Hello everybody. I've received the Castle Creations HV 85 controller which will be adapted to an electric scooter - Now, onto what to do with it and hooking it up! First order of business(As in, the first order I need to make!)...
I won't be using the controller until I buy the appropriate capacitors so I'd prefer to have those questions answered sooner than later.
Onto another issue, braking! What did you do to address braking? Would a simple cut-off interface between the battery and controller hooked up to the brake handle be good enough? I'm building my own special throttle interface circuit between the throttle to the controller, and I could hook up a brake line that just simply cuts out the throttle signal(makes it go to 0% throttle) but does the controller also need any signals to tell it that its braking? Or, are there any precautions in this regard to prevent blowing up the controller?
Also, what about installing an "emergency" cut-out switch? Would a simple switch between the controller and battery be advised or is there a better way? I've heard that just suddenly stopping the current would fry the controller(and, yeah, that makes sense since the inductance would cause a huge voltage spike at the moment of breaking the current) so I'm not entirely sure if that's best... I don't really like the idea of paying $70 and two weeks in time for every "emergency".
swbluto said:Would you guys advocate replacing the existing 50v caps or upgrading them to "100V" or "63V"(or whatever the common number is - 60?)? I think you get more capacitance per unit volume with the lower voltage, but I think 50V is a little too close for comfort to the top-voltage of my modified 48volt ping battery so would replacing the caps be a problem? Or did you guys just add them in parallel to the pre-existing caps and any voltage spike over 50 or so volts will kill the pre-existing caps?
Also, how do you identify "Low ESR" caps? I checked out the NTE catalog and no mention of ESR or "Low ESR" was made with its electrolytics so either I'm just bad at recognizing these special electrolytics or they're not usually mentioned in the specs.
Also, what lifetimes would you recommend? Do you recommend "High temperature" caps? Also, finally, is it possible to get too high of a capacitance? I know with switching power supplies, too high capacitances or inductances would reduce the response time of the circuit but I don't know of a relevant analog with the battery's relation to the controller. If "more is always safer", I'll probably go over-board to err on the "ultra safe" side as if an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, I'll probably invest $(cost of controller)/16 or ~$11 in caps. :lol:
I won't be using the controller until I buy the appropriate capacitors so I'd prefer to have those questions answered sooner than later.
Onto another issue, braking! What did you do to address braking? Would a simple cut-off interface between the battery and controller hooked up to the brake handle be good enough? I'm building my own special throttle interface circuit between the throttle to the controller, and I could hook up a brake line that just simply cuts out the throttle signal(makes it go to 0% throttle) but does the controller also need any signals to tell it that its braking? Or, are there any precautions in this regard to prevent blowing up the controller?
Also, what about installing an "emergency" cut-out switch? Would a simple switch between the controller and battery be advised or is there a better way? I've heard that just suddenly stopping the current would fry the controller(and, yeah, that makes sense since the inductance would cause a huge voltage spike at the moment of breaking the current) so I'm not entirely sure if that's best... I don't really like the idea of paying $70 and two weeks in time for every "emergency".