# Sitrep?



## samborambo (Aug 27, 2008)

I've noticed the NZEVA forum has been quiet for a while now. What's going on around the country? Anyone working on conversions right now or just hibernating?

I've been a bit busy lately to work on my AC motor controller. That's really the top priority for me at the moment. Plenty of distractions and social stuff has meant I haven't been out in the shed much in the last few weeks. I've been in contact with Microchip about using their source code as a basis for an open source controller. There's been a few emails back and forth to clarify some points but it's looking promising. However, they haven't given a difinitive "yes" yet.

I see the Tumanako project is off to a good start with the guys in Auckland working hard on thier AC controller. I've been meaning to touch base with them and possibly collaborate.

Robert, how's your MR2 coming along? Made a decision on what you're doing for the drivetrain, etc?

Kind of EV related: I'm presenting a paper at the EEA Northern Apex (electricity industry junior engineers) on EV charging infrastructure and the impact on NZ's electricity network. If it wins on the day, I'll be presenting at the general EEA conference in Christchurch next year.

Anyone else working on conversions? Any EV news?


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## evlowrider (Jul 23, 2009)

Hi Sam,

I'm am presently working on my '98 MX5 conversion, currently taking out the ICE, should have the block out this weekend or next. I have received all my main components except for the batteries which are due to be shipped from China fairly soon. Here are my specs:

Netgain Warp 9 motor
Soliton1 controller (waiting on the Evnetics potbox)
Zivan NG3 charger
Adapter and coupler for clutch (arrived today!)
BMS from EVWorks
48 SE 120AH Lithiums

This is my first EV conversion and first car project in about 12 years, its very much a project car for me so I'm taking my time. I'll use it for commuting when its done. 

I guess the other thing I should mention is I will be attempting to build my own instrumentation panel that will monitor pack volts, amp, estimate pack state of charge, and a few other things, like rpm and maybe communicate with the controller if I can persuade the super awesome cool people at EVnetics for their API. Aiming for this to work on a like a 7" color screen, maybe touchscreen. I'm a software person so I'll struggle my way thru the electronic hardware 

Pete


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## samborambo (Aug 27, 2008)

evlowrider said:


> Hi Sam,
> 
> I'm am presently working on my '98 MX5 conversion, currently taking out the ICE, should have the block out this weekend or next. I have received all my main components except for the batteries which are due to be shipped from China fairly soon. Here are my specs:
> 
> ...


Sounds good mate. How did you go with sourcing the SE cells? Through evcomponents.com or directly? How much per Ah? What did you end up paying for import duty and shipping?

The kiwi dollar is getting stronger against the green back (US$0.74!!!) which is always a good thing for bringing in expensive batteries. I'm still quite a way off ordering mine so I'm hoping the trend continues or at least remains stable.


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## evlowrider (Jul 23, 2009)

samborambo said:


> Sounds good mate. How did you go with sourcing the SE cells? Through evcomponents.com or directly? How much per Ah? What did you end up paying for import duty and shipping?
> 
> The kiwi dollar is getting stronger against the green back (US$0.74!!!) which is always a good thing for bringing in expensive batteries. I'm still quite a way off ordering mine so I'm hoping the trend continues or at least remains stable.


Got them thru the good folk at EVcomponents. Unsure what the duty is going to be until they arrive. Unless there is a tariff involved it will be GST on cost of the batteries converted to NZ dollars the day they write the invoice + some importer fees which seem to be around $80-$150. I believe the shipping was about US$360 on a slow boat from China.

Yea I'm slightly bummed that its gone up, I purchased all my stuff when it was hitting 'highs' of 0.69


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## Grant_NZ (May 28, 2008)

samborambo said:


> Kind of EV related: I'm presenting a paper at the EEA Northern Apex (electricity industry junior engineers) on EV charging infrastructure and the impact on NZ's electricity network. If it wins on the day, I'll be presenting at the general EEA conference in Christchurch next year.


 Hi Sam, not doing anything unfortunately, trying to sell a house and renovate another at the moment 
In regards to the above, I know Wellington City Council have plans in the pipeline for charging stations for EV's so by the time I actually get something started, there should be an infrastructure in place


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## KiwiEV (Jul 26, 2007)

I may be between EVs at the moment but I'm still lurking about! Money's a serious issue at present (enormous understatement) so I don't see another EV in the pipelines in the immediate future unless there's a miracle!

Current things happening for me:
- My wife and I are still going flat out trying to get our Taranaki tour business going. We're not having much luck just yet but we're not giving up. 

- The ebook is selling ok, but certainly nowhere near enough to pay the bills. I'm trying to push that as well. Give me time!

- I escaped redundancies and have kept my job at Nazic- uh, _Tele_com but I have to increase my hours and workload to keep it. It's lost it's lustre (another understatement). 

- I'm currently writing a blog at www.gavinshoebridge.com with interesting (short) articles based on electric cars. That sucks up and spare time I have!

So, we're going to keep going as we're going for 6 months and revisit our situation at the end of March 2010. We've been fighting for every cent for 3 years now and it's getting tiring. If we're still struggling in 6 months we're going to seriously consider packing up, selling up and trying again overseas.

Until then, I'm living my EV dreams through you guys. Don't stop!


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## rwt33 (Dec 4, 2008)

Hiya again all,
The progress is flying along at a great pace. 
- Got a manual 5-speed tranny (will be easier to add solenoids to change gear than having to do all the auto-trans mods), got a guy to draw me up an adapter plate and have got all the parts for the motor coupling.
- Making huge grounds on all the elec components. Just wound the transformer for the 1.5kW DC/DC conv and have built the rest of the circuit so will be finished this week. Charger has been simulated and parts+PCB are sitting on desk to be built. Aux controller for all those and the BMS is working fantastically. Who knew you could use c++ so well on tiny 8-bit micro! Only 12 hours ago (late Sunday night), the first BMS controller IC (ltc6802) showed signs of life and was monitoring voltages and turning on balancing resistors.
- Made more updates to the in-dash display with now a third 7" monitor (got hold of some hi-res ones from China) and am loving how easy and fancy graphics can be done using .NET WPF!

Phew. I keep counting my blessings I get as much free time as I do. I'm sure in a few years when children come on the horizon it'll be a completely different story!!

Great to see we've still got a good solid group still powering along with EV projects. Although it's no good for my work, I really hope the dollar stays high so we see more of the "oh well given the dollars so high I may as well buy a few extra cells" when placing the TS/SE lithium orders!

Cheers,
Rob


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## Qer (May 7, 2008)

evlowrider said:


> I guess the other thing I should mention is I will be attempting to build my own instrumentation panel that will monitor pack volts, amp, estimate pack state of charge, and a few other things, like rpm and maybe communicate with the controller if I can persuade the super awesome cool people at EVnetics for their API.


Read the source, Luke! The controller can provide you with all the raw data you need, but the estimation you'll have to figure out yourself.

I'm afraid this is about as much documentation there is, and to make things worse the code is pretty messy since I haven't really bothered to clean it up. From the beginning logger wasn't really meant to be released to the public, for me it was just a very handy tool for Tesseract to be able to send me logs so I could see what the controller does in real life. Turned out the logging utility was pretty popular though, who'd guessed that? 

It compiles under Linux and generates a Linux- and Windows binary since I ha**BEEEEEEP**. I do use Windows if I must but if I can find a way around it (like cross compile under Linux  ) I prefer to solve things that way, thus this compiles under Linux. If you're gonna try to compile it under Windows, good luck, you're on your own. 

The data format is changed in the upcoming software version 1.1 and will probably change later on as well, the format as it is now is VERY ad hoc. Somewhere in the future I should sit down and actually try to design a real protocol, something that might even be flexible with a header that specifies protocol version and other fancy things but, well, it hasn't been very high on the priority list...

Oh, and temptable.h isn't really used anymore, but I've forgot to remove it and it won't compile without it. If you build your own source it's safe to ignore it.

Knock yourself out. Take LOADS of pictures of the result!


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## samborambo (Aug 27, 2008)

rwt33 said:


> Hiya again all,
> The progress is flying along at a great pace.
> - Got a manual 5-speed tranny (will be easier to add solenoids to change gear than having to do all the auto-trans mods), got a guy to draw me up an adapter plate and have got all the parts for the motor coupling.
> - Making huge grounds on all the elec components. Just wound the transformer for the 1.5kW DC/DC conv and have built the rest of the circuit so will be finished this week. Charger has been simulated and parts+PCB are sitting on desk to be built. Aux controller for all those and the BMS is working fantastically. Who knew you could use c++ so well on tiny 8-bit micro! Only 12 hours ago (late Sunday night), the first BMS controller IC (ltc6802) showed signs of life and was monitoring voltages and turning on balancing resistors.
> ...


Really keen to see what you've done with the BMS and charger. Are you planning on doing a non-isolated fast charger? 

I'm trying to come up with a plan for adding a self-learning function to this Microchip vector drive source code. There's a few motor parameters there I've never seen before. They may have to be solved with something like successive approximation.

Awesome effort mate. Are you around on Labour weekend? We're heading down to Palmy for that weekend and was thinking on stopping in to see how you're going.

Sam.


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## rwt33 (Dec 4, 2008)

samborambo said:


> Really keen to see what you've done with the BMS and charger. Are you planning on doing a non-isolated fast charger?
> Sam.


I sure am doing isolated charger. Single phase boost circuit using one of the additional PWM lines on the motor controller. Huge advantage there is that I can use the code generation (straight from simulation) for the charger too.
So far I've simulated the hardware and digital controller, and chosen components ie isolated gate drive + supplies. Thinking about mounting it on some free space on the DC/DC converter board (original PCB had dual supplies but am only using one).

Looks like I'll be around at the moment on labour weekend and will be hoping to get some serious work done. Would be good to catch up and to show you what's happening. You can grab your geerbox too


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## evlowrider (Jul 23, 2009)

rwt33 said:


> Hiya again all,
> The progress is flying along at a great pace.
> 
> - Made more updates to the in-dash display with now a third 7" monitor (got hold of some hi-res ones from China) and am loving how easy and fancy graphics can be done using .NET WPF!


Hi Rob,

I'd love to know more about what you are doing in this area, I want to do something very similar myself. Could you share any further details with us?

Regards,
Pete.

Wellington


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## rwt33 (Dec 4, 2008)

evlowrider said:


> Hi Rob,
> 
> I'd love to know more about what you are doing in this area, I want to do something very similar myself. Could you share any further details with us?
> 
> ...


Yeah I definitely think the more people share and provide input the better for all of us so I've started a new thread in NZEVA called "Advanced dash controlls". I'll post what I'm doing in more detail and people can share/add to it. Find it here:
http://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/showthread.php/advanced-dash-controlls-37401.html


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## les nz (Dec 11, 2007)

samborambo said:


> I've noticed the NZEVA forum has been quiet for a while now. What's going on around the country? Anyone working on conversions right now or just hibernating?
> 
> Anyone else working on conversions? Any EV news?


I have just about finished my Toyota Vitz conversion in Mt Eden. Driven it with Demo plates for 35 Km. It has a range of 20Km which is a bit disappointing, but expect that to rise with a few more cycles. However struggling with installing the turbo timer for the rear battery box fan, using a switch on the petrol cap as a trigger for the timer. I cant believe I cant sort this after all of the other complex things Ive done!! Can anyone help?


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## Grant_NZ (May 28, 2008)

Hi Sam, just wondering how you're going with the controller? Did you go with ABB or CMG for the AC motor or are you still deciding? 

Regards
Grant


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## Duncan (Dec 8, 2008)

Hi Sam

Finally got started on my car
I have the suspension parts on my build table and I have started making my chassis

I thought about inverting the diff to give more room - but everybody has convinced me that it was not a good idea!

That paper you are presenting - can I have a read of it after you have presented 
Sounds interesting


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## John (Sep 11, 2007)

Duncan said:


> Finally got started on my car
> I have the suspension parts on my build table and I have started making my chassis
> 
> I thought about inverting the diff to give more room - but everybody has convinced me that it was not a good idea!


Duncan,

Are you going to start a build thread? I'm sure a lot of people will find your build very interesting. You could take a look at www.midlana.com for some variation to the locost theme.


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## samborambo (Aug 27, 2008)

Hi guys,

Sorry for the late reply. I've been working away from home for the past 4 months so I haven't had much of a chance to get into the shed.

Good to hear there's some more conversions coming along. I've been passively watching what's happening with the Tumanako project which looks very promising.

Hopefully I'll have more to report on my MR2 once I'm back in the shed 

Sam.


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