OK everyone, we've finally ironed out what should be the last of the kinks in the V1.0 Phaserunner Software. The windows build is accessible from here
https://www.dropbox.com/s/df14ev8940az95l/Phase%20Runner%20Software%20v1.b3.exe?dl=0
We will have the MacOS and Linux release candidates available very soon too. On the surface this will look fairly similar to the previous Phaserunner 0.9X software, but there is a lot that is improved under the hood which we hope will smooth out the setup process.
First and foremost on these is that the communications behavior has been made much more rugged and tolerant of communication glitches while the device is hooked up. There are many additional bounds and sanity checks taking place during the autotune routines to ensure that the initial parameter inputs are sensible, and much more meaningful error messages when there are problems during the tune process.
On the main screen, the only thing you'll really notice is that the rated system voltage is no longer present. We've moved this over to the advanced tab and added more clear language that in general there is never any need to change this from the default value of 48V. In its place, we've enabled a checkbox for the fault-tolerant hall feature, which allows the Phaserunner to continue running fine in sensored mode when one hall sensor stop working. It will also allow it to revert to sensorless mode if you power up the Phaserunner with the halls connected and then unplug them. However, if the phaserunner is powered on without halls attached, it won't automatically start in sensorless which is (admittedly) a bit silly.
In the advanced tab, there is also a setting now (requiring level 3 access) to change the communication BAUD rate. This setting only kicks in after you have turned the Phaserunner off and on again. Once the phaserunner has been power cycled, then you'll need to change the software to run at this new Baud Rate by going to File->Preferences->Communication Speeds.
In general there's no need to change things from 115KBaud, but there have been cases where people have managed to have eeprom corruption that reset their Phaserunner to 9600 baud and this gives the means to communicate with it and then revert things back to 115KBaud.
zro-1 said:
Has been done. We've also got it so that all the hall and phase reporting are in colours of Yellow, Green, and Blue, rather than UVW. And if there are hall failures during autotune it will tell you specifically which ones are and aren't toggling rather than always saying hall error.
Whoa! This will be awesome in trying to troubleshoot why my Phaserunner can't read the halls in my Q100H.
Yes, so in addition to the autotune process reporting which specific halls are not toggling, and whether they are stuck High or Low, there is also a preview of the 3 hall signals themselves in the dashboard view
This allows you to rotate the wheel by hand and watch the halls toggle. I'm really not sure why we didn't include this in the initial software spec since it's incredibly useful in any kind of hall troubleshooting.
The Graphing process also has a number of improvements. You'll see if that it plots the data at a faster rate and with smoother lines. But most importantly, it doesn't hang anymore during long plots if there is any communication glitch, and you can switch back to other tabs and then return to the dashboard tab and it will automatically resume graphing where it had previously left off. A dashed vertical line on the graph shows each time there was an interruption like this.
So please any active Phaserunner users who want to try this out and give us feedback let us know. We're especially keen for those who have struggled with occasional communication issues to try this release and see if it solves the problem. A number of those were MacOS users and we hope to post the B3 MAC version within the next couple days for you too.