Brushless Controller Board with Hall Throttle

I salvaged some wheel/motors from a hoverboard in hopes to use them to make an electric drift trike.

I picked up one of these:

https://www.amazon.com/KKmoon-12V-36V-Brushless-Controller-Balanced/dp/B01LQ80K9K

And it drives the motor just fine. By using a variable resistor, the input can be adjusted from 0-5 V.

I would like to now hook a throttle up to it, but am having a hard time finding a reasonably priced potentiometer throttle.

Hall effect throttles are abundant, and cheap. I am interested in this one:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N54ZCHS/_encoding=UTF8?coliid=I247QW25ALYADH&colid=2WR434CLH5XK3

Does anybody have any experience using these generic driver boards with hall effect throttles?

Thanks!

I answered my own question. The hall effect throttle definitely works, but never quite gets to full stop, or full throttle.

I will look at adding a diode between the signal line of the throttle, to at least give me full stop. It will likely alter the potential of full throttle even more, though.

This might help:

https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=28466&hilit=pot+hall+throttle

Thanks, amberwolf.

I was thinking that the easiest solution for me would be to program a AVR or PIC microcontroller to read the input voltage, and output 0-5 volts accordingly. Even if I only did it with a 5 or 7 step throttle curve, it would probably work just fine.

Testing the hall throttle this morning, with a 5V Vcc, I get 0.5V-3.8V on the signal wire. I added a diode in line with the signal wire, which essentially drops by detectable voltage to 0, but it still doesn't stop the motor from turning (although it is slower). Just for kicks, I added 2 diodes in series to the signal wire, and it still didn't fully stop.

I don't understand why, but I also don't fully understand the hall effect. If the circuit built into the controller still spins when the detectable voltage is 0, I'm not sure that my microcontroller will detect it properly, either.

I'm baffled.

Perhaps it makes more sense just to use a breathless speed controller made for an e-bike with throttle. Price is about the same.

If the controllers you are using now start providing power to the motor at anything above exactly 0V, then to control that, you have to provide something that starts at 0V.

If the controller is still providing power to the motor even at 0V (nothing hooked to it's input) then it probably requires a pull-down resistor, which would be a resistance (usually around 10Kohms) wired between the signal input wire and the ground wire.

If it still provides power even then, there's something wrong with it (programming, calibration, defective components, poor design, etc)..


If the voltage being input is not actually zero but the controller requires it to be, you'll have to do something to reduce it to zero, either externally or within the controller, or change the controller (programming/etc) to not require zero input for zero power.


A hall throttle is just as simple as any potentiometer throttle, just with a different voltage range. Instead of 0-5V output (assuming 5V power into it), then it is usually around 0.5v-4v output.

Controllers usually have an active voltage range on their input that is a narrower range than what the throttle itself provides, specifically so you don't have the problem of a motor spinning / getting power even at throttle "zero" positions that still output a voltage.

Hall throttle type controllers usually start working at around 1V input, sometimes not starting till 1.4V. They usually stop increasing power output around 3.5V, sometimes 4V. Many are marked on their labels, some you ahve to determine experimentally if not using a hall throttle on them.


You don't actually have to even use a hall effect sensor and magnet for such a system, you can use a regular pot on it, too--it just wont' respond to pot movement except for the small part of it's range that corresponds to what the controller is setup for.


Regarding the MCU conversion of hall to pot type output, I'd think it'd be a lot easier to build Fechter's simple op-amp circuit in the linked thread. Seems like a lot of work to build and program an MCU setup.



I don't know what a "breathless" controller is, but I suspect you mean "brushless".