot. If you connect a resistor between the reference power supply (+5V) and the throttle input, and the PB-6 to the throttle input and ground, you have turned the PB-6 back into a pot.

This is NOT recommended though, because pots tend to fail open and that would mean full throttle. Of course, if you have the BRAKE input connected to the brake light circuit then if this happened and you stomped on the brakes as instinct would have you do, the Soliton1 will shut down the motor output regardless of what the throttle is saying, interpreting it (correctly) that something has gone wrong.


----------



## Qer (May 7, 2008)

dimitri said:


> So, while I am waiting for EVNetics throttle assembly, I followed Qer's suggestion and reduced motor current limit to 700 amps.


Which will decrease the top current at max throttle.



dimitri said:


> I also fooled calibration routine to set max value at 85%, rather than 67% which it was detecting before ( I jumped 5V to throttle terminal and ran calibration  ).


Which also will decrease the top current at max throttle. 

I bet that if you run a graph now you'll find that top current will be limited to around 500 Amps, with other words it will behave roughly as your previous beta controller.

Ye canna' change the laws of physics, capt'n.


----------



## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

dimitri said:


> Guys, thanks for all suggestions. I can't tell if this is a bad pot or if its by design, but this is approximately how my throttle input voltage is mapped across the entire operating angle of the PB6 arm. ....


Ummm... so, over the first half of the accelerator pedal's travel the signal goes from 0 to 3V while over the second half in only increase to 3.9V... 

If max motor current is 1000A then over the first half of the travel motor amps will range from 0 to 760A, which is about the maximum you seem to get anyway. In essence, then, the second half of your throttle pedal's range is tossed out by the combination of limited battery current/voltage and anti-log throttle behavior.

Setting max motor current to 750A and calibrating properly (rather than trying to fool the controller) is your best solution as of now. *

* - my opinion, of course - YMMV... literally.


----------



## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

dimitri said:


> I still want to replace PB6 with better solution though...


I don't think you need to dump the entire setup, just replace the potentiometer with a better one. Talk to Brian, (rctous), as I think he has a supply of quality pots.


----------



## Lordwacky (Jan 28, 2009)

dimitri said:


> This is a commuter vehicle with automatic transmission, so it will behave as such.
> 
> ....
> 
> So I chickened out and reduced my max battery current to 450 amps, better safe than sorry...


So I've been following this thread for a couple of days now. I'm super excited about this new controller it looks freakin awesome. You guys really did a nice job putting it together, a lot of thought went into the feature set. everyone involved should be proud.

My only question for Dimitri is, why did you end up going for such a high powered, high performance controller when clearly all you wanted was a commuter vehicle? Seems like a Curtis or Synkromotive would fit the bill nicely while saving ~$1k.

Not trying to crap on the thread, or your build by any means. I'm just courious, does the Soliton1 offer anything other then high power that would make it worth the expense to the lower power side of the spectrum? A lot of the throttle calibration/ interface features seem really nice, but I think the sykro offers similar options.


----------



## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

Lordwacky said:


> ...
> My only question for Dimitri is, why did you end up going for such a high powered, high performance controller when clearly all you wanted was a commuter vehicle? Seems like a Curtis or Synkromotive would fit the bill nicely while saving ~$1k.


I believe Dimitri had a Curtis on his first conversion, so he could probably give reasons for not choosing a Curtis the second go around. I could give reasons, too, but I'm hardly unbiased... 

Anyway he didn't pay a premium for the Soliton1 because he was a beta tester (the first, actually). 




Lordwacky said:


> ...does the Soliton1 offer anything other then high power that would make it worth the expense to the lower power side of the spectrum? ...


I think this is a very legitimate and eminently reasonable question, and my answer might surprise you - _if you are not interested in spirited performance from your EV then the Soliton1 is probably not worth the price._

I mean, lots of people - especially lots of people _here_ - are more interested in how cheaply they can convert their vehicles than anything else. They don't seem to mind the crappy performance that comes from saddling a modern vehicle conversion with a "shoebox" controller that reaches current limiting from overtemp within a minute of driving. If _any_ of those style controllers could deliver even 500A continuously they would be fine for most daily drivers... the problem is, they can't. Not a single one of them has the heat removal capability to meet their claimed current rating for more than a few seconds every couple of minutes (and some don't even come close to their claimed current rating, _ever_... Kel...cough...cough...ly...)

From my perspective - never having seen or tried one personally, that is - the Synkromotive controller appears to be the best choice for smaller and/or lighter vehicles like Dimitri's. There are lots of "features" built-in to the Soliton1 that make it compelling for people with LFP battery packs, and it is certainly easy to install, setup and use, but we are under no illusions here that such is enough to get people to pay $1000 more for it than a Synkro... no, the only reason you will pay that much more money is to get more than twice the power handling capacity...


----------



## TheSGC (Nov 15, 2007)

Tesseract said:


> I think this is a very legitimate and eminently reasonable question, and my answer might surprise you - _if you are not interested in spirited performance from your EV then the Soliton1 is probably not worth the price._
> 
> I mean, lots of people - especially lots of people _here_ - are more interested in how cheaply they can convert their vehicles than anything else. They don't seem to mind the crappy performance that comes from saddling a modern vehicle conversion with a "shoebox" controller that reaches current limiting from overtemp within a minute of driving. If _any_ of those style controllers could deliver even 500A continuously they would be fine for most daily drivers... the problem is, they can't. Not a single one of them has the heat removal capability to meet their claimed current rating for more than a few seconds every couple of minutes (and some don't even come close to their claimed current rating, _ever_... Kel...cough...cough...ly...)
> 
> From my perspective - never having seen or tried one personally, that is - the Synkromotive controller appears to be the best choice for smaller and/or lighter vehicles like Dimitri's. There are lots of "features" built-in to the Soliton1 that make it compelling for people with LFP battery packs, and it is certainly easy to install, setup and use, but we are under no illusions here that such is enough to get people to pay $1000 more for it than a Synkro... no, the only reason you will pay that much more money is to get more than twice the power handling capacity...


I won't lie, I was one who originally wanted the EV done cheaply. However, the controller wasn't something I was really willing to skimp out on, but after consulting a few nearby EV'ers I ended up with a *Kel-ly*, because at the time they were brand new and looked promising, and most people here in MA were blowing up other brand name controllers and went with a Zilla, which wasn't available, so I decided what the heck it was the only option available, albeit untried at the time. That was about a year ago.

I needed something that could dish out 300+ motor AMPs for these hills without flinching, and I finally ordered a Synkro because it fit the bill, and my EV is only a 96 volt system, and has some serious power for what I normally do, and three weeks ago it was the only thing available. Now there are so many high powered choices I have way more to day dream about....

OK, now my point: I went into the EV world with the impression that Zilla's and the like are really only for drag racing. Then I built my EV and found that driving in MA IS drag racing, so expect really good business from anyone who even wants to keep up with traffic, even when it's a measly 35 MPH 6% grade hill...... Even check out the EV Album under Massachusetts, there are only two Curtis' and my Kelly, the rest are Raptors and Zilla's. That will hopefully include Synkros and Soliton1's very soon. (I have EV2 on my mind, and it needs to be bad @$$)


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

Lordwacky said:


> My only question for Dimitri is, why did you end up going for such a high powered, high performance controller when clearly all you wanted was a commuter vehicle? Seems like a Curtis or Synkromotive would fit the bill nicely while saving ~$1k.
> 
> Not trying to crap on the thread, or your build by any means. I'm just courious, does the Soliton1 offer anything other then high power that would make it worth the expense to the lower power side of the spectrum? A lot of the throttle calibration/ interface features seem really nice, but I think the sykro offers similar options.


No offense taken, I know it seems crazy to get 1000Amp controller when you only need 500Amps. Like Tesseract said, I used Curtis in my first EV, so this time around I wanted something more featuristic  and a little more powerful, but at the time I had to make a decision ( gee only 10 months ago , but seems like eternity in EV world  ) there wasn't anything good available. My only choice other than Curtis was Logisystems, but they had many troubles back then, Synkromotive wasn't even advertised back then ( even today you still have to wait 2-3 months to get it, and I have been driving my EV for 2-3 months already ). So, I just happen to be in the right place at the right time to become first beta tester for EVNetics, since they are local to me in Tampa. Just pure dumb luck . I earned my discount as early tester, so I didn't pay full retail price.

Also, after learning much about controllers, I wanted mine to be based on large industrial size IGBTs, I didn't want a string of small transistors to power my car, there are just too many potential issues, although people can argue that its been proven by many years, I don't care. Most controller failures are due to FETs getting out of sync and blowing up in an avalanche. I don't want that.....

As for current rating, IMHO its not a good design decision to buy a piece of power equipment to always run it at its max capacity. IMHO, if I need 500Amp most of the time, I want to have capability to dish out 700-800Amps in case of unforseen situation. Afterall, would you buy an ICE car which you always have to drive in full throttle? That's crazy... I want to have reserve capacity at my foot...

If I was to make a call today, it would be between Synkromotive and Soliton1. And it would be a tough call even with $1000 price difference. Why? We are yet to see how well Synkromotive can handle its advertised current levels, no one has publicly shown that data yet, while Soliton1 data is available in nice graphs on this forum. You make your own conclusions....

Also, I don't like that Synkromotive has a large hole in it with a squirell fan. Can you imagine how much dust will be inside in 2-3 years of daily driving? Doesn't seem to be designed for harsh road conditions. I follow a blog of a beta tester with Synkro and its showing lack of cooling already in hot summer days. Well, here in Tampa, there are many many of those days, so I need good reliable cooling 

I don't mean to bash Synkro, it has a great potential, but just not there yet, while Soliton1 is here today.


----------



## TheSGC (Nov 15, 2007)

dimitri said:


> I don't mean to bash Synkro, it has a great potential, but just not there yet, while Soliton1 is here today.


I just started to laugh when I read this part, cause I am still waiting for my Synkro to arrive! So litterally, the Synkro isn't here yet and your Soliton1 is here today.

I do agree with the need to have way more power available with the pedal action. You never know when you have to out run an 18 wheeler coming off the ramp right into you, and using the brakes would be useless, the only option being to go FASTER!

I have to ask, do you climb any decent size hills at all? Like mini mountains or anything? 

One thing I would like to see someday is someone do a full review of many of the similar type controllers in the same car for a week at a time, to have a good comparison. One week it's Curtis, then Logi, then Synkro, Zilla and Soliton1 doing real world driving and post data to get a good sense of what each controller is good for.

I am so used to computer hardware reviews where they through a ton of different gfx cards into the same comp, run the games at the same settings and see the outcome. I wonder how hard it would be to get a few companies to lend out controllers so someone could do full reviews on each controller with data to backup (or refute) the controller's ratings. Which I guess could be good or bad for the controller manufacturer.


----------



## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

TheSGC said:


> Even check out the EV Album, there are only two Curtis' and my Kelly, the rest are Raptors and Zilla's.


Not sure where you got those figures, I see 732 Curtis controllers and 104 Kellys in the evalbum http://www.evalbum.com/cntrl


----------



## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

dimitri said:


> Also, I don't like that Synkromotive has a large hole in it with a squirell fan. Can you imagine how much dust will be inside in 2-3 years of daily driving? Doesn't seem to be designed for harsh road conditions.


Might be a good idea to put some air filter material over the fan to avoid dust build up.


----------



## TheSGC (Nov 15, 2007)

JRP3 said:


> Not sure where you got those figures, I see 732 Curtis controllers and 104 Kellys in the evalbum http://www.evalbum.com/cntrl


I meant under Massachusetts location, I know there are rediculous amonts of Curtis's, Kelly's and Alltrax, just not here in MA.


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

TheSGC said:


> I have to ask, do you climb any decent size hills at all? Like mini mountains or anything?


No hills here , all flat . If there were hills, I'm sure I would climb them in lower gear with appropriate reduction in range due to high current.


Drove 30 more miles today, throttle response is decent enough, although clearly not as linear as I wish. I can maintain 150-200 cruising amps at 60 mph for many miles and get to 400 amps during acceleration.


----------



## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

dimitri said:


> No hills here , all flat . If there were hills, I'm sure I would climb them in lower gear with appropriate reduction in range due to high current....


Well, there _is_ the Sunshine Skyway Bridge... about 1 mile at 4% grade. That surely counts as a hill, at least


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

Tesseract said:


> Well, there _is_ the Sunshine Skyway Bridge... about 1 mile at 4% grade. That surely counts as a hill, at least


If it was within my range I would definitely give it a try, but its just a bit too far from my home


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

EVNetics just sent me next version of the controller software which has a real nice feature we have been discussing in the past, ability to "bend" the throttle curve, to allow smooth power control in the first half of the pedal range and more aggressive in the second half so you have to "floor it" to get max power. So you still get the same power, but its dished out in a configurable non-linear "curve". Its meant for linear throttles, but it helped a lot with my crappy Curtis as well. I set the value of "half throttle" to 20%, which means first half of pedal movement will control 20% of total power and second half will control 80% of power. Default value is 50% which makes it a linear control "curve".

First off, Soliton1 software upgrade is very easy, you just press update button on the Web page, browse to the file you got from EVNetics, click Update and wait 2-3 minutes, during which the error light is flashing, indicating progress. When done, light goes off, you recycle power and now the page shows new version and new features are available.

After some playing around I settled on 20% value for half throttle and it made my pedal response much smoother than before.

I still want to get EVNetics throttle assembly though, I think it will make control range even better.


----------



## Lordwacky (Jan 28, 2009)

dimitri said:


> Also, after learning much about controllers, I wanted mine to be based on large industrial size IGBTs, I didn't want a string of small transistors to power my car, there are just too many potential issues, although people can argue that its been proven by many years, I don't care. Most controller failures are due to FETs getting out of sync and blowing up in an avalanche. I don't want that......


That has been my conclusion as well. I like IGBTs better then fets. I know the Kelley and Logisystems controllers are supposedly fets but I was under the impression that Curtis,Zilla were IGBT based. I'm not sure about the Synkro, but I thought it was IGBT based as well.



dimitri said:


> As for current rating, IMHO its not a good design decision to buy a piece of power equipment to always run it at its max capacity. IMHO, if I need 500Amp most of the time, I want to have capability to dish out 700-800Amps in case of unforseen situation. Afterall, would you buy an ICE car which you always have to drive in full throttle? That's crazy... I want to have reserve capacity at my foot.........


I agree. A certain amount of over engineering in critical components is a good thing. Maybe I'm misunderstanding something, but if you have your current limted to 450amps isn't that all you'll be able to get out of the controller? Or is there some kind of override/turbo button that you push to override the current limit setting for short bursts?


----------



## Qer (May 7, 2008)

Lordwacky said:


> I agree. A certain amount of over engineering in critical components is a good thing. Maybe I'm misunderstanding something, but if you have your current limted to 450amps isn't that all you'll be able to get out of the controller?


No.

Vmotor = Vbattery * D
Ibattery = Imotor * D

D is duration of the PWM between 0 (IGBT fully off) to 1 (IGBT fully on) which means that if the pack voltage is 100 Volt and D is 0.5 (ie 50% PWM) then motor voltage is 50 Volt but if maximum pack current is 450 Amps it also means that:

Imotor = Ibattery / D

and with D = 0.5 it means that motor current can reach 900 Ampere "despite" the limit of 450 Amps.

That's why I've said a few times that it's much smarter to think in terms of power instead of current and with a pack voltage of 120 Volt (which I think D uses) and maximum 450 Ampere the motor can provide 54 kW. That is, as long as motor current is below the setting for maximum motor current (which is a completely different setting than battery current).


----------



## Bowser330 (Jun 15, 2008)

Lordwacky said:


> I agree. A certain amount of over engineering in critical components is a good thing. Maybe I'm misunderstanding something, but if you have your current limted to 450amps isn't that all you'll be able to get out of the controller? Or is there some kind of override/turbo button


I presume when you say "450amps" you are referencing the post where D mentions his *Battery Current Limit* being 450A...

Check out D's power graph to see his motor current (green line)....










It looks like his motor current is floating around 700A @ 120V (sagged) = 84kw = 114HP...

Mazda Protege5 specs
Final drive (auto) = 3.9
4th gear = .725
Stock Tires = 23.68" Diameter (195/50-16 stock)

If D was indeed going 75mph when he shutdown his last run on the graph...

rpm = mph * gearing *336 / Tire Diameter
*3009rpm* = 75 * 2.8275 * 336 / 23.68"

Warp9 Torque @ 120V & 600A = 98 * 5252/3009 = 171 ft.lbs
(98HP = 120V * 600A)

600A @ 3000rpm with 120V, cool.


----------



## Qer (May 7, 2008)

Bowser330 said:


> It looks like his motor current is floating around 700A @ 120V (sagged) = 84kw = 114HP...


Uhm. No cookie for you.

When the *motor* current is around 700 Amps the *battery* voltage is, indeed, 120 Volt but the duty cycle is approximately 0.7 so:

700A * 120V * 0.7 = ~59 kW...


----------



## Bowser330 (Jun 15, 2008)

Qer said:


> Uhm. No cookie for you.
> 
> When the *motor* current is around 700 Amps the *battery* voltage is, indeed, 120 Volt but the duty cycle is approximately 0.7 so:
> 
> 700A * 120V * 0.7 = ~59 kW...


damn it, you got me there...

600A * 120V * 0.8 = 57.6kw = 78hp

78hp * 5252/3009 = 136 ft.lbs

Warp9 Torque @ 120V @ 600A (motor) @ 80% duty cyle = 136 ft.lbs


----------



## Bowser330 (Jun 15, 2008)

Dimitri, 

Have you thought about doing any aero mods?

The ones I can think of real quick..

(1) flat under-body tray
(2) front bumper/grill block
(3) rear wheel caps/cover
(4) smaller side mirrors
etc...

The mods get even more effective at higher speeds due to the effect drag has on the car at those speeds.


----------



## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

Lordwacky said:


> That has been my conclusion as well. I like IGBTs better then fets. I know the Kelley and Logisystems controllers are supposedly fets but I was under the impression that Curtis,Zilla were IGBT based. I'm not sure about the Synkro, but I thought it was IGBT based as well.


Oops... you got that list all jumbled up. Curtis and Kelly (and Alltrax) use lots of little MOSFETs in parallel; Synkromotive and Zilla use lots of little IGBTs in parallel.

Industrial VFDs over, say, 5hp in size seem to use IGBT modules exclusively; only the tiniest ac drives from Automation Direct use pc board mounted IGBTs (and no one uses MOSFETs - they simply aren't rugged enough).




Lordwacky said:


> Maybe I'm misunderstanding something, but if you have your current limted to 450amps isn't that all you'll be able to get out of the controller?


Dimitri set his _battery_ amps limit to 450A - he could still have 1000A on the motor side at up to 45% duty cycle, though that is unlikely, given his somewhat low (for the Soliton1, anyway) pack voltage.


----------



## TomA (Mar 26, 2009)

Tesseract said:


> ...my answer might surprise you - _if you are not interested in spirited performance from your EV then the Soliton1 is probably not worth the price._


Great porduct, gentlemen, and your openness and commitment to making it so and doing your development in public within this community is also outstanding.

The Value Proposition of the Soliton1 is pretty straightforward for my application, but counter-intuitive at first blush. 

I'm building a 400lb kevlar/carbon single seat trike, and I intend to use the new EnerTrac hub motor, which is currently limited to a peak of 30kW or so. No one knows exactly what it can withstand, and it will be heat-limited in my full envelope bodywork. I'll have to be careful with it, and with my 48X40Ah LiFePO4 pack. I'm looking for the very most out of this combination without ruining things to find that point, and so a motor temp sensor that inputs to the controller, and the precision this controller offers on both the motor and battery sides is really important. I also need regen. 

I'm not an electrical engineer and I can't afford to blow up parts to learn basic lessons, so for me the Soliton1 is an easy choice. It puts everything I need to do in one well-supported package. It gives me confidence I can measure and repeat my configurations. There just isn't any way for me to get all that reliably for less money. Even if I were an EE, it would still be smarter to go with this controller and spend my time solving other problems.

Cheapness is no unqualified virtue. In my experience, a pile of broken parts usually costs more than one good one than doesn't fail. One damaged/repaired/outgrown/ruined motor or controller, plus the trouble it causes, is more than the difference in price of the Soliton1. Just as importantly, I want to learn and tweak what my machine can do, not what each of its components _can't_ do, and the consequences of that. Where the latter course of development is foreseeable, its a waste of my time and energy. Cheap parts will put me firmly on the second path.

Also, I really don't think of the Soliton1 as over-dimensioned for my application. That's a very narrow view of its capability. The high output is just a bonus that will allow me to use it in another vehicle down the road. Its principle virtues for me are precision and flexibility. In the end that will very likely save me time and money. OK, enough of the unsolicited precustomonial.

I do have a question. My project is mass-obsessed. How much does this unit in air-cooled (basic) configuration weigh?

Tom


----------



## Lordwacky (Jan 28, 2009)

Thanks for Explanation on Battery current vs Motor current. I had understanding prior, but its much better now after seeing the math.

In my comment however I was referring to Battery current exclusively only with the understanding that Motor current can be higher. D said (paraphrasing) that he wanted a higher power controller then what he need so he could draw Higher current (I assume battery current) if he got into a pinch and needed to accelerate faster, merging into traffic or what not.

rewording my question. With his battery current limit set to 450A he only ~ the same power available as he would with a curtis (ignoring the fact that the curtis can't deliver that power continuously and the Soliton can, huge thumbs up on that by the way). Maybe i read his statement wrong but he implied that if he stomped on the gas he could get more then 450A (battery). I'm not sure how that would work unless there was somekind of override built into the controller. 



Qer said:


> Vmotor = Vbattery * D
> Ibattery = Imotor * D
> 
> D is duration of the PWM between 0 (IGBT fully off) to 1 (IGBT fully on) which means that if the pack voltage is 100 Volt and D is 0.5 (ie 50% PWM) then motor voltage is 50 Volt but if maximum pack current is 450 Amps it also means that:
> ...


I agree Power is an easier way to look at it.

Power out(t) = Power in(t) - Power losses(t)
Most good controllers Power losses(t) << Power in(t) 
therefor, Power out(t) ~ Power in(t)

Which means Vbatt(t)*Ibatt(t) ~ Vmotor(t)*Imotor(t) at any given time t 
simple application of conservation of energy

or by using your equations above

Vmotor*Imotor * D = Vbattery * D*Ibattery 
or simply
Vmotor*Imotor = Vbattery*Ibattery


One question for my own benefit, Aren't all controllers rated in terms of the max battery current they can draw (throwing asside the whole continuous thing) or are they rated by how much motor current they can produce? 

All controllers use the same PWM scheme to control motor speed, so they all have the same math.


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

Lordwacky said:


> With his battery current limit set to 450A he only ~ the same power available as he would with a curtis (*ignoring the fact that the curtis can't deliver that power continuously* and the Soliton can, huge thumbs up on that by the way).


Highlighted in red above is the key point. During normal cruising I would never draw 450Amps, usually less than half of that. Then, suddenly I need to accelerate to get out of traffic or pass or whatever the situation may arise, so I floor it and I can still accelerate for as long as it takes, maybe even a minute at max power level. There is no way Curtis can handle 450 battery amps for a minute unless you have some serious liquid cooling rigged to it.

We really need to change the focus away from the max current ratings on the controllers and look towards *continuous* ratings.

Think about it, this is the first time when controller is not the bottleneck, but the battery or the motor, this is very significant milestone in EV world.

IMHO, the fact that I can dial down controller power to protect the battery is worth extra cost.

BTW, as I look at my data over past couple days, I come to conclusion that once my throttle is working properly I will increase the battery max current to 600 Amps. My limit of 450Amp is mostly imposed due to crazy throttle response, which was very difficult to control.

With good linear throttle and carefully selected "half throttle" value, I can leave high max battery current which will only be used when the pedal is completely floored. 

Hope this makes sense.


----------



## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

TomA said:


> ...I intend to use the new EnerTrac hub motor, which is currently limited to a peak of 30kW or so.
> ...
> and so a motor temp sensor that inputs to the controller, and the precision this controller offers on both the motor and battery sides is really important. I also need regen.


Right now we have independent motor voltage, motor current and battery current limits - we will be adding a motor _power_ limit to the code at some point, though (mainly need to figure out when to choose V over I limiting).

We also have a motor temp _switch_ input, not a thermistor, though the ability to read such is also on the to-do list.

And as has been mentioned/argued about many times, the Soliton1 hardware is theoretically capable of regen, but it hasn't been tested and, frankly, one of the reasons is because we haven't come up with a good way to discourage people with inappropriate motors from enabling it anyway.




TomA said:


> I do have a question. My project is mass-obsessed. How much does this unit in air-cooled (basic) configuration weigh?


Just under 15kg - minimizing weight was not a design consideration.

Oh, and thanks for the kind words!


----------



## bblocher (Jul 30, 2008)

dimitri said:


> Good news is that I got to test LVC protection from both the controller and my BMS, bad news is that I limped home for half a mile at 20 mph and my lowest cell was resting at 2.6V  . I immediately started charging and few minutes later all cells were north of 3.0V , whew, I hope there is no long term damage.


For those who haven't heard, I accidently brought a cell to resting voltage of just over 1.0v (I don't recall the exact amount offhand). When I gave it ANY throttle, it showed 0v. I figured it was ruined for sure but I'm still using it. At around 30% SOC, it's still over 3.2v resting and isn't even the lowest cell. The extend of the damage, if any, is unknown but these cells are much hardier than all the stories I have heard.

Glad to hear things are going well over all with the controller. I'm considering getting one of these for the S2K and provide some more head-to-head comparisons with the other controllers I've tested.


----------



## bblocher (Jul 30, 2008)

dimitri said:


> Highlighted in red above is the key point. During normal cruising I would never draw 450Amps, usually less than half of that. Then, suddenly I need to accelerate to get out of traffic or pass or whatever the situation may arise, so I floor it and I can still accelerate for as long as it takes, maybe even a minute at max power level. There is no way Curtis can handle 450 battery amps for a minute unless you have some serious liquid cooling rigged to it.
> 
> We really need to change the focus away from the max current ratings on the controllers and look towards *continuous* ratings.


I disagree with the Curtis statement here, at least with my setup. I have direct air onto my massive finned heatsink with a fan additionally to move air. I am able to hold 450 amps (battery side, which is where the TS BMS requires amp monitoring). I do this daily as I climb 5-7% grades on the way to work. Each grade takes 1 to probably 5 minutes on the worst one to finish and I'm doing 65-70mph up them. The only way I've ever seen the Curtis start backing off amps is when my RPMs start getting well over 4k. From what I've been told, this is because of resistance from the motor. I just upshift and the amps hold strong until RPMs increase.

The Kelley controllers that you may have read about me testing here or on my blog were another story.

With that said, I'm still looking at a new controller for all the reasons Dimitri stated. Mostly, I don't want to push my controller to the max daily for long periods of time. I'd like to go from needing 100% of my controller to maintain the speed limit up these grades to using half capacity of the controller to get the same job done with power to spare in case I actually want to accelerate up the hill. 

I'd love to put a lot more controllers through the paces in comparison, but sadly don't have the resources. The two Kelleys belonged to a fellow EVer who lives close by. I will be comparing those three with whatever I put in the S2K and I'm leaning towards Soliton1 currently. Really curious to see how it affects my 2nd gear 0-30mph testing I did. It was the most consistant test I could think of for acceleration which didn't take my shifting/clutch work into account and could be stop-watched easily. The Kelley 500 amp was something crazy like 15+ seconds, where the Curtis 500 amp controller was 7 seconds. Acceleration is much faster using 1st and shifting, but haven't timed it. I'm thinking I could actually get some decent times with a true 1K controller.


----------



## Bowser330 (Jun 15, 2008)

bblocher said:


> I disagree with the Curtis statement here, at least with my setup. I have direct air onto my massive finned heatsink with a fan additionally to move air. I am able to hold 450 amps (battery side, which is where the TS BMS requires amp monitoring). I do this daily as I climb 5-7% grades on the way to work. Each grade takes 1 to probably 5 minutes on the worst one to finish and I'm doing 65-70mph up them. The only way I've ever seen the Curtis start backing off amps is when my RPMs start getting well over 4k. From what I've been told, this is because of resistance from the motor. I just upshift and the amps hold strong until RPMs increase.
> 
> The Kelley controllers that you may have read about me testing here or on my blog were another story.
> 
> ...


You were able to hold 450 battery Amps from 0-4000rpm with a 144V_500A Curtis and Warp-9? Wow thats great to hear.

3200lb S2000 from 0-60mph in 7 sec in 2nd gear... Nice!...I am very interested to see how much faster you could get to 60 with 1000A....4 seconds maybe...


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

Bowser330 said:


> You were able to hold 450 battery Amps from 0-4000rpm with a 144V_500A Curtis and Warp-9? Wow thats great to hear.
> 
> 3200lb S2000 from 0-60mph in 7 sec in 2nd gear... Nice!...I am very interested to see how much faster you could get to 60 with 1000A....4 seconds maybe...


I believe Brian said 0-30, not 0-60 

I'm sure he wishes it was 0-60 in 7 sec, but its just not realistic


----------



## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

bblocher said:


> For those who haven't heard, I accidently brought a cell to resting voltage of just over 1.0v (I don't recall the exact amount offhand). When I gave it ANY throttle, it showed 0v.


Not to take the thread off topic but were the voltblochers installed when that happened?


----------



## bblocher (Jul 30, 2008)

Yep 0-30. The 0-60 testing would require changing gears, and again, was trying to keep it simple in the tests. So next I'm really interested to see the 0-30 time with more POWER! 

Yes, I've had the modules on since the first charge. As Dimitri mentioned, no two cells are the same. I had one that was completely empty, and the rest of the remaining cells were 2.6v resting. The pack was basically 100 DOD (one cell just hit rock bottom and the others were close behind, but I got home probably moments before this happened).  If you missed the blog entry, it was because of the crappy Thundersky BMS. I thought I had received a full charge before leaving work, but I didn't. I did as I've heard recommended, reduce my charging amps as low as possible (I can adjust mine so went with 1.5 amps) and let it charge there until I saw >3.2v and cranked it back up to 30 amps.

Ok, back on topic


----------



## Bowser330 (Jun 15, 2008)

dimitri said:


> I believe Brian said 0-30, not 0-60
> 
> I'm sure he wishes it was 0-60 in 7 sec, but its just not realistic


WOW my bad....hahaha sorry guys!

Ok.. so... I guess I am still wondering what the 0-60mph will be with the *Soliton1* 1000A...maybe you could start in 3rd gear and not need to shift...or maybe keep it in second and max out the rpm....

I tried to do a comparison of the Warp-9 and the S2000 Motor....Check out the file I attached...

Basic Assumptions:
(1) The *Soliton1* will be able to provide 1000A (200fltbs in Warp-9) from 0rpm-4000rpm, then 150ftlbs then 100ftlbs...I assumed this based on pulling almost 500A from the Curtis all the way till 4000rpm...

(2) I had to assume the S2000's low end torque values since the dynochart I used wasn't showing 0rpm - 2500rpm...

(3) I averaged the torque multiplication from 0-60mph...Is there a better way? to try to make an apples to apples...

(4) I wonder if 100ftlbs is possible up to 7000rpm (500A??) John Wayland got his Kostov 11" take 620A @ 6000rpm...9" is faster spinning...maybe?

I wonder how an 11" motor would do with 250ftlbs capable to 4000rpm???


----------



## bblocher (Jul 30, 2008)

Bowser330 said:


> WOW my bad....hahaha sorry guys!
> 
> Ok.. so... I guess I am still wondering what the 0-60mph will be with the *Soliton1* 1000A...maybe you could start in 3rd gear and not need to shift...or maybe keep it in second and max out the rpm....
> 
> ...


What are the numbers in the far three boxes?


----------



## Bowser330 (Jun 15, 2008)

bblocher said:


> What are the numbers in the far three boxes?


I multiplied the total gear ratio (Gear ratio * Final drive) by the torque...to show the "multiplied torque"..which we can use to compare the two motors....I then averaged the multiplied torque, the bottom boxed number...


----------



## Bowser330 (Jun 15, 2008)

BACK on topic....

Dimitri, how is the car running? Any updates to share?


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

Not much to report, the car is running great. I have been dealing with PakTrakr issues lately, see my thread in Tech Discussion section. Long story short, battery cables emit EMI because high current is drawn in sharp PWM pulses. The more power controller provides the more EMI will be created, plus PakTrakr's utter lack of shielding make a nasty combination 

Anyway, EVNetics suggested to twist battery cables and generally run them as parallel and as close together as possible so EMI from 2 cables will cancel each other out.

Obviously the longest cable run is from the trunk to the engine compartment and I am not going to throw that out and redo it, that would be too much hassle, but I had a little cable slack where it connects to B+ and B- on the controller, so I twisted those 2 leads as much as I could ( see the pic ). This had dramatic impact, PakTrakr is now almost 100% stable.

I also ordered large ferrite rings from Ebay, so I will try to put those on battery cables to further decrease EMI. I will post pics when that is done.

I would recommend anyone who plans to buy Soliton1 and PakTrakr to pay utmost attention to EMI shielding, cable twisting, possibly replacing stock data cables with shielded wire, etc. Twist your long battery cable runs and put them in single PVC counduit, rather than 2 separate conduits.


----------



## Bowser330 (Jun 15, 2008)

Dimitri,

How is the car running?

I remember you mentioning you might increase the Amperage limit you set earlier? Any Progress?

Keep us updated!


----------



## mckemie (Aug 22, 2007)

dimitri said:


> I set my Minimum Battery voltage to 104 volts, which corresponds to 2.6V per cell in my 40 cell LiFePo4 pack. Once my pack is discharged to this voltage level Soliton1 will force current reduction limit to maintain this minimal voltage and allow me to "limp" home, rather than abruptly cut power as some other controllers do when they sense LVC event. IMHO, this is excellent safety feature, protecting both your battery and your life.


It IS as good a safety feature as can be put in the controller. However, it is not likely to prevent over-discharging LFP cells. The cells have a VERY sharp fall off voltage when they approach end of capacity and they have small variations from cell to cell. When the pack is near to being discharged, a few cells will have much lower voltage than the average. I would consider using 3.1 volts as the minimal threshold and I wouldn't expect that to be very effective in preventing single cell over-discharge.

If your pack voltage is an average of 2.6v per cell, you are almost certainly killing at least a few of your cells. You should not be "limping", you should be walking.

You should (and perhaps do) have some single cell low voltage detection mechanism.


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

Bowser330 said:


> Dimitri,
> 
> How is the car running?
> 
> ...


I will increase the limit after I get EVNetics throttle assembly, so I can get smooth throttle control for entire power range. I am also waiting for next software release with PWM frequency control option, so I can set PWM to "silent" mode. Currently Soliton1 runs at 8kHz, which is barely audible at low RPMs and when the car is stopped or in slow motion, but its still audible nonetheless. It should be completely quiet after this software update. 

I will report once I get these things done.


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

mckemie said:


> It IS as good a safety feature as can be put in the controller. However, it is not likely to prevent over-discharging LFP cells. The cells have a VERY sharp fall off voltage when they approach end of capacity and they have small variations from cell to cell. When the pack is near to being discharged, a few cells will have much lower voltage than the average. I would consider using 3.1 volts as the minimal threshold and I wouldn't expect that to be very effective in preventing single cell over-discharge.
> 
> If your pack voltage is an average of 2.6v per cell, you are almost certainly killing at least a few of your cells. You should not be "limping", you should be walking.
> 
> You should (and perhaps do) have some single cell low voltage detection mechanism.


No worries, I have cell level BMS with LVC protection, however, you are wrong about voltage levels. You are referring to "resting" voltages, but in reality BMS trips when under load, and under load voltages are perfectly normal to get to 2.6V towards the end of charge. As soon as you let go of the pedal, they jump back to 3.1V. BMS must be set to cutoff under load, which is exactly what happened in my case, protecting the battery. If I was foolish enough to set LVC=3.1V as you suggested then I would be "limping" when my SOC is still at 70% full 

Check out TS discharge graphs, you can see that under 1C-3C loads voltage sags well under 3.0V, without any issues.

All this stuff has been discussed in details in several threads in Battery forum, look for long threads with several dozen pages on the subject of LiFePo4 cells


----------



## Bowser330 (Jun 15, 2008)

dimitri said:


> I will increase the limit after I get EVNetics throttle assembly, so I can get smooth throttle control for entire power range. I am also waiting for next software release with PWM frequency control option, so I can set PWM to "silent" mode. Currently Soliton1 runs at 8kHz, which is barely audible at low RPMs and when the car is stopped or in slow motion, but its still audible nonetheless. It should be completely quiet after this software update.
> 
> I will report once I get these things done.


cool thanks


----------



## Lordwacky (Jan 28, 2009)

dimitri said:


> I am also waiting for next software release with PWM frequency control option, so I can set PWM to "silent" mode. Currently Soliton1 runs at 8kHz, which is barely audible at low RPMs and when the car is stopped or in slow motion, but its still audible nonetheless. It should be completely quiet after this software update.
> 
> I will report once I get these things done.


I've read somewhere that efficiency of a PWM controller declines as the frequency is increased. Is there any data on how the efficiency of the Soliton will be affected if you increase the frequency? 

PWM frequency control, yet another nice feature in the Soliton Suite.


----------



## Qer (May 7, 2008)

Lordwacky said:


> I've read somewhere that efficiency of a PWM controller declines as the frequency is increased. Is there any data on how the efficiency of the Soliton will be affected if you increase the frequency?


We've done some simulations of it and the switching losses definitely shoot up from being pretty small compared to the losses you get from the Vce-drop at 8 kHz to being more or less equal to the losses from the Vce-drop at 14 kHz (the Vce losses are the same at all frequencies). That means in reality that running full 1kA at 14 kHz probably won't be healthy for the IGBTs so I'm working at code that will seamlessly drop the frequency when current start to increase.

You can probably get some seconds of peak 1 kA @ 14 kHz but we don't want "probably" or "peak" if we can avoid it. 



Lordwacky said:


> PWM frequency control, yet another nice feature in the Soliton Suite.


Ty. Soon time for dyno tests. Then our Guinn... I mean Dimitri might get his beta to play with.


----------



## mckemie (Aug 22, 2007)

dimitri said:


> No worries, I have cell level BMS with LVC protection, however, you are wrong about voltage levels. You are referring to "resting" voltages, but in reality BMS trips when under load, and under load voltages are perfectly normal to get to 2.6V towards the end of charge. As soon as you let go of the pedal, they jump back to 3.1V. BMS must be set to cutoff under load, which is exactly what happened in my case, protecting the battery. If I was foolish enough to set LVC=3.1V as you suggested then I would be "limping" when my SOC is still at 70% full
> 
> Check out TS discharge graphs, you can see that under 1C-3C loads voltage sags well under 3.0V, without any issues.
> 
> All this stuff has been discussed in details in several threads in Battery forum, look for long threads with several dozen pages on the subject of LiFePo4 cells


I can report that I have never noticed my 45 cell TS-LFP260 pack dropping below 140v, that's 3.11v per cell average. But that's with the relatively low power 700 amp Logisystem controller; it seems like it never draws even 2C. I suspect you are drawing higher C levels with smaller cells.

I configured my pack to maximize longevity. Average draw is less than 1/2 C.

You say "well under 3.0V, without any issues"; can you be sure that cells treated in that way will not fail in 1,000 cycles? For me, that is an "issue".


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

mckemie said:


> I can report that I have never noticed my 45 cell TS-LFP260 pack dropping below 140v, that's 3.11v per cell average. But that's with the relatively low power 700 amp Logisystem controller; it seems like it never draws even 2C. I suspect you are drawing higher C levels with smaller cells.
> 
> I configured my pack to maximize longevity. Average draw is less than 1/2 C.
> 
> You say "well under 3.0V, without any issues"; can you be sure that cells treated in that way will not fail in 1,000 cycles? For me, that is an "issue".


Makes sense then, you have larger cells and less draw, so you are not seeing as much voltage sag. TS datasheets are moving targets  so its hard to be sure of anything, but I got as much capacity as I could afford and I am trying to get max range while not exceeding 80% DoD and 3C discharge rates, those are supposedly "safe" for 3000 cycles, which means over 10 years of life for my usage patterns.

Clearly with larger cells you can afford not to dip to 80%DoD, so you trade range for longevity, its your call. Honestly, I rarely dip to 80% DoD myself, but when I designed LVC level I had to think of those rare occasions when I need max range even if it means 90% DoD. I look at LVC as a last resort protection, not every day protection, so I set it accordingly.

If you set LVC=3.1V you may one day regret it, even if its 1% chance. But again, the beauty of DIY is that each can make their own design decisions, so I respect yours


----------



## DJGietzen (Sep 15, 2009)

can you water cool this thing with a standard automotive radiator?


----------



## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

DJGietzen said:


> can you water cool this thing with a standard automotive radiator?


That would be the very definition of overkill. A tranny cooler is about the right size. An ICE radiator has to dispose of 100kW or more of heat (after all, ICEs are about 20% efficient, so for every 10kW of useful power there is 40kW of heat to get rid of!)

The Soliton1, worst case, generates about 2kW of waste heat. In average use it's probably closer to 400-600W. The built-in fans and heatsink seem to keep it out of thermal limiting for most sporty commuter applications. Liquid cooling is really only necessary for very punishing setups (heavy vehicles and/or a heavy right foot  )


----------



## DJGietzen (Sep 15, 2009)

Tesseract said:


> Liquid cooling is really only necessary for very punishing setups (heavy vehicles and/or a heavy right foot  )


I have both. well I have the foot and I'm estimating my conversion is going to be a heavy one. Thats why the s1 looks so attractive to me. It looks like it can help delevier the high acceleration I want.


----------



## Bowser330 (Jun 15, 2008)

Any updates Dimitri or Rebirth Auto (beetle) ??


----------



## FarFromStock (Mar 16, 2009)

Bowser330 said:


> Any updates Dimitri or Rebirth Auto (beetle) ??


Here are a couple videos that the good folks at RebirthAuto took of my BMW that they are converting using the Soliton1. 

This one is of some stop-and-go traffic:

http://www.youtube.com/user/rebirtha.../0/V5sf3JbPyCE


This one is of the highway run. They were able to run it up to 90mph! At 80mph it was drawing ~350 amps.

http://www.youtube.com/user/rebirtha.../1/W8PBEGcHBok


----------



## Bowser330 (Jun 15, 2008)

FarFromStock said:


> Here are a couple videos that the good folks at RebirthAuto took of my BMW that they are converting using the Soliton1.
> 
> This one is of some stop-and-go traffic:
> 
> ...


Awesome, Thank you!

What gear was 90mph accomplished in?

Are you using the original BMW2002 transmission?

(I am trying to figure out what rpm you were at drawing 350A)


----------



## FarFromStock (Mar 16, 2009)

Bowser330 said:


> Awesome, Thank you!
> 
> What gear was 90mph accomplished in?
> 
> ...


Yes, original 4-speed transmission with (I believe) 3.64 differential. So that means it was probably around 4900 rpm at 90mph. We haven't been able to get the tachometer working yet though.


----------



## Bowser330 (Jun 15, 2008)

FarFromStock said:


> Yes, original 4-speed transmission with (I believe) 3.64 differential. So that means it was probably around 4900 rpm at 90mph. We haven't been able to get the tachometer working yet though.


So the setup is 132V of Gel cell 105AH batteries, Warp-9 Motor and Soliton-1...

350A @ ~5000rpm with 132V (sagged too??)

NCE!


----------



## 69er (Oct 4, 2009)

Tesseract said:


> That would be the very definition of overkill. A tranny cooler is about the right size. An ICE radiator has to dispose of 100kW or more of heat (after all, ICEs are about 20% efficient, so for every 10kW of useful power there is 40kW of heat to get rid of!)
> 
> The Soliton1, worst case, generates about 2kW of waste heat. In average use it's probably closer to 400-600W. The built-in fans and heatsink seem to keep it out of thermal limiting for most sporty commuter applications. Liquid cooling is really only necessary for very punishing setups (heavy vehicles and/or a heavy right foot  )


I can't find it now but I seam to remember reading that without water cooling Soliton1 is capable of delivering 1000A for 15 seconds (after which the thermal protection starts kicking in). That's plenty enough for accelerations. However, for the sake of comparison with other controllers it would be nice to know:
1. What would be the ratings beyond 15 sec in case of no water cooling (1 min, 2 min, 5 min, 1 hour, continuous)?
2. What was the starting heatsink temperature when those tests were performed...... meaning, if short term tests were done starting with 25C (or so) heatsink temp it is one thing, but if they were done after the controller has ran its continuous load for long enough to reach steady temperature (like most industrial controllers are tested), then it is a different story.


----------



## Qer (May 7, 2008)

69er said:


> I can't find it now but I seam to remember reading that without water cooling Soliton1 is capable of delivering 1000A for 15 seconds (after which the thermal protection starts kicking in).


Like this?










Although I don't think it's the temperature that starts to degrade the motor amp in the end, I think it's the battery current (it looks rather flat at the end). Although, we've made so many graphs like this one so the one you're remembering could be temperature as well.

We've done a few runs with water cooling too and then the temperature doesn't even get near cut down no matter how wild Tesseract's been with the throttle.


----------



## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

69er said:


> I can't find it now but I seam to remember reading that without water cooling Soliton1 is capable of delivering 1000A for 15 seconds (after which the thermal protection starts kicking in).


More or less... 15-20s out of every 90-120s. This data is on the EVnetics website.




69er said:


> That's plenty enough for accelerations. However, for the sake of comparison with other controllers it would be nice to know:


It would be nice to be able to compare controllers on a level playing field, but as of now that's simply not possible: no one else publishes proof of their controller's performance like we do nor does any independent testing facility vet the claims made by companies for accuracy and truthfulness. 




69er said:


> 1. What would be the ratings beyond 15 sec in case of no water cooling (1 min, 2 min, 5 min, 1 hour, continuous)?


Interesting choice of timeframes - the only manufacturer I am aware of that uses such is Logisystems

You need a defined load cycle for this sort of test to be meaningful, of course. I suppose I could just ramp up to 1000A then let the controller determine it's equilibrium with ambient and report the average current during each time period. A more realistic load cycle would be 10 seconds at 1000A with a linearly increasing duty cycle from 0-100% (to simulate acceleration to speed) then leveling off on the motor amps at some pre-defined amounts and seeing how long you can run before thermal limiting starts reducing the output current.

Keep in mind that our dyno setup is similar to the average EV - a WarP 9 and a lead-acid battery pack - so there are practical limits as to how long we can run the controller before either the motor overheats or the batteries go flat. In general, though, the controller long outlasts both motor and batteries.




69er said:


> 2. What was the starting heatsink temperature when those tests were performed...... meaning, if short term tests were done starting with 25C (or so) heatsink temp it is one thing, but if they were done after the controller has ran its continuous load for long enough to reach steady temperature (like most industrial controllers are tested), then it is a different story.


It's both... see above. We start at ambient temperature, which for a warehouse in south St. Petersburg, FL, has been around 30C. Thermal limiting kicks in at a heatsink temp of 55C. The 15/90 cycle as described above has been repeatedly tested. That is what we call our "stoplight to stoplight" test. 

I can tell you now, though, that we can meet the 1000A for 20 seconds rating of the WarP motors, and can easily exceed their other current/time specs of 450A for 5 minutes and 225A for 1 hour. More specifically than that I haven't really tested.

EDIT - looks like you registered today, apparently just to question the Soliton1... why not take a moment to explain who you are otherwise, to be perfectly honest, I'm going to assume you are a disgruntled competitor


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

> We start at ambient temperature, which for a warehouse in south St. Petersburg, FL, has been around 30C. Thermal limiting kicks in at a heatsink temp of 55C. The 15/90 cycle as described above has been repeatedly tested. That is what we call our "stoplight to stoplight" test.


This quote is important. When designing cooling for Soliton1, pay attention to peak ambient temp which you can expect in your climate zone, for example after a car sits in hot summer parking lot for an hour or so.

From personal experience in Tampa FL, I had many instances of starting a car and seeing thermal limits kick in before I even had a chance to accelerate. Of course that was after my EV sat in scorching hot parking lot for 4 hours.

My point is, regardless of controller specs, pay attention to external factors.


----------



## 69er (Oct 4, 2009)

Tesseract said:


> EDIT - looks like you registered today, apparently just to question the Soliton1... why not take a moment to explain who you are otherwise, to be perfectly honest, I'm going to assume you are a disgruntled competitor


Well, first off, I need to appologize for not introducing myself - didn't think it mattered. I am an engineer in charge of testing lab of one of fairly-well-known motor drive (controller) manufecturers (for personal reasons I'll leave out my name and the name of the company I work for). What you care most for is whether I work for (or have anything to do with) your competition. Well, I don't! I CAN ASSURE YOU I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH ANY OF YOUR COMPETITION. You were/are guessing Logisystems ... when I get a chance I'll be asking them to clarify some things about their controller(s) (that is, if they bother to answer). My interests in EVs are general, although, because of my background, I always end up wanting to know more about controllers. I don't have an EV myself but I have a couple friends who do and I am fairly familiar with things that go on. I am planning to do a conversion next spring which is why I am trying to see what controller to chose.

That said, is it OK to ask questions about your controller? ..... and I must say that you are a little "too easy on the trigger" to assume the worst and call names.



Tesseract said:


> Interesting choice of timeframes - the only manufacturer I am aware of that uses such is Logisystems


Actually, (I just checked) they have their 2 min, 5 min and 1 hour rating (which is, incidently, same as Curtis - only "a little" more agressive). I was not asking for exactly those periods - more like "any or all of".





Tesseract said:


> Keep in mind that our dyno setup is similar to the average EV - a WarP 9 and a lead-acid battery pack - so there are practical limits as to how long we can run the controller before either the motor overheats or the batteries go flat. In general, though, the controller long outlasts both motor and batteries.


Understood .... but then, your controller is rated at 1000A continuous with water cooling. To really test it for that you would need to run it at 1000A for as long as it takes for all the components to get to a stable temperature, right?. Let's say, it takes a half hour. If done at 300 V and with sort of worst case of 90% (average) duty cycle you would need roughly 200 fully charged Trojan T-125 batteries (4 strings of 50 batteries prividing 225 A each for a half hour). That's a lot of batteries! In other words, continuous rating of 1000 A is an estimate?




Tesseract said:


> I can tell you now, though, that we can meet the 1000A for 20 seconds rating of the WarP motors, and can easily exceed their other current/time specs of 450A for 5 minutes and 225A for 1 hour. More specifically than that I haven't really tested.


If it easily does 450 A for 5 minutes, how come it can't do 1000 A for more than 20 sec? I know it all too well that things with power dissipation are not linear - still, it somehow seams quite strange.


----------



## 280z1975 (Oct 2, 2008)

69er said:


> snip ... That said, is it OK to ask questions about your controller? ..... and I must say that you are a little "too easy on the trigger" to assume the worst and call names.


While I can't speak for Teressact I can say that he has been "attacked" by other posters during this build thread (some of which may or may/not have been his competition). At one point he almost stopped posting because of it. This has been a VERY interesting thread for me personally as I watched (from a limited internet text view) the development of the Soliton1 and it would have been a serious disappointment to me if his insights into the development weren't posted.


----------



## Qer (May 7, 2008)

69er said:


> If it easily does 450 A for 5 minutes, how come it can't do 1000 A for more than 20 sec?







It simply doesn't look safe running it at 1000 Amps for long...


----------



## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

69er said:


> ..... and I must say that you are a little "too easy on the trigger" to assume the worst and call names.


Sorry I gave you that impression, though I can't really see how my asking you to provide a little more info about yourself could be interpreted as assuming the worst and calling names. 

As for my reluctance to answer your questions in detail, the fact is that just a couple weeks ago Ryan Bohm of EVSource (who is developing the former NetGain controller) asked me some similarly technical questions on the EVDL, so your timing happened to be particularly bad.

That said, please do understand that I won't give away information a competitor could use to improve _their_ controller just to satisfy a particularly skeptical potential customer. At some point you have to decide to either trust the claims of a controller manufacturer or not. I happen to think that we make that decision rather easy given all the performance data we make public (and, of course, which is very easy for anyone to verify courtesy of it being streamed to the ethernet port).

Finally, there is no need for 1000A continuously - you'd need to put _four_ NetGain Warp 9's and a _300kWh_ battery pack in your EV - but there IS something very useful about having 1000A on demand _repeatedly_, and at a certain demand frequency the line between continuous and intermittent duty gets blurred.


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

Today I finally got my EVNetics throttle assembly. I expected automotive build quality from the pictures I have seen, but when I got to hold it in my hand, let me tell you, its more of a military grade, I'm pretty sure it can be used as a deadly weapon if you swing it just right  There is no doubt it will outlast the car by many years.

Here are pics of the assembly and how it looks in the car.

















Automotive TPS sensor provides super smooth range of operation from min to max position. Once calibrated on my Soliton1 it gave me excellent pedal response across entire pedal range. Without any effort I can control battery current from 0 to 500 amps (my gauge limit) with about 20 amp precision and then easily keep it steady on any level I wish. Its no longer jerking around with every little road bump like PB6 did. Return spring on this unit is quite strong, so I removed my additional spring used with PB6, without which it was just too flimzy.

Overall I am extremely satisfied with EVNetics throttle assembly and would recommend it to anyone.

Keep in mind, it doesn't have high pedal microswitch, but I never cared for those anyway, I don't think its needed in EVs, it was meant for golf carts where PB6 was used.

Hope I didn't lay it too thick  , but I am just super excited to finally have smooth control of my car


----------



## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

She's a beauty. I agree about the microswitch, never saw the point.


----------



## tomofreno (Mar 3, 2009)

> She's a beauty. I agree about the microswitch, never saw the point.


 Does that mean you would buy one JRP3?  Is it possible to use this with the Curtis 1238-7501 controller?


----------



## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

tomofreno said:


> Does that mean you would buy one JRP3?


 maybe.... 


> Is it possible to use this with the Curtis 1238-7501 controller?


Don't see why not, it's a 0-5k pot.


----------



## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

JRP3 said:


> maybe....


Heh - that just about killed you to write it, huh? 




JRP3 said:


> Don't see why not, it's a 0-5k pot.


IF the 1238 has a pot calibration routine built into the interface software then yes. The reason is that the nominal resistance range of the TPS is not from zero ohms to 5k, but more like from 300-400 ohms to 4.8k. If your controller doesn't have the ability to calibrate the throttle for min and max (e.g. - Logisystems, Curtis 1221/1231) then you can't use this throttle assembly.


----------



## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

Tesseract said:


> Heh - that just about killed you to write it, huh?


It was rough  Its harder than I realized to find a quality 0-5K pot with a male shaft. Having to make something self supporting with a bearing to interface with a female socket isn't something I feel like trying to do.




> IF the 1238 has a pot calibration routine built into the interface software then yes. The reason is that the nominal resistance range of the TPS is not from zero ohms to 5k, but more like from 300-400 ohms to 4.8k. If your controller doesn't have the ability to calibrate the throttle for min and max (e.g. - Logisystems, Curtis 1221/1231) then you can't use this throttle assembly.


I don't think the 1238 has that capability. You can choose 0-5K, 5-0K, and something else I think, but I don't know if you can fine tune the range. You couldn't have picked an actual 0-5K pot? I guess I won't be buying one


----------



## yarross (Jan 7, 2009)

JRP3 said:


> I don't think the 1238 has that capability. You can choose 0-5K, 5-0K, and something else I think, but I don't know if you can fine tune the range.


Page 42 of 123X manual.


----------



## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

JRP3 said:


> ... You couldn't have picked an actual 0-5K pot?...


Not for a lack of trying, mind you, but all of the TPS we tried (mostly ones for really popular vehicles, like the Ford F-150, that we purchased off the shelf from NAPA) don't go down to zero. Them's the breaks!

More and more controllers have throttle calibration routines, though, so there is less reason to support dinosaurs that don't. Granted, the Curtis 1231C (and the derivative Logisystems) may be the most popular controller for EVs thus far, but it's stone age technology, to put it bluntly. EVnetics, Alltrax, Synkromotive, Zilla, heck, even MP Holmes open source controller, can all calibrate a throttle at min and max positions, and this is a pretty basic requirement if you think about it.

That said, we couldn't care less if our throttle assembly doesn't work with any other controller but our own, but I'm pretty sure that Curtis' AC controllers are fully programmable.


----------



## DIYguy (Sep 18, 2008)

Hi Folks.... I may have missed it  but, has there been any thought to a "Valet mode"? 

Thanks.....

I did find a comment on Valet...looks like it is being considered for a future software upgrade.... still?


----------



## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

yarross said:


> Page 42 of 123X manual.


You are correct:


> Forward Deadband 0–5.00 V Defines the wiper voltage at the throttle deadband threshold. Increasing Forward_Deadband 0–32767 the throttle deadband setting will increase the neutral range. This parameter is especially useful with throttle assemblies that do not reliably return to a well-defined neutral point, because it allows the deadband to be defined wide enough to ensure that the controller goes into neutral when the throttle mechanism is released.





> Forward Max 0–5.00 V Defines the wiper voltage required to produce 100% controller output.
> Forward_Max 0–32767 Decreasing the throttle max setting reduces the wiper voltage and therefore the full stroke necessary to produce full controller output. This parameter allows reduced-range throttle assemblies to be accommodated.


----------



## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

Tesseract said:


> That said, we couldn't care less if our throttle assembly doesn't work with any other controller but our own


Well you would sell more, but I can see it's not a high profit item, and given the difficulty of finding a true 0-5K pot definitely not worth the effort.


----------



## Qer (May 7, 2008)

DIYguy said:


> I did find a comment on Valet...looks like it is being considered for a future software upgrade.... still?


Possibly. It's, however, not very high in priority because I don't really expect it to be a very "hot" feature. Not as hot as it's tricky to implement at least.


----------



## DIYguy (Sep 18, 2008)

Qer said:


> Possibly. It's, however, not very high in priority because I don't really expect it to be a very "hot" feature. Not as hot as it's tricky to implement at least.


I'm surprised that it wouldn't be more wanted. It was one of the first things I thought about with my daughter who wants to drive it and also leaving the vehicle for a paint shop to work on. How do you establish this general customer position? Thank you...


----------



## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

Probably because ICE's never needed a valet mode. Why would an EV need one more so than an ICE?


----------



## Qer (May 7, 2008)

DIYguy said:


> It was one of the first things I thought about with my daughter who wants to drive it and also leaving the vehicle for a paint shop to work on.


I'm not saying that the ability to change profile is uninteresting, but as the controller can't be locket atm the only thing your daughter need to get around it is a laptop...



DIYguy said:


> How do you establish this general customer position?


Ad hoc? 

Right now I have 37 action points on my list (including this specific feature), 3 of these are done, 3 are being tested and tuned for real life (by some reason real life always behaves differently than I expect...) and at least 8 more have top priority without discussion (a few more will probably be bumped as well).

Then we have the problem with me doing this on my spare time still. Buy more controllers so I can live on this! 

Erf. Just realised another thing to add on the list. 38...

...hm. Damn. Slipped my mind again. Oh well, it'll pop back eventually.


----------



## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

DIYguy said:


> I'm surprised that it wouldn't be more wanted. It was one of the first things I thought about with my daughter who wants to drive it and also leaving the vehicle for a paint shop to work on. How do you establish this general customer position? Thank you...


Well, for one thing this is a dictatorship, not a democracy - you can always go with the open source controller if you want something designed by committee 

Secondly, we place a much higher weighting on feature requests by people who have purchased a controller compared to the rest of you riff-raff . Right now we have a contract to make 50-100 for a conversion company in the Netherlands and that is a sufficient volume to get our undivided attention as far as feature requests go 

That said, we have had a number of requests via e-mail for, e.g., the ability to switch between series and parallel wiring of the motors, so we built a dual-motor dyno and are working in earnest on it (deciding when to switch from series to parallel is easy; it's deciding when to switch back that is hard!) and that one IS on the list even though not a single one of our current customers feels a compelling need to go with a dual motor. Mainly, we have it high in the priority scale because its necessary for the Soliton1 to be taken seriously by racers.

Anyway, Valet mode is also on the list, it's just several months away from being implemented.


----------



## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

Valet mode: Screw a block of wood to the bottom of the accelerator pedal


----------



## DIYguy (Sep 18, 2008)

Tesseract said:


> Well, for one thing this is a dictatorship, not a democracy - you can always go with the open source controller if you want something designed by committee


I understand, I was just wondering. 


Tesseract said:


> Secondly, we place a much higher weighting on feature requests by people who have purchased a controller compared to the rest of you riff-raff . Right now we have a contract to make 50-100 for a conversion company in the Netherlands and that is a sufficient volume to get our undivided attention as far as feature requests go


I'm sorry, I only bought one. (it's being shipped now) (I know, I have some explaining to do)


Tesseract said:


> That said, we have had a number of requests via e-mail for, e.g., the ability to switch between series and parallel wiring of the motors, so we built a dual-motor dyno and are working in earnest on it (deciding when to switch from series to parallel is easy; it's deciding when to switch back that is hard!) and that one IS on the list even though not a single one of our current customers feels a compelling need to go with a dual motor. Mainly, we have it high in the priority scale because its necessary for the Soliton1 to be taken seriously by racers.
> 
> Anyway, Valet mode is also on the list, it's just several months away from being implemented.


I may not even need it... once it's set up, it may be fine....


----------



## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

DIYguy said:


> I understand, I was just wondering.
> 
> I'm sorry, I only bought one. (it's being shipped now) (I know, I have some explaining to do)
> 
> I may not even need it... once it's set up, it may be fine....


I'm just jerkin' yer chain. We consider all feature requests, especially if they are interesting/have merit. If you actually buy a controller (or 50+) then we'll even consider implementing really dumb ideas too.

But, ummm... wait a minute... I thought you were one of the brave Electro Craft guinea pigs??? What happened?


----------



## Qer (May 7, 2008)

Tesseract said:


> If you actually buy a controller (or 50+) then we'll even consider implementing really dumb ideas too.


I would like to point out for everyone the fact that this wonderful statement was delivered by the guy that couldn't code himself out of a paper bag even if his life depended on it...


----------



## RKM (Jun 9, 2008)

Gary,

I'm with you on the value of a valet setting. I have a sixteen year old daughter who will be driving this car too (dang, I must be old!). I've already told her that none of her boyfriends are to drive this car without my written permission and attendance in the passenger seat. 

It may not be as desireable for the lower power controllers, but the new breed of high power controllers make the vehicles way too fun and quick. I know I've had trouble keeping my right foot in a reasonable position on the accelerator. 

So, do I understand that the Electrocraft is no longer with you and that you are now a brave EVnetics guinea pig? If so, I'm sorry to hear that the Electrocraft didn't work out. Would be interested in the story, though not my business.

Take care.

Rob


----------



## Qer (May 7, 2008)

RKM said:


> It may not be as desireable for the lower power controllers, but the new breed of high power controllers make the vehicles way too fun and quick. I know I've had trouble keeping my right foot in a reasonable position on the accelerator.


Ok, two voices say Aye where one obviously even is a customer. Hm.

Just curious, how would you suggest it'd be done in a way that can't be easily either hot wired or circumvented? This is one of the problems that I haven't figured out a good solution for so input is welcome.

I can of course add a password on the web interface, but that only solves the circumvention security flaw, not the hot wire problem. Another solution is, of course, a coded key that you have to insert in a holder, but then that key has to be manufactured as well.

Hm. I'll ponder it at least. No promises as of now.


----------



## DIYguy (Sep 18, 2008)

Ya, I am a guinea pig...in many ways...lol Yep too...to the Soliton as well. I did buy one. I still have the Electrocraft though. It had/has a problem right from the start. Same as ClintK's. It cuts out at low power level. I guess the problem is that Darius changed to a different IGBT with faster switching characteristics and this is causing grief ever since. It looked ok on the scope and running the motor in his shop.... (as far as I could tell). Problem is, he can't load the motor so, he doesn't get what I get when it's in the truck. He is still standing behind it and will no doubt work it out. I just got impatient. Also, I just got overwhelmed with all the features of this BMF thing. I really want the ability to limit motor voltage and low battery voltage. I guess when I bought this Electrocraft there was no Zilla or Soliton.... oh well.... I got other issues too...lol, but I aint-a-stoppin' yitt..... Maybe it'll be LiFePo before you know it...lol


----------



## DIYguy (Sep 18, 2008)

I think one of your programmable inputs would be fine. I am not worried at all about someone defeating it. I would like something like a key switch under the hood. Valet on, or off. Valet settings adjustable in software. If I take it to the paint shop... it will be set to move the truck around the shop/lot only. If my daughter drives it.... I dunno, but there will be something set up in there! (boyfriends are the most worry.... ) lol


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

DIYguy said:


> Also, I just got overwhelmed with all the features of this BMF thing. I really want the ability to limit motor voltage and low battery voltage.


Gary,

no need to be overwhelmed with Soliton1, its very simple. Its just a handful of voltage and current settings, many of which can be left default anyway. Just figure our min pack voltage that you don't want to go below and max battery current that you don't want to go over, those are 2 most important ones. Motor current and voltage should limit themselves nicely based on battery limits anyway.

Default slew rate of 600 A/s is fine, and you can play with it later if need be.


----------



## DIYguy (Sep 18, 2008)

Thanks Dimitri. I guess I meant that I was overwhelmed with the prospect of having all these nice features. I'm not too worried about the setting etc. Well, one thing is that my battery pack is 192 volts nominal and my motor is a GE advanced 13 degrees. So, it may take most of that .... or not, but programmable limits are very nice. Actually, everything about this unit is pretty nice.


----------



## bipole (Sep 8, 2009)

*Re: Max KW*

Could someone expand on this spec from the Manual?


"342V max allowed battery voltage with full current available at up to 200V
(slight derating above that)."

There are only a few hv controllers to compare to, one at 320kw and one at 640kw. I'm getting ready to buy and would like to compare apples to apples (in kw) at the 'racing warranty' spec.


----------



## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

*Re: Max KW*



bipole said:


> Could someone expand on this spec from the Manual?
> 
> "342V max allowed battery voltage with full current available at up to 200V (slight derating above that)."


QC/calibration for each controller is done at 252V/1000A, but the design was proved at 300V and 1000A and the IGBTs are meant to be used in 230VAC VFDs, so they expect to see a bus voltage of, ta-da, 340VDC. 




bipole said:


> There are only a few hv controllers to compare to, one at 320kw and one at 640kw. I'm getting ready to buy and would like to compare apples to apples (in kw) at the 'racing warranty' spec.


The Zilla Z2K still claims the highest peak power, but the time period it can deliver such for is not specified, and allowed current is reduced with increasing voltage, starting at 192V (not unusual, that, just pointing it out). 

If you need high power for longer than about 10-20 seconds, and/or over the full range of duty cycle, though, then the Soliton1 may be back in contention. Read page 3 of the Zilla owner's manual.

There are other differences as well but whether they are important in your application is unknown. Shoot me a PM or an email to jsj [at] evnetics.com if you want to run it past me. I am, I think I have well-established here, a straight shooter and if your application isn't an ideal fit then I'll say so.


----------



## EVComponents (Apr 20, 2009)

*Re: Max KW*



Tesseract said:


> If you need high power for longer than about 10-20 seconds, and/or over the full range of duty cycle, though, then the Soliton1 may be back in contention. Read page 3 of the Zilla owner's manual.


The entire question is largely meaningless. There are very few DIY conversions that would ever approach the limits of a Zilla Z2K controller. Most people are limited by their motor well before they ever reach the performance limits of a Z2K.

The only ones are a few serious racers and they are using multiple motors and in some cases even twin Z2K controllers. 

For a daily driving commuter, a Z1K (LV or HV) or Soliton are more than enough.


----------



## DIYguy (Sep 18, 2008)

Its nice to see the straight up answers... I like it.


----------



## 280z1975 (Oct 2, 2008)

Was that just some civility I read on a forum ... what's the world coming to!


----------



## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

DIYguy said:


> I think one of your programmable inputs would be fine. I am not worried at all about someone defeating it. I would like something like a key switch under the hood. Valet on, or off. Valet settings adjustable in software. If I take it to the paint shop... it will be set to move the truck around the shop/lot only. If my daughter drives it.... I dunno, but there will be something set up in there! (boyfriends are the most worry.... ) lol


There's a "ghetto" way to implement Valet mode and I can't believe dimitri didn't think of it since it's the flip-side of his idle kludge: just wire a resistor in series with the +5V line to the throttle pot and put a toggle switch across it to short it out for "normal" mode. Calibrate the throttle with the switch closed (resistor shorted) so that when the switch is open the max throttle is limited proportionally. 

For example, if your throttle pot is 5k and you put a 1k resistor in series with the 5V line then the max motor amps would then be reduced to ~83% of whatever is programmed; a 4.7k resistor would knock 'em to near 50%, etc.

Now, this won't change the ramp rate, which is probably something that a "real" valet mode would alter, but it also can't be defeated by plugging in a laptop - you have to know where the switch is that shorts the resistor out.


----------



## DIYguy (Sep 18, 2008)

Tesseract said:


> There's a "ghetto" way to implement Valet mode and I can't believe dimitri didn't think of it since it's the flip-side of his idle kludge: just wire a resistor in series with the +5V line to the throttle pot and put a toggle switch across it to short it out for "normal" mode. Calibrate the throttle with the switch closed (resistor shorted) so that when the switch is open the max throttle is limited proportionally.
> 
> For example, if your throttle pot is 5k and you put a 1k resistor in series with the 5V line then the max motor amps would then be reduced to ~83% of whatever is programmed; a 4.7k resistor would knock 'em to near 50%, etc.
> 
> Now, this won't change the ramp rate, which is probably something that a "real" valet mode would alter, but it also can't be defeated by plugging in a laptop - you have to know where the switch is that shorts the resistor out.


Sounds like it would work ok... only thing is, using my exaple, I would have to get the soldering iron out each time I wanted to change the valet setting...which admittedly would likely not be often. 

I suppose the cream would be a whole new set of operating perameters... ramp rate, max amp, min battery ... although one likely doesn't need all of that.

(i could always throw my other controller in each time  ... ouch!)


----------



## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

DIYguy said:


> Sounds like it would work ok... only thing is, using my exaple, I would have to get the soldering iron out each time I wanted to change the valet setting...which admittedly would likely not be often.


Or you could replace the fixed resistor with another pot (wired as a variable resistor) so you could tinker with the value until you are happy. 




DIYguy said:


> I suppose the cream would be a whole new set of operating perameters... ramp rate, max amp, min battery ... although one likely doesn't need all of that.


Changing the ramp rate would useful, but only if it's much above 500A/s in the first place, so we might hard code that into valet mode just to keep the home page as uncluttered as possible. 




DIYguy said:


> (i could always throw my other controller in each time  ... ouch!)




No comment!


----------



## DIYguy (Sep 18, 2008)

Tesseract said:


> Or you could replace the fixed resistor with another pot (wired as a variable resistor) so you could tinker with the value until you are happy.


Ya, good idea. That would work.


----------



## bipole (Sep 8, 2009)

*Re: Max KW*



Tesseract said:


> QC/calibration for each controller is done at 252V/1000A, but the design was proved at 300V and 1000A....


I must apologize, I quoted the other controllers' KW without reporting the actual specs.

Z2K max battery current:200V: 1900 A= 380 KW
250V: 1835 A = 458 KW (interpolated)
300V: 1770 A = 531 KW
400V: 1600 A = 640 KW but the battery pack has to sag to get any amps out, so this is virtually unobtainable.

So, even the 300V spec would take an extremely stiff battery pack to hit those numbers with the specified 348V max nominal input.

I just thought it would be prudent to eat a little crow and report the actual specs.


----------



## Bowser330 (Jun 15, 2008)

*Re: Max KW*



bipole said:


> I must apologize, I quoted the other controllers' KW without reporting the actual specs.
> 
> Z2K max battery current:200V: 1900 A= 380 KW
> 250V: 1835 A = 458 KW (interpolated)
> ...


interesting side point...the EHV models of Zilla state 348V max however the S10 Smokescreen was using one with a pack voltage of almost 400V...

maybe some type of custom setup...


----------



## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

*Re: Max KW*



Bowser330 said:


> interesting side point...the EHV models of Zilla state 348V max however the S10 Smokescreen was using one with a pack voltage of almost 400V...
> 
> maybe some type of custom setup...


Nah, Bowser, both the Zilla and Soliton1 use 600V IGBTs, which are intended to be used in products that run directly off of rectified and filtered 240VAC, which gives a nominal DC bus voltage of 340V, so 400V ain't exactly "instant death" territory. If your power source is a battery pack - i.e. no worries about lighting, load dump transients, etc. - you can bump the voltage up to as high as 480V (80% of max). This assumes that the huge increase in EMI from operating at a higher voltage doesn't wreak havoc, of course... 

(A side note worth mentioning: the legal limit for terrestrial broadcast radio stations is 100kW and no one would expect an electronic device to function fine right next to such a transmitter's antenna, but that's what we expect of the control boards inside a Soliton1, Zilla, etc...  )

Unfortunately, increasing the voltage also cuts into the current rating because it greatly increases the switching losses - perhaps to such an extent that there is no net increase in actual power output! Long term reliability is also decreased regardless of how well spikes and such are managed. Modern IGBTs and MOSFETs have a "square" Safe Operating Area (SOA) curve, but only if you keep the actual die/dice at 25C, which is generally unrealistic unless the ambient temp is -20C or colder! So, as you increase operating voltage there comes a point at which you have to start decreasing operating current OR duty cycle/pulse width, and these are not widths measured in seconds, folks, but in milliseconds or even microseconds (e.g. - the IGBT modules used in the Soliton1 can withstand 3000A for 6us, which is nice for surviving a short circuit for just long enough to shut them down safely, but not at all a _useful_ current rating!) See the pic illustrating a typical SOA curve, which applies to the controller itself as well as the devices that do the actual switching.

So as is always the case, everything comes down to finding the point of maximum power for the batteries, controller and motor. Sometimes it makes sense to go with a higher pack voltage composed of smaller (lower Ah) batteries and let it sag down to a voltage the controller is happier with; sometimes better results are obtained with a lower voltage but stiffer pack. If there was a single answer to this problem then drag racing wouldn't be any fun, now would it?


----------



## DIYguy (Sep 18, 2008)

Tesseract....
I am preparing for my Soliton1 which should be here Monday or Tuesday. I have a couple of questions....

Regarding the programmable outputs, I read they could be used to drive meters..... but couldn't find much info on this. Are there internal shunts for driving current meters? (likely not..) What can I program to these outputs? I want to have both battery and motor amp meters.... at least in the beginning. I have two shunts that I can wire up... but wasn't sure what exists currently.. (no pun intended) lol

Secondly, regarding the water cooling.... Is there any recommendation on on cooling capacity? I read the 1 - 2 gpm... but obviously the method of cooling the fluid can change a lot.... ie; reservoir only vs small rad/fan combination. Perhaps Dimitri has some feedback on this? (I did read your recommendation on ambient temp considerations)

Thanks,
Gary


----------



## EVComponents (Apr 20, 2009)

*Re: Max KW*



Bowser330 said:


> interesting side point...the EHV models of Zilla state 348V max however the S10 Smokescreen was using one with a pack voltage of almost 400V...
> 
> maybe some type of custom setup...


The nominal voltage of an EHV is 348V.
The max voltage we recommend is 375V. 

They are tested higher than that though. There is a software cutoff that should protect the controller.


----------



## Qer (May 7, 2008)

Ok, meters. This is a work in progress (very much right now) but in version 1.0 it looked like this:










This is because I screwed up and there's a buffer in the web server that gets truncated, so lets just ignore that version (*ahem*) and look at beta 373 instead, which is what we deliver atm (ideally I'm against releasing beta versions to the public, but when the beta is better than the original version I can live with making an exception  ):










This got typically too complicated and messy, not to mention too confusing so we've scaled it down a bit. The idea was that if you're going to use an ordinary panel meter you can use the 0-10 Volt range and just add a resistor in series to convert the voltage to current but apparently there's car meters (like tank meters) that use 0-100% of the 12 Volt for the full range and then there's those that work the opposite way (100-0%) but, well, it got so messy and confusing that we've decided to simply scrap all these choises and only keep the 0-100% and leave it to the DIY'er to convert the signal to something useful (and if you run a DC/DC, which we recommend anyway, the voltage will vary so little that you can still use the resistor approach).

So right now (in rc379) it looks like this instead:










Much cleaner. What you can't see here (because it's not implemented yet, work in progress as I said) is that some of these parameters will activate other input fields in the web interface where you can enter the preferred parameters and others will use already existing settings. For example, motor current will use the maximum motor current you've entered for the motor so if your max motor current is 800 Ampere the scale will be 0-800 Ampere for 0-12 (or 0-13.5 or whatever) Volt out and the same goes for battery current of course.

Power is one I haven't really decided on yet, but one way or another it will use some kind of setting to determine the scale since it will depend a lot on your setup what range you'd like to see. A commuter might like 0-60 kW but someone with a sports car probably want a wider scale, otherwise it might be smack at 100% as soon as you hit the throttle, not very useful.

Controller temperature is always 0-100% for 0-100C. Typically it should stay on the lower half of the scale...

DoD-level is a new one which definitely is work in progress, right now it only outputs zero since I'm working on the code. DoD-level is probably the wrong name since the plan is that it should work as a fuel tank meter, ie 100% is good, 0% is bad. "Charge level" perhaps? Name suggestions are welcome.

RPM is the only output that doesn't output a voltage since it's meant to be used with an existing RPM-meter. Right now it only outputs 2 ppt (ie targetted for tachometers from 4 cylinder engines) but the plan is that it should handle 2, 3 and 4 ppt. One question I've always wondered is what a tachometer for a 5 cylinder engine uses? 2.5 ppt?

Also; all outputs (except RPM) are PWM outputs. If you connect them to an ordinary meter it won't matter since it will average out nicely by itself (like your motor averages out the PWM), but if you want to use digital gauges this might mean that you'll have to use a RC-filter to get a stable reading.

Did this cover your questions? That is except cooling. I'll leave that one to Tesseract. It's physics.


----------



## DIYguy (Sep 18, 2008)

Wow...well, yes. At this point I guess knowing that there is/will be meter outputs.. I don't have to wire the big shunts in the circuit. That's all I need at this moment. I'm more of an mechanical guy, so interfacing the meters later will likely drive the need for some assistance.


----------



## Qer (May 7, 2008)

DIYguy said:


> Wow...well, yes. At this point I guess knowing that there is/will be meter outputs.. I don't have to wire the big shunts in the circuit. That's all I need at this moment. I'm more of an mechanical guy, so interfacing the meters later will likely drive the need for some assistance.


Nope, no need to measure the currents. Again...


----------



## Jimdear2 (Oct 12, 2008)

Hello QER and Tesseract.

I was wondering if your controller is able to be set to a "do not exceed" RPM but still able to maintain maximum current outputs available from the battery pack for maximum torque at the selected RPM. Please excuse me if the questions I'm asking have already been answered. I just may not have been able to understand the answer as presented or I may have missed it while in the hospital.

For the last 2 years I have been seriously applying EV tech to tractor pulling. One (of many) problems I have had is maintaining a fixed wheel speed irregardless of ground speed. Stock tractors generally use brute traction and torque to move the weight. Super stock and modified tractors use a combination of friction and traction, In many cases friction being the primary.

I just aquired a rebuilt 13 inch motor for the cost of components used in the rebuild. I plan on using the motor in a modified ultralight tractor with suitable modifications to run it at 120 + volts and 800 + amps. The total 1350 lbs battery, motor, driver and tractor weight will determine the maximums. 

I was initially planing on a removable chopper type controller using low voltage for low speed driving and back up duties, with a separate set of contactors to apply direct battery increading voltage/amprage for pulling. BUT . . . Limiting RPM to keep the motor from exploding in this situation becomes a problem. One slippery spot or one bounce might destroy a motor. Backing off thre throttle will lower the voltage and rpm but it also will reduce tire speed which affects ground speed which effects inertia, etc. etc.

My current, self designed, RPM limiter just uses a tachometer shift light signal to shut down the main contactor and requires a reset to continue. The driver has to be on top of things to keep the shutdown from happening. It saves a motor but looses the pull. I tried setting up the system to come back up when the shift light went off but the cyclic jerking that produced was not good.

Is it possible using the software hardware in your controller to set a RPM limit that will adjust voltage to maintain up to a maximum RPM and still allow maximum current to develope maximum torque. Kind of a maximum power cruise control. 

In 90% of the hooks you do, it's pedal to the metal, hang on and steer, maybe touch a steering brake. ICE tractors rely on soft rev limiters (randomly shut off a random cylinder) to maintain a safe rpm.

Ideally what I want is a reasonable assurance that I can get up to a fixed tire speed, I can then adjust tire pressure and ballast weight to control traction and ground speed. Then when the weight starts coming down I can know that maximum available power is going through my tire/weight set up.

If I wasn't clear in the above please ask any questions needed.

Have a great day,


----------



## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

DIYguy said:


> ...
> Secondly, regarding the water cooling.... Is there any recommendation on on cooling capacity? I read the 1 - 2 gpm... but obviously the method of cooling the fluid can change a lot.... ie; reservoir only vs small rad/fan combination. Perhaps Dimitri has some feedback on this? (I did read your recommendation on ambient temp considerations)...


There is no simple answer to that question, which is why I don't even try to cover it in the owner's manual. Fortunately, though, the Soliton1 has significant heat-dissipation capability as is, so liquid cooling is only _necessary_ if any of the following apply: 1) high ambient temp (>35C); 2) long periods above 400A (ie - above 75-80mph on the interstate); 3) hilly conditions (similar to #2).

So my first suggestion is to try driving around without liquid cooling at all. Collect some log files and look at the 7th column to see what the temp gets up to. If you routinely exceed 60C, especially given the much lower ambient temps up there, _then_ I would consider liquid cooling. If you routinely exceed 70C then I would say you _need_ liquid cooling.

If you want to keep the controller cool regardless (because you have OCD, for example), then there are infinite possibilities. Way too many to cover in a post like this, and nothing is really all that critical, but since you asked personally prefer a sump (reservoir) type system compared to the closed loop that dimitri has. As little as a liter or two of coolant in the reservoir is more than enough; a larger reservoir may eliminate the need for a heat exchanger completely (relying on the _specific heat capacity_ to act as a "heat sink"). I've seen one clever installation that simply routed copper tubing around the engine compartment and relied on incidental airflow for cooling - cost effective, and works, too. Then there is the tried and true auto tranny cooler, the hardcore computer gamer's cooling systems (Seb likes these for some reason), etc... Sky's the limit.


----------



## Qer (May 7, 2008)

Jimdear2 said:


> Is it possible using the software hardware in your controller to set a RPM limit that will adjust voltage to maintain up to a maximum RPM and still allow maximum current to develope maximum torque. Kind of a maximum power cruise control.


That is a very good question and one that I unfortunately must answer with that I seriously don't know. From the tests we've done so far it's been proven that handling RPM is tricky as hell simply because it's very hard to measure. Typically when you measure current or voltage it's there, instantly (well, almost), when you measure RPM you actually can't measure RPM but you either measure pulses per time or time between pulses. This means that no matter how you do it when you get the results it's too late and the data you get is what was, not what is. This brings havoc to your calculations, trust me.

There are today two ways the controller handles RPM, idle-RPM and overrev. Idle-RPM tries to actively regulate the RPM and compensate for differences in load (mainly an AC shutting on and off etc) and it means that it's constantly trying to fine tune the current to keep the RPM. While this method works fairly well for medium loads I'm not sure it's that good at handling a tractor that's burning CURRENT and then suddenly slips. There are some safeguards that should catch it, but I would like to emphasis on should...

The other way, overrev, is probably better for your needs although I'm not sure it's a good way. What it does is simply to kill the current (very much like an ICE simply kills the ignition) and then the current ramps up with the current slew rate again so you actually get some degree of control there since you could experiment with different slew rates for optimum grip. Possibly. Maybe...

Our tests show that the overrev seems to work pretty well for saving the motor. You can see the vid here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWJBEiNYqic

It might sound like Tesseract is only cranking the motor up and down several times, but the protection actually kicks in several times per peak to keep the RPM sane. If the controller didn't do that (or if the tach had failed in that test) the motor would've blown up. Somewhere I even have a log over it....

Ah, can't find it, but here's some data from my mockup to at least give you an idea how it behaves:










You could get the current to ramp much faster by increasing the slew rate, which you probably want to do anyway. The default slew rate targets a commuters needs rather than someone that wants to win a race.


----------



## Jimdear2 (Oct 12, 2008)

QER;

Thanks for the quick reply. I am not sure that I understand your information so let me reply with what I think you said.

Your RPM limit system from the graph shows current ramping up to 700 peak amps at about 272 seconds with the RPM reaching 5000 at about 273 seconds at which point the current drops to zero at 274 seconds the RPM drops to 3500 and the current has risen to about 350 amps and continues back to 700 amps and the RPM again rises to 5000 where thwee whole sequence starts again. That is equivaqlent to the driver flooring and letting off the throttle on a two second cycle. A sequence like that would produce broken drivetrain parts or total loss of momentum every time. That is why I went to a complete shutdown on my own system.

A far as the video went, do you mean that the periods between that violent application and reduction of throttle (motor jerks severly) that the controller had pulsed the motor severel times to control the RPM. Or was the several severe jerks the controller applying RPM control. 

I envision a rpm limiter as allowing you to apply full throttle to the motor with no load and having the motor rise to a set rpm and maintain itself there

The first system you described sounds much more like what I am looking for. As you describe it. _Idle-RPM tries to actively regulate the RPM and compensate for differences in load (mainly an AC shutting on and off etc) and it means that it's constantly trying to fine tune the current to keep the RPM._ From what I have read it sounds like you may be trying to overcontrol. In an ICE I doubt that the range is tighter then +/- 100 rpm and may even be wider then that.

As I have said before I might not understand what is happening or the limits of your controller. But is it possible for your idle control system paremeters to be set at 5000 rpm,1000 amps and activated by the full throttle signal instead of the no throttle signal. If the system could maintain even +/- a couple of hundered RPM at that level it would be a succses.

Jim



Qer said:


> That is a very good question and one that I unfortunately must answer with that I seriously don't know. From the tests we've done so far it's been proven that handling RPM is tricky as hell simply because it's very hard to measure. Typically when you measure current or voltage it's there, instantly (well, almost), when you measure RPM you actually can't measure RPM but you either measure pulses per time or time between pulses. This means that no matter how you do it when you get the results it's too late and the data you get is what was, not what is. This brings havoc to your calculations, trust me.
> 
> There are today two ways the controller handles RPM, idle-RPM and overrev. Idle-RPM tries to actively regulate the RPM and compensate for differences in load (mainly an AC shutting on and off etc) and it means that it's constantly trying to fine tune the current to keep the RPM. While this method works fairly well for medium loads I'm not sure it's that good at handling a tractor that's burning CURRENT and then suddenly slips. There are some safeguards that should catch it, but I would like to emphasis on should...
> 
> ...


----------



## Woodsmith (Jun 5, 2008)

Hi Jim,

A lot of this controller stuff is way over my head, and I may be speaking out of the other end of my anatomy, but from what I gather, shunt motors will produce a steady speed regardless of load and just draw more and more amps to do so until it cooks itself. Would that be more useful for what you need when pulling?


----------



## Jimdear2 (Oct 12, 2008)

Woodsmith said:


> Hi Jim,
> 
> A lot of this controller stuff is way over my head, and I may be speaking out of the other end of my anatomy, but from what I gather, shunt motors will produce a steady speed regardless of load and just draw more and more amps to do so until it cooks itself. Would that be more useful for what you need when pulling?


Woodsmith, 

I had also thought of shunt motors but I don't know enough yet. 

Plus when somebody offers me a completly rebuilt 13 inch series motor for what amounts to lunch money and pickup within driving distance, I grab it and run with it. 

Right now I have in the shed an unfinished rolling chassis, a short powerglide with a 1.83 low gear a narrowed Ford 9 inch with a 5.14 gear and a large number of 80 to 90% 16 amp hour Hawkers. As far as I know there is no controller and shunt motor available to me that would produce the kind of power I think this set up would make. I'm already out in the cold unknown with this. 

Drag racing stuff really doesn't apply, the oppisites apply. I need maximum power (torque) at the end of the pull, RPM above a point that keeps the tires turning is irrelivant. I need maximum speed at the beginning to build up inertia. Thats why I'm hoping that EVNetics can help. I saved enough on the motor that I can start looking at better controllers. When I read about the idle control that they were working out I was hoping their RPM limiter worked similar. 

This is probably more of an answer then you expected, actually responses like this help me clear up the muddy waters. Thanks for commenting and listening.


----------



## Qer (May 7, 2008)

Jimdear2 said:


> Your RPM limit system from the graph shows current ramping up to 700 peak amps at about 272 seconds with the RPM reaching 5000 at about 273 seconds at which point the current drops to zero at 274 seconds the RPM drops to 3500 and the current has risen to about 350 amps and continues back to 700 amps and the RPM again rises to 5000 where thwee whole sequence starts again.


Yes, but this is with a current slewrate of 500 or 600 A/s, you can change that setting to as high as 25000A/s. For a commuter such a high slew rate doesn't make sense (not to mention that the controller managed to break the tranny on a buggy that way  ) but for you perhaps an extremely high slew rate actually makes sense?



Jimdear2 said:


> A far as the video went, do you mean that the periods between that violent application and reduction of throttle (motor jerks severly) that the controller had pulsed the motor severel times to control the RPM. Or was the several severe jerks the controller applying RPM control.


It's Tesseract cranking up and down the throttle as the motor jumps around, but it's the overrev protection that makes sure the motor doesn't fling itself to pieces when it hits max rpm.



Jimdear2 said:


> The first system you described sounds much more like what I am looking for.


That depends on how much the load change. What I worry about is that a slip and then suddenly grip again might make the idle algorithm start oscillating or it will force it outside it's controlling range which, on the other hand, will simply mean that the race is over.


----------



## Woodsmith (Jun 5, 2008)

Sorry to be OT.

Hi Jim,

Maybe a twin motor set up would work. A shunt motor twinned with a series motor?
The controller will get the series motor to give you the speed at the start and part way through you power up the shunt motor as well to keep the wheels turning at maximum torque. 

I'm just imagining a big knife switch, like Dr Frankinstein uses, to connect the shunt motor.


----------



## 280z1975 (Oct 2, 2008)

Qer said:


> snip ...
> 
> Our tests show that the overrev seems to work pretty well for saving the motor. You can see the vid here:
> 
> ...



Ummm ... why is the motor just laying on the ground? I know it has little inertia to it, but still jumps a bit ... all I can think about is a motor overspeeding and blowing up with peices flying everywhere ... any reason why it's not mounted for these tests?


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

DIYguy said:


> Secondly, regarding the water cooling.... Is there any recommendation on on cooling capacity? I read the 1 - 2 gpm... but obviously the method of cooling the fluid can change a lot.... ie; reservoir only vs small rad/fan combination. Perhaps Dimitri has some feedback on this? (I did read your recommendation on ambient temp considerations)
> 
> Thanks,
> Gary


Gary, if anything I would recommend against doing the setup I have done. I wanted to route water thru my dash heater core, which drove my decision to buy automotive grade pump, which required multiple bronze fittings to step up to the hose diameter. When it was all done, I found that I can't even feel a slightest increase in cabin heat from controller, which makes the whole setup too complicated and not worth the trouble.

If I was to do it again, I would probably use small PC cooling pump, small ATF radiator (or maybe just a copper tube loop) and small expansion tank ( useful to drain the air from the system ), basically same thing Tesseract recommended.

I also second the notion of trying just the air cooling first, you may not need water cooling at all. I had mine done because I was testing first beta unit of Soliton1 which had different power ratings and more restrictive temp controls. Production unit is much more forgiving in this sense.

Hope this helps.


----------



## DIYguy (Sep 18, 2008)

Thanks Dimitri. I had no intentions of running the cooling through the heater core... I never thought that there would be enough heat to make use of it. Besides, the time when the heat would be more abundant would be in the summer...when I would want AC. lol

Thanks for tip. 

My Controller just arrived!   Sure is pretty, heavy too.

Bit of shipping damage as one of the terminal strip separators is snapped. No big deal I guess. 

Hmmmm, I ordered the throttle pot as well and it's no where to be seen. Will have to get after Mike at EV Propulsion. Mix up somewhere...

Now I'm all excited again....lol


----------



## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

280z1975 said:


> Ummm ... why is the motor just laying on the ground? I know it has little inertia to it, but still jumps a bit ... all I can think about is a motor overspeeding and blowing up with peices flying everywhere ... any reason why it's not mounted for these tests?


That video was made awhile ago when the dyno testing area was a corner of the warehouse where everything was shoved temporarily.

We're since built a more formal dyno testing area now with a bank of 24 AGM batteries, a variable voltage "charger" and with the twin motor dyno bolted to the floor.


----------



## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

DIYguy said:


> ....
> Bit of shipping damage as one of the terminal strip separators is snapped. No big deal I guess. ...


Interesting... it'd be really tough to break one of those dividers without damaging something else (like, oh, I dunno... that big honkin' ethernet jack), especially since the controller should have been surrounded by those expanding foam bags. You didn't happen to find the bit of broken divider in the box by any chance, did you? Also, take a few pictures of the box and send 'em to us.

As for your throttle pot, there's no mix-up, just a slight delay as we catch up with demand for them. Should be shipping one out to you in the next day or two.


----------



## Jimdear2 (Oct 12, 2008)

QER and Tesseract,

Sorry guys, I just don't seem to be able to ask the right question or maybe my lack of the basics won't allow me to understand your answers. 

QER you mention slew rate I think that means the rate of current change over a measured period. Example A low rate is 50 amps change over 1 second, a high rate is 500 amps over 1 second. Am I right? If that is correct I want to think on how that would affect your graph.

I'm also going to describe what I am trying to do or acheive and ask if you think the controller can do it.


First; I establish the best RPM and torque that will produce the best power from the motor.
Second; I set up the gearing of my tractor to use that motor rpm to produce the desired wheel speed. E.g. best torque is at 3500 rpm and and safe rpm is 4200 rpm. Gearing would be adjusted to give a desired mph wheel speed at 4200 motor RPM.
Third; RPM limits on the controller would be set to 4200 rpm. Current would be set to the maximum that the batteries could supply (assumes a battery pack of sufficient wattage to supply whatever the controller/motor can take for the entire period of the pull)
Fourth; The pull starts, full throttle is applied (here is where the adjustible slew rate would be killer, a soft start like applying the throttle slowly is sometimes desirable on a loose track and a hard start is desired on a tight track, i.e. a hard bang to break the tires loose) So while lightly loaded (the transfer weight over the wheels of the sled) the tires spin up to the desired mph and are held there by the rev limiter and the tractor and sled accelerate at a rate decided by motor power and track conditions and tractor/tire/ballast weight without blowing the motor. This condition, maximum motor RPM, maximum current could exist for 5 to 10 seconds. Smoothness during this period is essential. Slowing and loss of momentium is a killer.
Fifth; At some point as the weight transfer to the skid plate friction will overcome the tractors ability to continue to accelerate and the weight will start loading the rear tires of the tractor this causes the tires to generate more tracton.
Sixth; The ideal situation is the motor/controllers ability to maintain some tire rotation right up to maximum motor RPM during the entire deceleration to a stop.
Thats a quick picture of what I want to try to do. I think that is the best use of the electric motors best feature, high torque at low rpm. I still need to get the highest possible speed during the initial distance while maintaining a good tire speed over the loaded portion of the 300 foot distance. 

Another way to state it would be I want to produce a higher average tire speed then the ICE tractors. They can move faster but can't maintain that higher speed when they loose rpm and fall below their norrower torque peak. 

Right now I have my gearing set to avoid coming too close to the magic rpm number. If we hit a slippery spot or a bad bounce, my over rev stopper shuts off the tractor. 

I guess the best way to ask is will your controller be able to maintain that stable rpm while supplying maximum effort?

Sorry about these long rambling questions. I don't relate to electronics as well as I should. Still learning. When I grew up computers had vacuum tubes or gears and transistors were science fiction. 

Jim

One thought though, you probably know more about tractor pulling now then you ever wanted to. 




Qer said:


> Yes, but this is with a current slewrate of 500 or 600 A/s, you can change that setting to as high as 25000A/s. For a commuter such a high slew rate doesn't make sense (not to mention that the controller managed to break the tranny on a buggy that way  ) but for you perhaps an extremely high slew rate actually makes sense?
> 
> 
> 
> ...


----------



## Qer (May 7, 2008)

Jimdear2 said:


> QER you mention slew rate I think that means the rate of current change over a measured period. Example A low rate is 50 amps change over 1 second, a high rate is 500 amps over 1 second. Am I right?


Yes, you've grasped the idea, although 50 A/s isn't low, it's snail sluggish (and 100 is the lowest you can go anyway). The default setting is 600 A/s and that gives a response that should be rapid enough for the average commuter without stressing the transmission to the extreme (YMMV, of course) and in the graph I posted I think the setting is 500 or 600.



Jimdear2 said:


> If that is correct I want to think on how that would affect your graph.


If you change the setting to ten times higher (ie about 5000A/s) the current will ramp up ten times faster. Ie, the cycle will be ten times as fast. With some inertia on that (a flywheel perhaps?) those bursts will be smoothed out which MIGHT give you what you want? Maybe?



Jimdear2 said:


> First; I establish the best RPM and torque that will produce the best power from the motor.


That would be right below the rpm limit when the motor starts to fling itself to pieces or, alternatively, right below the point where back-EMF starts to affect the top current.



Jimdear2 said:


> Fourth; The pull starts, full throttle is applied (here is where the adjustible slew rate would be killer, a soft start like applying the throttle slowly is sometimes desirable on a loose track and a hard start is desired on a tight track, i.e. a hard bang to break the tires loose) So while lightly loaded (the transfer weight over the wheels of the sled) the tires spin up to the desired mph and are held there by the rev limiter and the tractor and sled accelerate at a rate decided by motor power and track conditions and tractor/tire/ballast weight without blowing the motor. This condition, maximum motor RPM, maximum current could exist for 5 to 10 seconds. Smoothness during this period is essential. Slowing and loss of momentium is a killer.


Hmm. That'd take two different slew rate settings. Not too thrilled over that, I must say, since it'd screw up my algorithms (and thus risking bugs). The Valet mode could be (ab)used for this though, whenever I get around to implement that...



Jimdear2 said:


> Thats a quick picture of what I want to try to do. I think that is the best use of the electric motors best feature, high torque at low rpm.


As long as back-EMF is lower than pack voltage you'll have a flat torque curve, so you can get high torque at (reasonably) high RPM as well, and since power is torque*RPM there's no need to gear down the motor too much.



Jimdear2 said:


> Right now I have my gearing set to avoid coming too close to the magic rpm number. If we hit a slippery spot or a bad bounce, my over rev stopper shuts off the tractor.
> 
> I guess the best way to ask is will your controller be able to maintain that stable rpm while supplying maximum effort?


I guess that's the big question, yes. 

It's hard to implement overrev in a better way than simply shut down the current (which is pretty much like how ICE's cut ignition). It's simple (thus there's very little risk for bugs in the software), it's fast (thus hopefully saving the motor) and it's good enough for most situations. I can, however, see how it in this case might bring havoc to your transmission, but that's exactly why it ramps up the current rather than slam it on...


----------



## DIYguy (Sep 18, 2008)

Tesseract said:


> Interesting... it'd be really tough to break one of those dividers without damaging something else (like, oh, I dunno... that big honkin' ethernet jack), especially since the controller should have been surrounded by those expanding foam bags. You didn't happen to find the bit of broken divider in the box by any chance, did you? Also, take a few pictures of the box and send 'em to us.
> 
> As for your throttle pot, there's no mix-up, just a slight delay as we catch up with demand for them. Should be shipping one out to you in the next day or two.


Thanks for the reply. Yes, I thought the same thing about the ethernet port .. since it sticks out further, but it looks fine. Yes, I did find the broken piece in the box. There was sufficient foam although it was not evenly applied on the sides. The box also looked a little wonky...but then again, it went though many hands before mine. I'll send a couple of pics for you.

Mike already got back to me on the Pot, no worries.. it is on the way as you said.

I have a small suggestion.. Consider installing plugs in the water cooling ports. I think there are small press in plastic ones available (usually red in colour). You wouldn't want some bit of foam or other partical to get in there and block or slow cooling flow...especially for one of them high current applications. 

Overall, it's a very impressive piece of work.


----------



## TheSGC (Nov 15, 2007)

Wow, I know how big that controller is! Seeing it on the chair it does seem very intimidating and beastly looking!

So any plans to take this sucker and charge up any real hills? I am still waiting for someone to take this new toy and charge up a hill on video.


----------



## Jimdear2 (Oct 12, 2008)

Qer said:


> That would be right below the rpm limit when the motor starts to fling itself to pieces or, alternatively, right below the point where back-EMF starts to affect the top current.
> 
> Hmm. That'd take two different slew rate settings. Not too thrilled over that, I must say, since it'd screw up my algorithms (and thus risking bugs). The Valet mode could be (ab)used for this though, whenever I get around to implement that...


That sounds intereting. Adjustible slew rate for programing launch and a top end RPM limit would be great. Just as long as the limit was on motor speed only and not on power.



Qer said:


> As long as back-EMF is lower than pack voltage you'll have a flat torque curve, so you can get high torque at (reasonably) high RPM as well, and since power is torque*RPM there's no need to gear down the motor too much. I think you are on target.
> 
> I guess that's the big question, yes. ......


WONDERFUL I think we are on common ground now.



Qer said:


> It's hard to implement overrev in a better way than simply shut down the current (which is pretty much like how ICE's cut ignition).
> 
> It's simple (thus there's very little risk for bugs in the software), it's fast (thus hopefully saving the motor) and it's good enough for most situations. I can, however, see how it in this case might bring havoc to your transmission, but that's exactly why it ramps up the current rather than slam it on...


Just a comment, moderen ICE Soft rpm limiters work by reducing power, i.e. randomly cuting off a cylinder or two, rather then a complete cut off of, say ignition. (There are other systems as well) This is much easier on components. That is why you can take a modern ICE with a engine speed limiter and just floor it in neautral It will rev to a point and then maintain. If you add load, the system will increase torque to maintain that rpm until load overcomes the engines ability to produce power.

I suppose if the frequency of the on off cycle of current was high, the latentcy (or ineritia??) of the motor would give the apperance of a smooth power reduction rather then an abrupt cut off. Does that sound right?

Thanks I'm a lot closer to knowing what I want and will continue to follow what you guys are doing. I have learned a lot from you both.


----------



## Qer (May 7, 2008)

Jimdear2 said:


> Just a comment, moderen ICE Soft rpm limiters work by reducing power, i.e. randomly cuting off a cylinder or two, rather then a complete cut off of, say ignition.


The overrev protection is pretty much modelled after how ICE's handle it since it seems to be a reliable way to do it. 

For an I4-engine running at 6000 RPM it actually means that you get a power out for about 10 ms under which RPM is kept stable by inertia. It's true that when the Soliton cuts power it takes longer than 10 ms for current to fully recover, on the other hand current starts to increase pretty much immediately as RPM goes below treshold again.

Will it work in reality? I guess your guess is better than mine...


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

Jim,

if controller does all those things for you, then why do you need to be in the driver seat? Just flip the switch and sit on the bench drinking beer .

I am being sarcastic of course, no offense, but your requirements seem a bit too complicated. As it stands today Soliton1 is protecting your motor and battery, which is critical job, but you also want it to win the race for you? What's the fun in racing or pulling if everyone gets Soliton1 in their vehicle and they all run alike?

I had a chance recently to test RPM limiting with Soliton1 and it works great in protecting the motor, but obviously if you don't let go of the throttle then it will "jerk" the power, since its trying to comply with 2 contradicting commands from the driver, limit RPM yet keep going faster


----------



## Jimdear2 (Oct 12, 2008)

To all and especially dimitri

Yah, if racing was easy we would all do it.

Actually most of the gas ICE guys are running on their rev limiters (or blowing engines)

I'm just trying to equalize the playing field. The winner is the guy with the highest average tire speed and who steers the best course. The ICE guys can go way higher (My double M/C engine tractor hits 12000 rpm). ICE with their higher HP can go faster, but I can pull harder longer. My little garden tractor with a 5 or 6 continious HP 24 volt motor scares the Heck out of the stock 13 horse tractors. As long as it is traction and torque with equivalent power I kill them . But when they run off their governors with more MPH its hard to outpull them.

The gas guys are beating me with the inertia they build up with their higher speed. I need every MPH I can squeeze out. A controller that could maintain the ragged edge with full power would free me up to steer Steering is a lot more dificult then you might think.

I think that the controller thy have designed is awsome. I'm just expolring the limits right now and hoping that there is a special thing that will help.



dimitri said:


> Jim,
> 
> if controller does all those things for you, then why do you need to be in the driver seat? Just flip the switch and sit on the bench drinking beer .
> 
> ...


----------



## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

Jimdear2 said:


> ...
> The gas guys are beating me with the inertia they build up with their higher speed. I need every MPH I can squeeze out. A controller that could maintain the ragged edge with full power would free me up to steer Steering is a lot more dificult then you might think.
> 
> I think that the controller thy have designed is awsome. I'm just expolring the limits right now and hoping that there is a special thing that will help.


I've refrained from commenting on this because it was mostly a programming issue, but I've given the matter some thought and I think the existing over-rev limiting function will mostly do what you want as long as you use a sufficiently fast slew rate for the motor amps (as in, somewhere north of 2000A/s). Maybe this will break a driveshaft, but one thing I am sure of is that the cost of a driveshaft pales in comparison to the cost to rewriting the code for your particular application 

One other thing... our dyno does a good job of loading the motor down but it does not have even a fraction of the rotational inertia of an actual vehicle drivetrain (something that has made testing out idle such a pain in the posterior...). This lack of inertia means that the rev limiting function invariably results in - literally - a jumpy motor.


----------



## Woodsmith (Jun 5, 2008)

Jim,
I was just wondering if a heavy flywheel and clutch on your motor would make a difference? Spin up to the rev limit and then dump the clutch. The heavy flywheel would take care of the power surges as the controller cuts in and out.


----------



## Qer (May 7, 2008)

dimitri said:


> but obviously if you don't let go of the throttle then it will "jerk" the power, since its trying to comply with 2 contradicting commands from the driver, limit RPM yet keep going faster


Yep. It could've been made smoother, but then I decided that if someone hit the rev limit there's some benefit in making the ride as uncomfortable as possible so even a newbie driver realise something's wrong and release the throttle.

I hope all your fillings are still in place.


----------



## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

Qer said:


> Yep. [rev limiting] could've been made smoother,...


Just to expand on this a bit..., and this is aimed particularly at Jim, rev-limiting could be made smoother - even smoother than the best systems used in ICE vehicles - but here's the problem: this would require not cutting current to zero when the RPM limit is reached and going to 0A is the ONLY way you can have a hope of saving the motor if the reason it is over-speeding is a sheared shaft coupler! Even then the RPM still overshoots the setpoint by a good 1000 RPM during my simulation of such (by cranking up the slew rate and cranking down the dyno load then slamming the throttle to full blast).

To make over-rev operate smoothly - that is, to regulate motor RPM at some set point - would require a PID loop that is _tuned_ to the mechanical response of the system. The problem with this is that if something in the drive train _breaks_ the tuning parameters - especially for the derivative function - will be totally wrong and the system will become unstable. In this situation, a rev-limiter that using a tuned PID loop will actually make a bad situation worse. We decided that a PID loop has merit for idle because the maximum RPM desired for idle is low enough that even if something catastrophic occurred the loop will have plenty of time to prevent an over-rev condition, even with a tach that only delivers 1 pulse per revolution (worst case).

Over-rev, though, is typically going to be set to somewhere around 5000 rpm or higher, and there ain't much margin between that speed and destruction for, say, a 9" motor. 

In contrast, rpm-limiters for ICE vehicles can be made nice and smooth (though that certainly wasn't the case with my old Chevy S-10) because the likelihood of the engine shaft breaking is slim to none. You DIY'ers, with your unhealthy love of misaligned Lovejoy couplers -  - are a whole 'nother story, though. The risk of a sheared coupler is far greater in a conversion both because of this and the massive torque capability of the series DC motor (especially if fed by a 1kA controller  ).


----------



## TheSGC (Nov 15, 2007)

Tesseract said:


> One other thing... our dyno does a good job of loading the motor down but it does not have even a fraction of the rotational inertia of an actual vehicle drivetrain (something that has made testing out idle such a pain in the posterior...). This lack of inertia means that the rev limiting function invariably results in - literally - a jumpy motor.


It sounds like you need to build yourself an EV! Maybe get some sponsors and go for an all out street legal racer.


----------



## Jimdear2 (Oct 12, 2008)

To all of the people who contributed thoughts and comments to this discussion.

Thanks. I'll keep an eye on this thread. 

I realize that QER and Tesseract started out to build a Street type controller and to make it the best it could be. 

Lordy didn't they just sucseed.

Us racer types see a lot of things we like in this "street" controller, and they keep adding more and more stuff.

I guess I was hoping some of the things I read and heard would work the way wanted and I hoped they would. 

I still haven't given up though. I'm betting that one of them will have an euricia moment and I'll get what I want.

It's time to let this thread get back to what it is supposed to be.

You all be well


----------



## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

Thanks for the kind words Jim. I want to highlight one thing in particular you wrote:



> Us racer types see a lot of things we like in this "street" controller, and they keep adding more and more stuff.


There is much less of a difference between a racer and a daily driver with EVs than with ICE vehicles because you can brutally overload an electric motor by many more times its continuous output without doing anything special. I mean, what's the difference between the White Zombie that's driven on the street and the one that's screaming down the drag strip??? Maybe what the current limits and ramp rate are set to?! You don't get this luxury with an ICE vehicle because you have to build the engine specifically for the application, which usually renders it all but undriveable on the street (barely idles, bucks and stalls at low rpms, extremely peaky power curve, etc...). With a Soliton1-powered EV you just load up the controller's web page and change a few settings to go from mild-mannered daily driver to transaxle-snapping monster. When someone figures out a way to let you change an ICE's camshaft timing through a web browser I guess the Soliton1 will have some competition in that aspect, but for now we got the ICEs solidly beat in the ease of configuration department.


----------



## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

It seems I brought some grief on myself by mentioning the meter drivers in the Soliton1 - which aren't quite ready for prime time, and hence aren't discussed in the current revision of the owner's manual. That said, I will give a brief overview of how they work with the caveat that some of the details are subject to/probably will change.

The meter driver outputs are a square wave with amplitude more or less the same as the 12V supply voltage and a duty cycle that is varied from 0% to 100% in proportion to the monitored parameter (say, motor amps). 

To interface this with an analog meter that requires 50mV for a full scale reading you simple use the circuit shown in the attachment which is just a resistor divider to convert the ~12V output of the meter driver down to 50mV. Many different resistor combinations will work, I just happened to pick two standard values from the E24 series. 

For even better accuracy you could connect a zener diode in parallel with the "shunt" resistor so that variations in the 12V supply don't feed through to the meter, but that's really for advanced OCD sufferers only 

In another post I'll show you how to drive the usual fuel level or temperature gauge where the "sending unit" is a variable resistor connected to ground. This requires making a simple electronic circuit - one we will provide for a suitably exorbitant price, of course, for those of you that are soldering-challenged


----------



## DIYguy (Sep 18, 2008)

Tesseract said:


> It seems I brought some grief on myself by mentioning the meter drivers in the Soliton1 - which aren't quite ready for prime time, and hence aren't discussed in the current revision of the owner's manual. That said, I will give a brief overview of how they work with the caveat that some of the details are subject to/probably will change.


Thanks.... and sorry for asking...  lol. I just needed to know if I had to install the meter shunts with my controller wiring...



Tesseract said:


> When someone figures out a way to let you change an ICE's camshaft timing through a web browser I guess the Soliton1 will have some competition in that aspect, but for now we got the ICEs solidly beat in the ease of configuration department.


Actually, this technology exists.... solenoid controlled valves. Timing is a function of computer control...as is injector control etc. Not sure if/when it will become mainstream....

edit...means no camshaft....


----------



## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

DIYguy said:


> Thanks.... and sorry for asking...  lol. I just needed to know if I had to install the meter shunts with my controller wiring...


It wasn't just you, several other people sent e-mails to me so I figured I'd save some time and write about it here.




DIYguy said:


> Actually, this technology exists....


It exists, sure, but I doubt very seriously you - as the ordinary vehicle owner - will ever have the ability to radically alter any engine control parameters. For one thing, the EPA (in the US) frowns mightily upon any modifications that affect the emissions of an ICE vehicle. For another, the OEMs don't want to deal with the consequences of junior "hotting up" the cam timing and throwing a rod while street racing his friends (or wrecking the car because of such, etc...).


----------



## DIYguy (Sep 18, 2008)

Well, I put it in....wired it up. ...turned the key, fans whirled... Plugged in the lap top, software popped up.....went through the set up... calibrated the throttle..... turned it off.... turned it on.... touched the pot...motor turned.. jumped in.... put it in gear and took it for a spin. Literally... it was that uneventful. 

Got back, parked in the driveway. .. decided to do it again.... wouldn't go. Red error light on solid.... plugged in the laptop.... told me my accesory battery was low voltage. Put the charger on it.... turned the key, put it in gear .... and backed it in my garage.....  

Just like that. It rocks....


----------



## kek_63 (Apr 20, 2008)

DIYguy said:


> Well, I put it in....wired it up. ...turned the key, fans whirled... Plugged in the lap top, software popped up.....went through the set up... calibrated the throttle..... turned it off.... turned it on.... touched the pot...motor turned.. jumped in.... put it in gear and took it for a spin. Literally... it was that uneventful.
> 
> Got back, parked in the driveway. .. decided to do it again.... wouldn't go. Red error light on solid.... plugged in the laptop.... told me my accesory battery was low voltage. Put the charger on it.... turned the key, put it in gear .... and backed it in my garage.....
> 
> Just like that. It rocks....


 

Okay, that sounds just a little too easy for a DIY project, now, doesn't it?

Props to you Soliton guys,
Keith


----------



## Qer (May 7, 2008)

kek_63 said:


> Okay, that sounds just a little too easy for a DIY project, now, doesn't it?


I apologize. I will immediately start adding odd behaviours to the software so you have something to discuss. 



kek_63 said:


> Props to you Soliton guys,
> Keith


Ty.


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

Yea, its so boring in the controller area now, that we are all gathered in the battery section, devising new ways of destroying our packs 

Congrats Gary, how's your poor battery pack dealing with power hungry Soliton1 ? Have you set any limits yet?

How about a picture under the hood showing the goodies?


----------



## DIYguy (Sep 18, 2008)

dimitri said:


> Yea, its so boring in the controller area now, that we are all gathered in the battery section, devising new ways of destroying our packs
> 
> Congrats Gary, how's your poor battery pack dealing with power hungry Soliton1 ? Have you set any limits yet?
> 
> How about a picture under the hood showing the goodies?


Thanks Dimitri,

I'll post a pic or two. There are a few videos in my build thread. 

Too early to tell how the batts will stand up...but dumping large sums of current should not be a problem for these batteries. They should be able to put the lithiums to shame.... They are rated for 2100 amps as I recall. At 192 volt nominal...it's the motor and controller that will have to sweat...lol

More seriously now... I have only tried the truck up the street and around the block. I had modest limits on most of the settings. I will experiment a little bit more soon. 

Tell me about this logger.exe program. Do I just execute this pgm while connected to the Soliton? I don't recall seeing much on this part...


----------



## Qer (May 7, 2008)

DIYguy said:


> Tell me about this logger.exe program. Do I just execute this pgm while connected to the Soliton? I don't recall seeing much on this part...


Yep. It dumps columns of data that you then can import into something else and draw nice graphs over your run. I believe Dimitri's importing it to Excel to make fancy graphics...?


----------



## DIYguy (Sep 18, 2008)

Qer said:


> Yep. It dumps columns of data that you then can import into something else and draw nice graphs over your run. I believe Dimitri's importing it to Excel to make fancy graphics...?


Please excuse my questions on items that I have not had a chance to fully follow up on...but I had only 15 minutes last evening after all the sports stuff.... so I wanted to try a couple of things. One was the logger application. (BTW it would be most helpful to have a sentence or two on this in the manual when you guys get to it... just sayin...) When I start the application ... I get the real time - one line screen. Not sure what all columns are, but most are obvious. Regarding the RPM read out. It looked fine and limited to 5000 where I set it just fine. I was wondering though, if it was accurate according to real world. I have a hand held rpm meter...but it's not working right for some reason. Anyways, I decided to connect my OEM tach and compare. I didn't use the Soliton tach output, I just paralleled the signal from the prox. Both worked ok, but the tach in the dash has a different readout. At 1000 rpm on the OEM tach, the datalogger says the motor is turning about 1500 rpm. At about 3300 on the dash, the logger is in limiting mode, bouncing around 5000 (where I have it set). I guess I need to get another rpm meter to know for sure what's going on. Oh also, I disconnected my pull up resistor (150 ohm) and everthing still worked exactly the same way. I should add, that I have a two pulse per rev sensor arrangement and the software is set for 2/rev also. 

OK, second issue... I clicked on the data file to see all this logged data.. and low and behold, another application is displayed! lol 
I have an application loaded on this laptop for gathering welding sensor data. It's called ARCagent. (this application was not running and hasn't been used in quite some time) I must assume that this ARCagent program uses the same kind of code. I will have to find a way to disable it or something. (I hope I don't have to remove it). 

More fun stuff... 

Edit.... I should add, I'm using a PNP inductive prox, so the resistor is across "tach and SGND"....not that it seems to matter much. Oh and the prox cable is shielded.


----------



## fugdabug (Jul 14, 2008)

Howdy!
Dimitri mentions running the cooling tubing into a radiator (the heater) in the car cabin... now that is a REALLY GOOD IDEA!... you eliminate some waste of heat and use the heat when needed. Are there other innovations we could apply to that? Say using the heat to generate movement in a material to run a pump or perhaps generate electricity?... put on the thinking caps cause I think the Soliton1 has opened a can of idea stuff boys and girls... 
Please pardon my 'brain farts'.. but I have been hashing over ideas that use heat for energy conversion for some years now... we live in the 'nort' voods'
don't ya kno'... so it is prime country for investigating the 'how' in how to stay warm. An' along with that comes the mind thinking in terms of energy and the use of every last bit of it.


----------



## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

It seems the Soliton is fine with only air cooling, so I doubt you'd get any usable heat from it in a liquid cooling setup.


----------



## fugdabug (Jul 14, 2008)

AH!, I was thinking as I finished writing, of course that would depend on HOW HOT the unit was running in the first place. Perhaps I should investigate that with the Curtis... Good to know that the Soliton1 is running that cool, this is a real good piece of news: less heat, less stress! (something we could all do with!)


----------



## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

DIYguy said:


> ... I wanted to try a couple of things. One was the logger application. (BTW it would be most helpful to have a sentence or two on this in the manual when you guys get to it... just sayin...)


Yeah, yeah... it's on the list. Problem is, the logger program data format changes on a frequent basis depending on what I am troubleshooting at the time, and it's not really what you'd call a polished program. However, Qer will be happy to provide you with source code and the data format if you want to write your own 




DIYguy said:


> When I start the application ... I get the real time - one line screen. Not sure what all columns are, but most are obvious.


Me either... I ask Qer that same question every few days it seems... Changes alot, though 




DIYguy said:


> Regarding the RPM read out. It looked fine and limited to 5000 where I set it just fine. I was wondering though, if it was accurate according to real world.


It's very accurate. I just double checked it against my optical tachometer and where logger said 737 rpm I got 750; at 1537 rpm I measured 1551; at 3050 rpm I got 3000, etc. Sooo.....




DIYguy said:


> ...the tach in the dash has a different readout. At 1000 rpm on the OEM tach, the datalogger says the motor is turning about 1500 rpm.


Did your vehicle come with a 6 cylinder engine by any chance? If so, the tachometer is expecting to see 3 pulses per revolution, not 2. That would handily explain why logger says 1500 rpm while the tach says 1000 rpm (exactly 50% higher on logger). Other than that, I have no other idea why your dash tach is off so much compared to logger. Would be interesting to see what a handheld tach says. 



DIYguy said:


> OK, second issue... I clicked on the data file to see all this logged data.. and low and behold, another application is displayed!


Well, logger.exe generates a plain text file called logger.txt that you can open up with Notepad (in Windoze) or any other text editor. The data is currently space-delimited but it can be formatted in a more spreadsheet-friendly way. Dimitri has Excel set up to import the data and make pretty graphs; I just rely on Qer's excellent little script to do that work for me 

As far as you abusing your prox... if it's a PNP output it needs a pulldown, and to minimize picking up noise place the pulldown resistor directly across the TACH and SGND terminals on the controller.


----------



## Qer (May 7, 2008)

Tesseract said:


> Did your vehicle come with a 6 cylinder engine by any chance? If so, the tachometer is expecting to see 3 pulses per revolution, not 2. That would handily explain why logger says 1500 rpm while the tach says 1000 rpm (exactly 50% higher on logger).


Right, thanks for reminding me. Tach output should have a ppt-setting as well. Too many things to keep track of...


----------



## DIYguy (Sep 18, 2008)

Tesseract said:


> Yeah, yeah... it's on the list. Problem is, the logger program data format changes on a frequent basis depending on what I am troubleshooting at the time, and it's not really what you'd call a polished program. However, Qer will be happy to provide you with source code and the data format if you want to write your own


yes, thanks... I have trouble writing English...lol



Tesseract said:


> Me either... I ask Qer that same question every few days it seems... Changes alot, though





Tesseract said:


> It's very accurate. I just double checked it against my optical tachometer and where logger said 737 rpm I got 750; at 1537 rpm I measured 1551; at 3050 rpm I got 3000, etc. Sooo.....
> 
> Did your vehicle come with a 6 cylinder engine by any chance? If so, the tachometer is expecting to see 3 pulses per revolution, not 2. That would handily explain why logger says 1500 rpm while the tach says 1000 rpm (exactly 50% higher on logger). Other than that, I have no other idea why your dash tach is off so much compared to logger. Would be interesting to see what a handheld tach says.


Yes, actually it did come with a 6 cylinder... OMG that was an interesting adventure...and apparently, it's not so cut and dried (3 pulses for 6 cyl, 2 for 4 cyl etc)... waste spark, PCM generated pulse...etc. At the time, I did verify to my hand held that 2 pulses per rev made an acurate read out on the dash unit... now, I'm wondering if my hand held was right...????



Tesseract said:


> Well, logger.exe generates a plain text file called logger.txt that you can open up with Notepad (in Windoze) or any other text editor. The data is currently space-delimited but it can be formatted in a more spreadsheet-friendly way. Dimitri has Excel set up to import the data and make pretty graphs; I just rely on Qer's excellent little script to do that work for me
> 
> As far as you abusing your prox... if it's a PNP output it needs a pulldown, and to minimize picking up noise place the pulldown resistor directly across the TACH and SGND terminals on the controller.


Yes, this is where I had it... but ...seems not to need one???


----------



## DIYguy (Sep 18, 2008)

the really nice thing is... If my OEM tach does in fact need 3 pulses per rev, I will be able to select this on the Soliton parameter set up...  beats pulling my motor/tranny connection apart to add another pick up point!


----------



## DIYguy (Sep 18, 2008)

Qer said:


> Right, thanks for reminding me. Tach output should have a ppt-setting as well. Too many things to keep track of...


ppt = pulses-per-turn, I assume? What is the timing on this one Qer?.... 

Thank you.


----------



## Qer (May 7, 2008)

DIYguy said:


> ppt = pulses-per-turn, I assume? What is the timing on this one Qer?....


Right now it's hard coded to 2 ppt (ie 4 cylinder engine) but I should add a setting for ppt for at least 2, 3 and 4. 6 might be a bit tough for the output though...

Anyone know what an I5-engine tach has? 2.5 ppt?


----------



## Overlander23 (Jun 15, 2009)

Will tach input work with one pulse? I've got one notch in my flywheel that I'll be reading with a proximity sensor. Or is on/off considered two pulses? Will I have to add another notch to the flywheel?


----------



## Qer (May 7, 2008)

Overlander23 said:


> Will tach input work with one pulse?


Yes. Input can handle 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6 ppt.


----------



## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

Overlander23 said:


> Will tach input work with one pulse? I've got one notch in my flywheel that I'll be reading with a proximity sensor. Or is on/off considered two pulses? Will I have to add another notch to the flywheel?


It will work - I use the same setup on the dyno - but it will not work _well._ 

With only 1 pulse per revolution it takes a while for the Soliton1 to get an accurate reading of the motor rpm, especially at the rpms used for idle (a feature that is still in beta test - much improved, dimitri, since you tested it, though ). This is because we count the time between pulses, but have to make a judgment about whether each pulse is valid (or noise) by looking at the difference in time between successive pulses and discarding those that are radically different. We then average the times of the last few valid pulses and take the reciprocal to get the rpm. This works surprisingly well even with prox sensors that use unshielded cable (not recommended, of course, but I try to test worst case for each feature, hence the 1 ppr setup on the dyno).

With only 1 ppr, and the usual number of tach errors per sensing period, it could take 1 second or more to get a decent RPM reading at the sort of speeds commonly specified for idle (700-900 rpm). Doubling the ppr to 2 cuts that time by more than half because it not only doubles the number of valid pulses per sample period, it also cuts the number of noise pulses considered noise in half (oversimplifying here, but it's a useful one).

By this logic, 4, 6, 8, 10, etc. ppr should be even better, and they are to some extent, but the little microcontroller inside the Soliton1 doesn't have unlimited computing power and we suspect that MAYBE we can handle 8 ppr on the high end (which translates into an 800 Hz signal at 6000 rpm, our nominal "minimum maximum" frequency the overspeed function has to be able to read in order to be considered "usable").

One other thing - if we get complaints from other customers about how crappy the Soliton1 maintains idle, or how it lets RPM overshoot the setpoint by a crazy amount, with a 1 ppr tach signal then our agreed solution is to delete the 1 ppr selection from the drop down list 

Wtf? You want this thing to make you breakfast in the morning, too?!


----------



## DIYguy (Sep 18, 2008)

Qer said:


> Right now it's hard coded to 2 ppt (ie 4 cylinder engine) but I should add a setting for ppt for at least 2, 3 and 4. 6 might be a bit tough for the output though...
> 
> Anyone know what an I5-engine tach has? 2.5 ppt?


I think you will likely have it covered with up to 4 ppt. Since PCM's became the norm... the standard "half the number of cylinders" was likely left behind. Seems most PCM's input the pulses from the sensor and spit out what they decide is best. I'm no expert on this topic, it's just an observation on the few I have had some experience with..... There is some interesting reading about this on my build thread by a few guys who know more about this topic....let me see if I can pin point it and put a link here....

OK starts at post # 183....http://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/showthread.php/good-ohmn-here-we-go-23492p19.html ...make sure u follow it for a while as there is more detailed info later on...Jimdear and Lazzer know about this stuff....


----------



## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

I read that part of your build thread - lots of good info and details in there, btw - but now I'm even more confused about this tach thing than before... 

So, have you actually determined whether your tach needs 3 ppt or 2 ppt?

One possible way to test this without buying/borrowing a function generator would be to feed the tach a 60Hz signal from a small 12V transformer with a single rectifier in series with one lead (white band towards the tach input, the other lead of the transformer to vehicle ground). If you have a 2 ppt tachometer then it should read 1800 rpm; if it's 3 ppt then it will show 1200 rpm.

Unless, of course, it simply can't read a haversine wave, which is also possible...


----------



## DIYguy (Sep 18, 2008)

Tesseract said:


> I read that part of your build thread - lots of good info and details in there, btw - but now I'm even more confused about this tach thing than before... ...


Yes, I know eh?.... I just wanted to make the point that it isn't always "# of cyl/2" 



Tesseract said:


> So, have you actually determined whether your tach needs 3 ppt or 2 ppt?...


Well, I thought I had up until recently. I discovered my hand held tach is wonky and the Soliton is reporting differently than what I thought. 



Tesseract said:


> One possible way to test this without buying/borrowing a function generator would be to feed the tach a 60Hz signal from a small 12V transformer with a single rectifier in series with one lead (white band towards the tach input, the other lead of the transformer to vehicle ground). If you have a 2 ppt tachometer then it should read 1800 rpm; if it's 3 ppt then it will show 1200 rpm.
> 
> Unless, of course, it simply can't read a haversine wave, which is also possible...


Thanks for the idea. The reporting from the Soliton looks solid...so, I just want to make sure my hand held tach is working or get another one to compare and I'll know for sure. I think the little optical ones can be found for under $100. I need to find a good source in Canada...to much extra $ shipping one from US.


----------



## DIYguy (Sep 18, 2008)

Hey Jeff,
I'm wondering about the ethernet cable connection on the Soliton. Obviously it was designed for some kind of lock-able connection..military spec or something??? I would like to connect properly to this port and terminate to a nice receptacle in the cabin.... perhaps somewhat concealed. Could you recommend an ethernet cable/option that may work??

Thanks,
Gary


----------



## evsource (Mar 23, 2009)

Tesseract said:


> As for my reluctance to answer your questions in detail, the fact is that just a couple weeks ago Ryan Bohm of EVSource (who is developing the former NetGain controller) asked me some similarly technical questions on the EVDL, so your timing happened to be particularly bad.


FYI, the original comment that a question was asked about:

We use two tyco/Kilovac EV200 contactors in parallel on the 1000A
controller. We have detected no local temperature rise even at 800A on
the battery side.​
And my questions:

Where are you measuring? I'm assuming they connect right up to the heavy copper busbars? On both contact terminals? 

Will powered shutoffs be "logged" and require some sort of inspection process?​
These questions were not because I'm implementing anything similar. I had at one point (a year ago) considered internal contactors (in fact, the EV200), but decided that without monitoring, this could be a risky idea. If the contactor breaks a load (e.g. user turns off the key with current flowing for whatever reason), this can damage the contactor and decrease its ability to break an emergency load in the future. Furthermore, the EV200 specs out in its datasheet for continuous carry current, "500 @ 50°C, 300 mcm conductors". Any idea how large 300mcm conductor is? (a couple sizes larger than 4/0). The Soliton is said to be capable of 1000A continuous, but is the contactor capable of this? Can it be inspected regularly after abuse?

So my questions were an honest attempt to understand the Soliton controller, and help others who might be contemplating purchasing understand important factors as well. I don't think it can be stressed just how important the main contactor is! 

Certainly there is a difference between technical questions worded to sneakily obtain proprietary information and questions to simply understand the product. I can see how my questions might have come across as the former. I should have clarified why I was asking.


----------



## Qer (May 7, 2008)

evsource said:


> If the contactor breaks a load (e.g. user turns off the key with current flowing for whatever reason), this can damage the contactor and decrease its ability to break an emergency load in the future.


No worries. The software will shut off the PWM first, THEN the contactor. The software always makes sure the contactor never has to break/make with current applied.


----------



## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

DIYguy said:


> ... I would like to connect properly to this port and terminate to a nice receptacle in the cabin.... perhaps somewhat concealed.
> ...


Thanks for reminding me about this... Seb keeps bugging me about it, too, but he bugs me about a lot of things and I can only take so many bugs...

The ethernet port is made by Amphenol and mates with a matching waterproof hood (that can be retrofitted onto an existing ethernet cable - which is why I selected it!) which can be bought from Mouser (and us, eventually):

http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Amphenol/RJFEZ6/?qs=anVall655kQL/YepboDjPw==

There is also a matching cap that seals the ethernet port when not in use, but they weren't available for a long time... apparently they are available again so I will likely clear Mouser out of these, too:

http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Amphenol/RJFEZBE/?qs=9QC6KritiMmuGSqZUH9%2b5A==

Our intent was to ship each controller with the cap but Amphenol apparently bought the company that makes this clever system sometime earlier this year and supply was disrupted for a few months. Which, I assure you, is the sort of thing that makes engineers gnaw their fingernails into the wee hours of the morning.


----------



## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

evsource said:


> ...Certainly there is a difference between technical questions worded to sneakily obtain proprietary information and questions to simply understand the product. I can see how my questions might have come across as the former. I should have clarified why I was asking.


I'm sorry, but I'm not going to answer your questions because: you are a competitor; they have already been answered in another thread that I started to discuss the development of the Soliton1 (titled "New controller prototype"); this thread is for customer reviews.

That said, yes, the EV200's need a heat sink to meet their current ratings... check out the first post of the aforementioned thread and decide for yourself whether the laminated bus structure I designed for the Soliton1 might serve that purpose well enough.

Otherwise, please don't attempt to impugn my knowledge with such inane questions like, "[a]ny idea how large 300mcm conductor is?..."


----------



## evsource (Mar 23, 2009)

Qer said:


> No worries. The software will shut off the PWM first, THEN the contactor. The software always makes sure the contactor never has to break/make with current applied.


Isn't that the main point of the main contactor is to break current in case of a failure of the power section?

My main message to any consumer doing an EV conversion is to make sure that *you*, the customer, has ultimate control over shutting down the system! Every controller manufacturer is going to say that their design is safe, and many customers just take their word for it. But if the customer knows that by turning the key off, the main (or other redundant contactors that would exist in any good design) will open, then the customer can be completely assured that they are in control in case of a failure. 

It's my opinion that at least one of the contactors in the loop should be one with viewable contacts, so they can be inspected for damage, and that this should be a part of a regular maintenance schedule. That's not to say that designing a sealed contactor into your controller is a bad idea. But I reiterate that a good design will have redundancy in this critical aspect of the design. This is even more true for direct drive systems. Some people have the idea that your brakes will stop a 300V pack of AGMs or Lithium cells. I can tell you from personal experience that the brakes do *nothing* against even a 144V pack of AGMs shorted to the motor.

Safety is all too often overlooked in EV conversions. It should be the #1 concern, not performance, not ego, not cost. 

And before I get labeled as a troublemaker here, I'm not trying to make anyone look bad. I'm just bringing up things that any customer should be asking and thinking about, independent of what controller they are using.


----------



## DIYguy (Sep 18, 2008)

evsource said:


> But I reiterate that a good design will have redundancy in this critical aspect of the design.
> 
> Safety is all too often overlooked in EV conversions. It should be the #1 concern, not performance, not ego, not cost.


I agree, ... completely. The builder is designing a "system"... the controller is one component in this system. 

(Not that anyone cares what I think....... lol)


----------



## evsource (Mar 23, 2009)

Tesseract said:


> I'm sorry, but I'm not going to answer your questions because: you are a competitor;


Seems that should be all the more reason to respond 



Tesseract said:


> they have already been answered in another thread that I started to discuss the development of the Soliton1 (titled "New controller prototype"); this thread is for customer reviews.


Plenty of other off-topic responses in this thread. Threads always seem to get off the original topic.



Tesseract said:


> Otherwise, please don't attempt to impugn my knowledge with such inane questions like, "[a]ny idea how large 300mcm conductor is?..."


I'm sorry, I should have read what I wrote before posting. That's almost exactly how someone worded it to me once, and it riled me up too. Most people (I didn't doubt that you knew, it's just how I asked), don't have any idea what 300MCM is ... even I had to look it up before posting to remember where it sat in relation to 4/0. 300MCM would be about the equivalent of a 2" x 1/4" busbar, which is perfectly conceivable for your controller. I am a bit curious how you extrapolate the 500A continuous rating of the contactor to your 1000A+ controller continuous rating. Did you say you have two contactors in parallel?


----------



## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

evsource said:


> I am a bit curious how you extrapolate the 500A continuous rating of the contactor to your 1000A+ controller continuous rating. Did you say you have two contactors in parallel?


This has already been answered in the aforementioned thread and you are welcome to wade through all 500+ responses to find said answers


----------



## evsource (Mar 23, 2009)

Tesseract said:


> This has already been answered in the aforementioned thread and you are welcome to wade through all 500+ responses to find said answers


Yeah, I already found it. So someone else doesn't have to waste time looking, yes, your controller has two contactors in parallel.


----------



## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

evsource said:


> ... I had at one point (a year ago) considered internal contactors (in fact, the EV200), but decided that without monitoring, this could be a risky idea. If the contactor breaks a load (e.g. user turns off the key with current flowing for whatever reason), this can damage the contactor and decrease its ability to break an emergency load in the future.


I apologize in advance for further derailing this thread, but Ryan made a valid observation here and since I have recently been admonished for being jerky I'm going to address this post and even be nice about it 

Yes, if the twin EV200 contactors inside the Soliton1 have to break a load that will decrease their life, but that is an abnormal situation by definition. Under normal circumstances the contactors close into a fully charged input capacitor and open while PWM duty cycle is zero. If for some reason they have to break a desat-level current (set at ~1800A in the Soliton1) then that may significantly decrease their life, but the only reason that will occur is if the microcontroller responds to the desat event faster than the hardware-based desat detection circuit but there is a bug in the code that somehow doesn't let PWM go to zero first - I suppose anything is possible, but practically speaking this is a rather remote possibility. Now, if the contactors have to break a totally out of control short circuit _before_ the bond wires in the IGBT modules fuse then they are definitely done for. Of course, if that were to happen then the controller won't turn on again until it is repaired. 

Basically, then, "normal abnormal" situations will result in the hardware desat circuit turning off the IGBTs in a controlled fashion then the microcontroller will ensure the PWM is off then it will command the main contactors to open then post an error code to the status register (readable in the web interface by refreshing the page). None of the contactors I cut open after destructive testing (during the prototyping period) showed signs of damage to their contacts, even though the IGBTs were smoking ruins. Having the microcontroller on a separate board from the power circuitry helps a lot when it comes to maintaining some semblance of control in the event of the fit hitting the shan, btw.




evsource said:


> Furthermore, the EV200 specs out in its datasheet for continuous carry current, "500 @ 50°C, 300 mcm conductors". ... Can it be inspected regularly after abuse?


Correct - the EV200 contactor does require additional heat-sinking through its terminal studs to meets its claimed current rating. I handled that problem in the Soliton1 (along with a couple others) by using a laminated bus structure composed of ~6.5" wide by ~0.1" thick copper plates that not only carry current from the contactors to the film capacitor and IGBTs, but also act as excellent heat sinks. Just for reference, the cross sectional area of the bus structure is equivalent to ~750MCM cable.

Unfortunately, the contactors inside the Soliton1 can not be inspected by the end user, but we have tried to monitor and catch all possible faults that might affect them (and every fault situation I could think of has been tested). At any rate, having the controller manage external contactors is a valid design option but we decided that putting the contactors inside the controller, though rendering them inaccessible, was a better overall choice because it eliminated a lot of tampering and wiring error problems right from the get-go.


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

Its been a while since I reported any news, wasn't much to report, just driving the car every day, passed 4000 EV miles this week.

Today I got the new Beta software from EVNetics team, which has Idle and RPM limiting working perfectly, so I disabled my own Idle circuit and just let Soliton1 do its magic. I can now safely floor the pedal while parked and RPMs will stick to my preset limit like a glue, no chance of overrevving the motor. My Idle is now working regardless of Air Conditioning state since controller has a PID loop keeping RPMs regardless of motor load. Before, I just had a preset throttle value for Idle, which was OK, but AC would mess it up and also when transmission gets hot and ATF is less viscous, my idle would go up too much. Now everything works just like stock car, Idle is rock solid.

Many thanks to EVNetics team!


----------



## Bowser330 (Jun 15, 2008)

great to hear!


----------



## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

Dimitri is being too kind... getting idle to work well was a real challenge. He had some... ummm... "exciting" times testing it out for us (we did some testing as well, but Dimitri has an almost supernatural ability to be the Worst Case Scenario, which makes him a great beta tester... but someone who's e-mails usually make me reach for the Tums...)

Soooo... I can't resist asking... does any other controller have the ability to idle the motor? Could this be an EV first? I hate to gloat.. aw, who am I kidding.. I *love* to gloat


----------



## TheSGC (Nov 15, 2007)

Tesseract said:


> Soooo... I can't resist asking... does any other controller have the ability to idle the motor? Could this be an EV first? I hate to gloat.. aw, who am I kidding.. I *love* to gloat


Running through the list, I can say the Soliton1 is the only controller that can idle the motor.

I do have a Zilla 1K-LV and using Dimitri's Idle circuit to cruise around. I will say, having the idle built into the controller would make life a lot easier. 

On the topic of idling, isn't is great how little power is uses? My 96 volt Civic idles using 4-6 AMPs when in Park, and about 3 AMPs when driving. My stereo system takes more power....

Wow, with all these cars being Autos these days, it can now be said that an off the shelf controller will take the "thinking" of an automatic transmission out of the picture.


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

Just when I thought it can't get any better, it just keeps surprising me 

Fuel gauge on my instrument cluster was the only dead instrument after conversion..... until today.

Soliton1 now has the SoC output selection. You set MIN and MAX pack voltage and the output creates PWM signal to simulate analog signal from OEM fuel gauge sender unit.

I had to create a simple circuit using schematic provided by Tesseract, which will be included in official Soliton1 documentation soon. This circuit has one transistor and 3 resistors, all can be bought at Radio Shack for a couple of bucks. It provides interface between fuel gauge and controller's output to normalize the voltage and current expected by the fuel gauge.

Once I had it done and set my typical pack voltages, the gauge needle came alive , woohoo 

I will watch how well it reports the pack SoC and possibly adjust the range for better readability over next few days.

Best part of this solution is that controller knows how much current is passing thru, so it only reads the SoC voltage when current is zero or low enough not to create much sag, so the SoC reading is not succeptible to voltage sag, which makes it difficult to read on a regular voltmeter. This way the needle always represents resting voltage, which is true SoC data.

EVNetics team has done it again, excellent job guys!!! 

At this point every single thing in my car works just like stock. Lack of exhaust pipe is the only thing that gives away an EV on the road, well, except my "Electric Conversion" decals on both sides and the back 

My wife now drives the EV without any hesitation, in fact she loves it as much as I do, so........ mission accomplished


----------



## Bowser330 (Jun 15, 2008)

Congratulations!

Bravo!


----------



## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

dimitri said:


> ...
> Best part of this solution is that controller knows how much current is passing thru, so it only reads the SoC voltage when current is zero or low enough not to create much sag, so the SoC reading is not succeptible to voltage sag, which makes it difficult to read on a regular voltmeter. This way the needle always represents resting voltage, which is true SoC data.


Hyperbole always appreciated, Dimitri... 

By way of clarification, the method used to determine State of Charge right now is rather crude: it's little more than an "expanded range" voltmeter that freezes the reading if the current drawn from the pack exceeds a user-defined amount. One major downside to this is that if you drive almost entirely on the highway _and_ don't let the throttle go to zero every once in awhile then the gauge may remain at an inaccurately high reading. Also, you have to make an educated guess as to how much battery current is acceptable before freezing the reading and that mainly depends on the internal resistance and stated capacity of the pack. My guess is to set it to somewhere between 0.2C to 0.5C.

There are a couple of ways to refine this function - like counting the Ah consumed versus the stated pack capacity - but we want to see how well the simple version works for awhile before tinkering with it some more. Besides, we have a lot of other features and functions to tackle, still, like a sport/econo mode; series/parallel motor switching; and the big daddy of destruction, regenerative braking eek.

I THINK I posted a similar schematic before, but attached is the circuit to convert the positive PWM pulses from an aux. output on the Soliton1 to the "variable resistance" expected by many automotive gauges...


----------



## Bowser330 (Jun 15, 2008)

Tesseract said:


> .... One major downside to this is that if you drive almost entirely on the highway _and_ don't let the throttle go to zero every once in awhile then the gauge may remain at an inaccurately high reading........


Couldn't you tie a switch into the throttle so that it would turn off the throttle for as much time as it would need to register the SoC, half a second, 1/4 of a second...So even if you were cruising along, you could leave your foot on the pedal and not have to lift it because its electronically turning it off for a 1/4 second, enough time to register the SoC.....making the driver unaware that its happening...


----------



## Qer (May 7, 2008)

Bowser330 said:


> So even if you were cruising along, you could leave your foot on the pedal and not have to lift it because its electronically turning it off for a 1/4 second, enough time to register the SoC.....


I once had a beat up Renault 5 with an ICE that behaved just like that. It was always a very bad idea to ride that car directly after food until I managed to fix the ignition...


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

No matter how close I try to set min and max voltage for SoC gauge, due to flat discharge curve the gauge spends most of the time in the middle, which is not very useful. Maybe counting AH would be more accurate and hopefully not too difficult to implement.


----------



## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

dimitri said:


> No matter how close I try to set min and max voltage for SoC gauge, due to flat discharge curve the gauge spends most of the time in the middle, which is not very useful. Maybe counting AH would be more accurate and hopefully not too difficult to implement.


Sigh... well, when I said we want to see how this works for awhile before tinkering with it I meant for more than 1 day 

Counting Ah requires calculus (integration) which, as you might imagine, is computationally intensive. I suspect it will come to that, but refining SoC meter is rather low on the totem pole as of now. I can say that it works pretty well with the lead-acid pack for the dyno... 

What are your voltage settings, exactly? If you set the upper voltage to 136V (3.4V/cell) and the lower voltage to 116V I'd expect you'd get a pretty decent indication of SoC. Perhaps that microcontroller interface thingamabob isn't quite as compatible as expected?


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

Tesseract said:


> Sigh... well, when I said we want to see how this works for awhile before tinkering with it I meant for more than 1 day


No problem, I am just reporting early results, I wasn't expecting you to jump on it 

What is the PWM frequency at the SoC output? I suspect that my gauge input has too much smoothing capacitance and its not draining fast enough between the pulses, similar to the issue I had with my RPM filtering. Fuel gauge behavior is strange, the needle stays at the top for too long and then suddenly starts to move to the middle. When I play with voltage settings to try different positions, I notice that it moves up much faster than down, which makes me think its the capacitance issue.

OEM fuel gauge sender has a float which I imagine moves a lot as fuel splashes around the tank, so I guess the gauge unit has to smooth all that noise.

I don't know, I still need to play with it some more.


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

Tesseract said:


> What are your voltage settings, exactly? If you set the upper voltage to 136V (3.4V/cell) and the lower voltage to 116V I'd expect you'd get a pretty decent indication of SoC. Perhaps that microcontroller interface thingamabob isn't quite as compatible as expected?


I have it at 124 - 140 at this time, although I tried few different combinations. Even at 140 max and actual voltage at 135 it still goes all the way up for few minutes, then slowly starts to taper down.


----------



## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

dimitri said:


> What is the PWM frequency at the SoC output?


Approximately 60Hz. 




dimitri said:


> I suspect that my gauge input has too much smoothing capacitance....


The simple synthetic variable resistor circuit I posted above is meant to interface the Soliton1 to an analog gauge directly, not provide the input to a microcontroller that _then_ drives the gauge. It relies on the mechanical inertia of the gauge to integrate the PWM signal into a steady average reading. The microcontroller may interpret this synthetic variable resistor as an intermittent short in the wiring. If you have an OBD-II scan tool you might want to see if a fault has been posted for the fuel tank sending unit.


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

It took some trial and errors, but I was able to zoom in on specific voltage range for my pack which corresponds to meaningful gauge reading. I think every case will depend somewhat on the gauge's ability to respond to PWM signal, but it is possible to make it work in a pretty decent manner. I would not throw away a voltmeter per say, but this SoC gauge is a really nice addition to the instrument cluster.

I only have one complain, if you don't mind . While controller is initializing itself it seems that SoC output is High, which makes the gauge needle go to the top, then it slowly comes down to correct level. Is it possible to make default state Low, so needle climbs up from zero instead? IMHO, this would make a little more natural behavior, similar to ICE car.

Hopefully it not too much coding, even its possible at all...


----------



## Qer (May 7, 2008)

dimitri said:


> I only have one complain, if you don't mind . While controller is initializing itself it seems that SoC output is High, which makes the gauge needle go to the top, then it slowly comes down to correct level. Is it possible to make default state Low, so needle climbs up from zero instead? IMHO, this would make a little more natural behavior, similar to ICE car.


Hm. Found the bug, will be fixed. Good catch.


----------



## Jimdear2 (Oct 12, 2008)

dimitri said:


> Its been a while since I reported any news, wasn't much to report, just driving the car every day, passed 4000 EV miles this week.
> 
> Today I got the new Beta software from EVNetics team, which has Idle and RPM limiting working perfectly, Many thanks to EVNetics team!


 
Sorry to go back so far in the posts, but I've been down sick. 

The question I have is for Dimitri. The above makes it sound like you used (tried out) the REV Limiter function on a motor installed to a drivetrain. If so how long did you maintain the maximum, was rhe motor power flow smooth or jerkey as it reached the maximum and bounced off the limit. I'm hoping that the added ineritia of the drive train would smooth out the power pulses caused by the current cycleing to zero and then back up.

Specifically what I want to be able to do is use this function in competition. Example. . . Set a desired RPM limit then when pulling mash the throttle and let the controller hold the line while I concentrate on steering. A lot of the steering on a puller is done with individual wheel brakes and require a bit of attention.

Thanks for any info you can give me.


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

Jim,

yes, I tried RPM limiting. I can basically floor the pedal and keep it floored, while Soliton1 will keep preset RPM limit. However, there is obvious oscillation in the PID loop, somewhere around 1 Hz in frequency. This is expected and amplitude of the oscillation depends on inertia and load in the drivetrain. EVnetics guys done a great job in making it as smooth as possible, but I think its still too violent to use under heavy load. There are adjustable PID parameters in the software, which you can play with to better match with your drivetrain, but I don't know how far you can take it.

Like it was said before, this feature is for motor protection, I'm not sure it will serve your needs, but it will save your motor


----------



## Jimdear2 (Oct 12, 2008)

dimitri said:


> Jim,
> 
> yes, I tried RPM limiting. I can basically floor the pedal and keep it floored, while Soliton1 will keep preset RPM limit. However, there is obvious oscillation in the PID loop, somewhere around 1 Hz in frequency. This is expected and amplitude of the oscillation depends on inertia and load in the drivetrain. EVnetics guys done a great job in making it as smooth as possible, but I think its still too violent to use under heavy load. There are adjustable PID parameters in the software, which you can play with to better match with your drivetrain, but I don't know how far you can take it.
> 
> Like it was said before, this feature is for motor protection, I'm not sure it will serve your needs, but it will save your motor


Dimitri,

Thanks for the feedback, I like this controller and it's features. I think T and Q have done a wonderful job of design, programming and presentation of features. 

Motor protection is important, broken drivelines components and slippery spots on the track are a problem when you are running close to the edge. I'm glad they have a reliable system.

The ICE guys are running their engines on the rev limiter and are using chips to set the limits based on track conditions, I need to be able to do similar to compete. 

I'll be lurking in the background watching hoping until next spring. We have our 13 inch GE, a narrowed axle, quite a few batteries a frame design in mind and will be starting the build after the first of the year. Your answer makes me hopful that something can be done with what is there, or that something new will occure to one of the guys. Maybe continued use will show a way to accomplish what I need.

Have a great day.


----------



## Qer (May 7, 2008)

dimitri said:


> yes, I tried RPM limiting. I can basically floor the pedal and keep it floored, while Soliton1 will keep preset RPM limit. However, there is obvious oscillation in the PID loop, somewhere around 1 Hz in frequency.


Um, I detect a slight confusion here.

The PID-loop is only active in idle mode, overrev behaves like in an ICE. When tach input passes maximum RPM the controller simply goes "Oh shit!" and cuts the power immediately. When RPM drops below maximum RPM the controller behaves like you stomped the throttle again (current ramps up with A/s as usual), thus the oscillation. If it'll give you motion sickness or shake out your fillings will partly depend on your A/s-setting.

If the controller tried to be smooth about it and used the PID-loop, odds are that it'd go "Ooops?" about the same time as the motor started to dismantle itself in an unordered manner under the hood.


----------



## Jimdear2 (Oct 12, 2008)

Qer said:


> Um, I detect a slight confusion here.
> 
> The PID-loop is only active in idle mode, overrev behaves like in an ICE. When tach input passes maximum RPM the controller simply goes "Oh shit!" and cuts the power immediately. When RPM drops below maximum RPM the controller behaves like you stomped the throttle again (current ramps up with A/s as usual), thus the oscillation. If it'll give you motion sickness or shake out your fillings will partly depend on your A/s-setting.
> 
> If the controller tried to be smooth about it and used the PID-loop, odds are that it'd go "Ooops?" about the same time as the motor started to dismantle itself in an unordered manner under the hood.


QER,
Thanks for clearing that up. The last time we talked about this you suggested that using a high amp slew rate "might" tend to smooth this out. I was hoping that either someone might try that and report the results or that something might occure to you or Tesseract.

I'm waiting to order our Soliton1 until the last second, just in case a hardware change might happen. With all of the other adjustible paremeters, it will be quite interesting to see how much tuning we can do to fit track conditiions. 

We had started to play with the few adjustments available in our current controllers on our garden tractors, quite enlightening.

Be well


----------



## dimitri (May 16, 2008)

Qer said:


> Um, I detect a slight confusion here.


Ahh, that makes sense! Thanks for clearing up. Why do I always get in trouble when I start making assumptions  , I guess as the saying goes, "when you assume...."


----------



## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

FWIW, and I know this is somewhat tangential especially since I'm no customer...  ... but while doing some tests on a frozen TS 200Ah cell today I finally remembered to turn on the AM radio I brought with me to see if you could still listen to it while the motor was running. And... you can. There is a slight buzz while the Soliton1 is dithering (sub-80A on the dyno) and at 700A+, but it is definitely in the background, not so loud it renders the broadcast unlistenable, even if still "intelligible".


----------



## CroDriver (Jan 8, 2009)

Tesseract said:


> FWIW, and I know this is somewhat tangential especially since I'm no customer...  ... but while doing some tests on a frozen TS 200Ah cell today I finally remembered to turn on the AM radio I brought with me to see if you could still listen to it while the motor was running. And... you can. There is a slight buzz while the Soliton1 is dithering (sub-80A on the dyno) and at 700A+, but it is definitely in the background, not so loud it renders the broadcast unlistenable, even if still "intelligible".


As far as I can tell my DC/DC converter is the major noise source, not the motor or controller.


----------



## rbgrn (Jul 24, 2007)

Guys,

There was a streak of bad posts at the end of this thread that I just decided to delete. The thread is now locked.


----------

