Cycle Analyst V3 preview and first beta release

Oops - we cross-posted. I added an edit above - please check the Setup screen to see if your pickup signal is getting to the CA.

The throttle change sounds fine in principle, but as you point out, reviewing the soldering execution might be a good step. Check the IN field on the diagnostic screen to ensure all is well voltage-wise.

The throttle change does put some other things on the table:

There is the matter of a voltage fault from a Magura due to wider voltage range. Check the Guide for thoughts on that - the settings should have been reconfigured with the new throttle and you may wish to add a resistor in there.

With a throttle change, there is also the possibility of insufficient dead zone at ZERO throttle which causes a flashing throttle bar graph. If so, increase the ThrI->MinInput a bit (0.05V - 0.1V) so that a closed throttle will look ZEROed to the CA instead of applied a tiny bit (which can cause a little hissy fit and NOGO on powerup)
 
Teklektik you all ready had me all straight on the resistor! thou you did not know. thanks!
http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=69736&start=25

The pickup(reed switch)/magnet ticks but no readout on the CA3...will check the solder...have been riding off road and it is pretty rough.
/cheers

...and later that day.
Re-soldered speedo...and throttle just since I had it open, still no speedo read-out.
Started to pull the reed switch off, had it dangling, before I de-soldered it...then thought I would just wipe the reed switch over a magnet in my hand...lo and behold, I get a speed reading/mph.
Put it back on the fork and it is working now...what the...
Ghost in the machine?
Maybe I knocked the reed switch loose when I took it off?
Maybe a kink in the wire got un-kinked?
Strange.
 
On a semi related note, I see the CA V2 has had a firmware update and has inherited some of the V3 features.
Justin or others in the know, can you tell us how the temp monitoring in this works ?
It says you've repurposed the Aux in - in addition to obviously giving the temp value does this actively roll back the power too ? Presumably the throttle doesn't now pass through the CA like it does on the V3 and so does it just pull down the throttle signal in usual V2 style ?

Apologies if this is discussed elsewhere, I've missed it if so and by all means post a link to another thread
 
Hyena said:
On a semi related note, I see the CA V2 has had a firmware update and has inherited some of the V3 features.
Justin or others in the know, can you tell us how the temp monitoring in this works ?
It says you've repurposed the Aux in - in addition to obviously giving the temp value does this actively roll back the power too ? Presumably the throttle doesn't now pass through the CA like it does on the V3 and so does it just pull down the throttle signal in usual V2 style ?
Click to expand...

Hey Jay, the temperature sensing is only in the Marine firmware which doesn't have a speedometer /distance functionality, since it was more for stationary applications where people just need battery monitoring. That said, it does still have the effect or reducing the throttle output voltage just like exceeding a current limit or low voltage cutoff, in case someone wanted to interact with the signal.

I've had a number of requests to also add the temperature sensing code to the V2.4 firmware, so when there is a say V2.41 release then this will get added too. However, the Aux Input does not have a 5K pull-up resistor to 5V the same was as the CA3's NTC input, so people using it with a thermistor will also need to add this pull-up resistor to their board in order for the thermistor voltage to scale appropriately.

Apologies if this is discussed elsewhere, I've missed it if so and by all means post a link to another thread
Click to expand...

Nope, AFAIK this hasn't been covered anywhere else yet so I'm glad you brought it up.
 
Scott said:
That’s good news to hear Teklektik!

I am having a problem with my CAv3 that I got 2 years ago. Recently I had the boot up issue where only the backlight came on. The next week after a trip to California when I turned on my bike the backlight did not even come on for the CA. I searched around and found out about the boot loader but the program can’t find my CA.
Click to expand...

If it's just the bootloader issue then you would still have a faint backlight glowing when the device is plugged in. If the screen stays totally dark with no hint of backlight, then that means there is a complete absence of power to the CA's circuitboard. The most common reason for this is accidentally shorting the 10V line between pins 1 and 2 of the 5-pin PAS plug at some point, which will cause the reverse voltage protection diode to fry.

So in cases where there is no backlight at all when powered, the next step is to measure the voltage between Gnd and the white 10V wire on the PAS plug. If you don't have around 10V here, then we'd need to open up the CA and identify which part in the power circuit is damaged (usually this being the reverse protection diode).

-Justin
 
justin_le said:
If the screen stays totally dark with no hint of backlight, then that means there is a complete absence of power to the CA's circuitboard.

The most common reason for this is accidentally shorting the 10V line between pins 1 and 2 of the 5-pin PAS plug at some point, which will cause the reverse voltage protection diode to fry.
Click to expand...
It's all about identifying the telltale symptoms... :D

Here's a recent post where Justin fills in some details of this diode failure and outlines repair strategies for the handy....
 
teklektik said:
There's a chance this might be another known issue with comms timing. There are work-arounds for that with the regular updater, but not for the boot fixer.

Try the procedure Justin outlines in this post.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the fast response!

That is actually the same post I found. I will give the old updater a try and see if that works.
 
Paladin said:
...and later that day.
Started to pull the reed switch off, had it dangling, before I de-soldered it...then thought I would just wipe the reed switch over a magnet in my hand...lo and behold, I get a speed reading/mph.
Put it back on the fork and it is working now...what the...
Ghost in the machine?
...
Click to expand...
Ya - I always find mystery 'fixes' to be unsatisfying...

Anyhow - glad the symptoms have abated. Thanks for posting back. :)
 
Scott said:
That is actually the same post I found. I will give the old updater a try and see if that works.
Click to expand...
I think Justin's post above looks very promising as the root cause if you are unsuccessful with the software strategy. A little DMM probing should tell the tale.

FWIW - You seem to have been pretty successful at searching for info on this in the thread. That said, you may find it useful to look in the post index of the Guide download page here. No guarantees, but almost all of the meaty posts from Justin and others are indexed there. It still might be challenging to find the right link, but something to keep in mind as an option.
 
Hi all,

I would like to use aux pot....
Looking at CA3 pcb there is 5V connection.
Is this 5V connection internal connected to same 5V for throttle, E-brake etc...?

Thank you!
 
How best to trouble shoot the Speedometer set up on CA3. I'm missing something, and not getting feedback.

Thanks!
 
tomjasz said:
How best to trouble shoot the Speedometer set up on CA3. I'm missing something, and not getting feedback.
Click to expand...
  • Verify that your pole count is set properly - typically 1 for a wheel pickup and something like 23 for hub motor.

  • Verify that the CA is getting a signal:
    • If you have a wheel pickup:
      Go to the Setup SPDOMETER section preview screen and watch the little arrow as you move the spoke magnet back and forth in front of the pickup. It should point up and down as the magnet passes.

      If not, your magnet may need to be re-positioned or you've lost your pickup connection due to reed switch failure, bad PCB soldering, or wire breakage.

    • If you have no wheel pickup (hall signal from controller):
      Go to the Setup SPDOMETER section preview screen and watch the little arrow as you very slowly rotate the motor (backwards if a gear motor). It should point up and down as the motor turns.

      If not, you likely have a bad Sp connection due to wire breakage, bad solder joint at controller or CA end, pulled wire in either M/F side of the CA-DP connector, a pushed (displaced) contact in the CA-DP connector, or a simple dirty CA-DP contact in the CA-DP cable or connector. Try just unplugging/plugging the connector a few times. Failing that, inspect the connector carefully, then use a DMM to verify continuity between CA PCB and connector contacts. You may have to do the same for the controller, but it's rarer and a PITA.
 
Hi everyone

First of all; great product and a great forum! I enjoy both very much.

So about two month ago I build my first ebike with CA v3, Grinfineon controller and the 12-pole pas sensor from ebikes.ca. I have since then decided to rebuild the bike, so that the CA got build in a "controlbox" together with an on/off switch, an preset switch and a trimpot for my pas sensor. I used the guides fro the unofficial manual by teklektik (that are awesome!) to make the preset switch and the trimpot for the pas as described under 6.6 PAS Assist Control without AUX Pot – DIY Virtual Torque Sensor.

Well I finished the build yesterday and most of the things turned out great, BUT I cant get my pas-sensor to work any more. The led on the sensor itself works fine (blinks when the magnets turn), but I get no read on the CA :(

I did some troubleshooting, and I found out that I have messed up badly. When building the "PAS Assist Control without AUX Pot – DIY Virtual Torque Sensor" I got the Vol+ from the external DC Power Plug on the CA. I really have no idea why I thought that it was 5v, brainfart i guess... Anyway as a result I have jammed 50v into the green wire (trq)

I disconnected the D.I.Y trimpot from the green wire (trq) and turned on the system again, but still no pas signal :( I have since then tried another pas-sensor, but still no luck, the only thing that happens when I turn the magnets, is a slight dim on the CA display.

So what do you guys say, Have I fried the CA, or is there some way to salvage it?

Thanks!
 
mkaaskh said:
I cant get my pas-sensor to work any more. The led on the sensor itself works fine (blinks when the magnets turn), but I get no read on the CA :(
Click to expand...
Does this mean that the little arrows on the 'SETUP PAS SENSOR' screen do not move when you turn the cranks?
Just trying to ensure we are looking at the signals at the lowest level possible before configuration sneaks into the picture....

mkaaskh said:
I got the Vol+ from the external DC Power Plug on the CA. Anyway as a result I have jammed 50v into the green wire (trq)
Click to expand...
Ya - I've done similar things so many times... (Big Sigh...). So - to check for sure: look at the 'SETUP TRQ SENSOR' screen and diddle the pot (now that it's wired correctly ;) ). You should see the voltage vary 0V - 4.95V correspondingly. Again, this is nice low level verification before configuration, etc gets into the picture.

mkaaskh said:
I disconnected the D.I.Y trimpot from the green wire (trq) and turned on the system again, but still no pas signal :( I have since then tried another pas-sensor, but still no luck, the only thing that happens when I turn the magnets, is a slight dim on the CA display.
Click to expand...
This really sounds like a matter for ebikes.ca Tech Support who have seen just about every wiring misstep on the planet. The two tests above will get them some additional details, but my knee-jerk reaction is that some processor input ports went South.
 
teklektik said:
tomjasz said:
How best to trouble shoot the Speedometer set up on CA3. I'm missing something, and not getting feedback.
Click to expand...
  • Verify that your pole count is set properly - typically 1 for a wheel pickup and something like 23 for hub motor.

  • Verify that the CA is getting a signal:
    • If you have a wheel pickup:
      Go to the Setup SPDOMETER section preview screen and watch the little arrow as you move the spoke magnet back and forth in front of the pickup. It should point up and down as the magnet passes.

      If not, your magnet may need to be re-positioned or you've lost your pickup connection due to reed switch failure, bad PCB soldering, or wire breakage.

Click to expand...



    • Thanks, finally have time to investigate. I have the wheel pickup in place and will follow the suggestions.

      Tom
 
justin_le said:
On that front, the Prelim10 build of CA3 firmware should be made available here in a matter of days. From an end user's side not a whole lot will have changed. There are a few tweaks, like the behavior if you have a speedo sensor and magnet pickup is much more resilient against double-bounce glitches in the sensor, so those occasional bursts of 200+ mph readings should be a thing of the past. As well, an update courtesy of Teklektik, if you exceed the threshold temperature and are in thermal rollback then the battery SOC icon will periodically update with a flashing thermometer symbol, (with the height of the mercury in the thermometer scaled to your ThreshTemp and MaxTemp values):
View attachment 3.
Click to expand...

Well, that release is now available for everyone here
http://www.ebikes.ca/downloads/CA3-0p10.zip

Rather than releasing just a .hex file, Teklektik has made things a bit more formal with a proper release notes document that has all the key changes since the previous version, and a basic readme file. There are two versions of .hex code, the standard CA3-0p10.hex which will convert revert all your settings to their default values (including things like your total distance and battery cycles), and a _NoEeprom version that will not change any of your settings. At this point, pretty much everyone should be using the NoEeprom code unless they particular want to restore everything to factory default state.
View attachment 1

There is also an updated V1.3 of the CA Setup Utility. This fixes one little bug that has been present for a while in that the PAS Sensor Direction Polarity setting would save the opposite of what is displayed by the CA's setup menu. But more significantly it also rolls in the firmware update tool so that you don't need to run the other firmware application for that. Just go to File->Update Firmware... and the firmware update window will pop up. It's also available as native in MacOS and Linux forms, giving both those user groups a pathway for firmware updating which was previously just windows.
UpdateFirmware.gif

Eventually we'll have something like with the Satiator software suite where you'll be able to click a link to automatically fetch the latest firmware from our server without having to download it separately and then navigate around to find the .hex file. But for now you'll still need to tell it where you unpacked the CA3-0p10.hex firmware.
 

Attachments

  • CA3-0p10.zip
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Justin & Co. -- thanks for new software release -- I for one appreciate the PAS "Polarity-direction" fix! And, of course, customers always want more, no matter how much great stuff you give them: :D

Any chance of a 32 bit Linux executable being made available (or the source so I can compile it for my platform)? I know I should be living in the 64 bit world, but...

Code: 
hj@gigi:/data/erowbike/CA_linux/CA_Setup_Utility_v1.3_Linux$ file exe
exe: ELF 64-bit LSB  executable, x86-64, version 1 (GNU/Linux), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.24, BuildID[sha1]=dabfffc7c2ae4dbdf91165e1775046b341aa4c93, not stripped
 
I just tried updating the "9" firmware on a spare, but "new" CAv3 (practice run before on doing it to 'live' unit) to the new "10" version. I'd successfully read and written configuration settings to this CA3 unit previously, and know that it worked correctly. I also updated the CA Setup Uitility to the new 1.3 version, and used that to flash the CA3. I used the same laptop running Windows XP I've been successfully using to update configuration settings on three separate CA3's, albeit using the 1.2 update utility for those. I'm using the Grin programming cable, and have the correct drivers installed, and am talking to the correct and fully functioning serial port. After connecting everything up per usual, I used the firmware flashing option from the "File" dropdown menu, which proceeded to load the flasher popup window. I selected one of the two new firmware *.hex files (the one that overwrites configuration settings as well as the unit's firmware), and hit the "Update" button. The progress screen halted at the "Power cycle unit" status line -- which I did well within the 30 second time frame -- but then "hung" there. After this, the CA3 no longer booted -- suggesting to me that it did indeed connect to the device successfully, just not doing a successful write. I did the usual reboot, reload, rethink, re-connect, and re-flash operations, even trying to flash the 'other' (noeeprom) *.hex firmware file. Nada. I now have a non-booting CA3. Should I download and try to flash the new firmware onto the dead CA3 with the "Old 2012 CA Update Tool"? ... or is there a better approach?
 
rowbiker said:
I now have a non-booting CA3. Should I download and try to flash the new firmware onto the dead CA3 with the "Old 2012 CA Update Tool"? ... or is there a better approach?
Click to expand...

Correct, could you next try using just the stand alone CA firmware flash tool and see if the .hex file will load correctly with that? As well, in the directory of the V1.3 setup utility you should see a file called "verbose_output.txt" which will have a record of the communication attempts during the failed firmware uploads. Can you also upload that file here for us to have a look?
 
Following is the contents of the verbose_output.txt file, with the duplicate/identical stanzas after the second one not included. I'm guessing each stanza represents me pushing the "Update" button, and logging the failure. There was a section in the txt file later on that had several paragraphs of high-order ASCII bits (didn't look at the codes) -- if you need all of that let me know, but I'd probably have to send you the actual file since email/posting etc. might 'translate' the coded characters.

If the error message relating to not finding the input file is accurate, I'm puzzled because I selected (via mouse click) the file from the popup box in the GUI interface, and if the app couldn't find the file, it wouldn't have appeared as an option to select??? And since this is a simple Windows XP box with me running in "admin" mode, I doubt if file permissions is an issue...

I will next do the "2012" firmware update method and report back the results from that effort later.

Code: 
Serial Uploader by Grin Technologies (2011)
Version 1.2
        Device found on port: 0! Bootloader Version:0202:Cycle Analyst 3
Serial Uploader by Grin Technologies (2011)
Version 1.2

Erasing ff pages from 20 to 2000
Erasing d7 pages from 2000 to 3ae0
All flash above bldr erased!failed to find input file!Serial Uploader by Grin Technologies (2011)
Version 1.2
    Device found on port: 0! Bootloader Version:0202:Cycle Analyst 3
Serial Uploader by Grin Technologies (2011)
Version 1.2 
... <snip> ...
 
rowbiker said:
...if you need all of that let me know, but I'd probably have to send you the actual file since email/posting etc. might 'translate' the coded characters.
Click to expand...
Nothing will be translated. Please post the .txt file as an attachment.
To test permissions, please verify that you can open the target .hex file with notepad.
 
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