Harold in CR said:In another thread, tomdb gave me a rough price of materials to build a Honda IMA inverter. These e-assist motors can be had for $100.00 and up, and the price est. was $400.00 or so. Figure $1000.00 for all materials and motor and this MIGHT make a reasonable priced moto conversion possible.
I would be in for trying to build an inverter with some assistance along the way. If e-vector would like to try, that might get a couple more involved, and be a very educational thread for future builders. I'm reasonably certain that the Lebowski chip works with tomdb's inverters. There is a guy (whereswally) that has boards for sale and the Lebowski chip comes programmed, and the newest version can be programmed without sending back. Both can be found on endless-sphere website. I don't know prices yet. Still watching to see if anyone else wants in and maybe order several boards and chips as a group thing. Mine would be sent to USA, Florida.
The motor I have now is a 6 phase brushless and needs 2 controllers, so, added costs to use this motor and, these 6 phase motors are not cheap like the e-assist motor.
What is Lebowski chip? PM or ACIM focused? is firmware closed or open?
actually I would like to start a DIY open source project for ACIM motor if my spare time (which is not much) allows it.
6-phase motor: is there any way to combine the coils to have more poles but only 3-phase? It's first time I've heard about them. I've heard about 4-phase...
My initial interests were:
* voltages under 200V, (current 500 Amp or more)
* MOSFET (because they are very compact and parallel-capable)
* ACIM motors,
* sensored for induction motor (as there is not an easy way to read BEMF) (for PM motors I think the goal should be sensorless)
but if there are several people involved maybe each one can handle some variant of the project, I am not sure if this could be handled
I also was reading about the VESC project for e-bikes and small motors, but I didn't get response from the author when I ask for a PCB
For this reason, I think that for all these projects an important topic is managing some small production (bare PCBs or partially assembled PCBs), as at least in my case, when I see a project like the VESC I would prefer to have it in my hand as soon as possible, and I think other people can also have problems with soldering, firmware loading, etc
Regarding using IMA or other controllers, it seems very interesting, but it causes me some concerns about if I will be able to understand all parts, or modify anything, or reprogram the firmware. Do you have the original firmware or how do you manage to load PM or ACIM firmware? Keep in mind that all of this is new for me, it seems too much info initially.