Cycle Analyst V3 preview and first beta release

Not sure if this should be its own post or be part of this thread. But here goes.

TLR: Discovered that if the main electronics board in the CA is pressed down a bit, it caused the CA to reboot or shutdown.

I've been having intermittent outages of my CAv3 ever since I got it. I'd be riding along and the CA would spontaneously reboot or at times completely shut down. I had always assumed it was because I'm lousy at crimping connections.

That may be still true, but it turned out that my more recent outages was not due to any of my connections. It was an issue inside of the CA.

I discovered that as I was wiggling all my connectors to try to recreate the problem while my trike was on the bike stand.

If I pushed the cables into the back of the CA, it would reliably trigger the reboot or shutdown.

Opened up the CA and wiggled the wires which seemed to cause it, but not any specific wire. Inspected all the solder joints and they all looked decent (though the quality of soldering and cleanup was a bit disappointing).

Then I noticed that if I just pressed down on the board it caused the reboot or shutdown. I still couldn't see any issue, though I suspected that ether flexing the board caused a problem or the connector to the display board was at fault.

I ended up fixing by wedging a piece of rubber between the main board and the display board. It seems to be quite reliable now.

Has anyone had a similar experience? Do I have a CA that may eventually fail?

Here's an image that show how I added the piece of rubber:

Click for large view - Uploaded with Skitch

Thanks!

kevinscargobike said:

... and the issue where a small low torque pedal movement causes the motor to surge with a value way above what the multiplier should produce, usually following high power usage. Like I go fast up the hill, then gently change which pedal is down as I roll down the other side of the hill to my mailbox and the motor spins up.

Click to expand...

I replicated this on the bench and captured exemplar failure log data. The PAS code reveals the issue to be related to initiating PAS shortly after zeroing Power Throttle. A change made some time back was designed to smooth the PAS/Power Throttle transition but has this unfortunate side effect.

There are no effective means to eliminate this symptom by settings adjustment except to avoid using Power Throttle with PAS. Here you might return to Current Throttle with a little less smooth PAS transition to avoid the PAS start-up surge. This would also give separate AGain/WGain adjustments for Throttle/PAS respectively. ...tradeoffs....

A repair will be forthcoming, but not immediately.

That’s great news! Thanks!

rberger said:

TLR: Discovered that if the main electronics board in the CA is pressed down a bit, it caused the CA to reboot or shutdown.

Click to expand...

Oh well, turns out that didn't really fix it. The fantastic folks at Grin Tech had proactively reached out to me about it and are going to check it out and see what the problem is after I send it back to them.

Luckily I have a second one on hand that I can swap it out with.

rberger said:

rberger said:

TLR: Discovered that if the main electronics board in the CA is pressed down a bit, it caused the CA to reboot or shutdown.

Click to expand...

Oh well, turns out that didn't really fix it. The fantastic folks at Grin Tech had proactively reached out to me about it and are going to check it out and see what the problem is after I send it back to them.

Luckily I have a second one on hand that I can swap it out with.

Click to expand...

looks like a cold solder joint to me.

Hi,

Maybe it is written in the 167 pages of this post, but could some one tell me how to record a value with a dot in the CA setup utility soft.
I'm not able to record for example 0.9 V in the Min Throttle input field.

Thank for your support

What version are you using? In 1.54 Windows version that I have here, I can enter 0.90 in either Zero Throttle Threshold field (in the Throttle In Settings section) or in Min Throttle Output field (in the Throttle Out Settings section), and it retains that when I change to a different field or section. It also retains it if I save the .hex file, close the program, and reopen it.

Le Gobbi said:

Hi,

Maybe it is written in the 167 pages of this post, but could some one tell me how to record a value with a dot in the CA setup utility soft.
I'm not able to record for example 0.9 V in the Min Throttle input field.

Thank for your support

Click to expand...

In Windows issues like that are quite often related to Region settings. AFAIK in France the decimal separator is not a dot, but a comma. You could try entering "0,9" or play with Region settings. (E.g. execute intl.cpl and change the number format in additional settings.)

Hi!

i just upgraded my CA to 3.11 and had some (new) strange things happening. After flashing the newest firmware it seems like the CA or at least the serial com interface crashed, i was not able to read/write anything from/to the ca. it always ended up in a timeout. sometimes writes where successful but the windows tool said "nooo i had a timeout". quickfix: reboot the ca and try again several times. after 2-3 tries it worked.

since strange things happened in the past after upgrades i decided to kick my ca with factory defaults and rebuild my configuration -> issue remains the same

what i did not try yet is downgrading...

so, this is not a high prio problem its more one of the annoying ones since it works after 2..3 times

anyway, maybe nobody wasnt aware yet

Cheers,

Juergen

Hello,

Truly enjoying my new CA3-DP. Over the weekend I installed a Sempu torque sensing BB. The CA3-DP has ver. 3.1B13 of the firmware, and it does not have Sempu listed as a PAS torque sensor. I've been attempting to connect the CA3-DP to a PC, so that I can upgrade the firmware and have been receiving the following message in a popup,

"Unable to communicate with the Cycle Analyst in a timely manner. Please make sure the device is properly connected. Please cycle power to the device and try again.

The FTDI drivers seems like they've installed correctly. No warnings from Windows 10 stating they did not. When I plug the TTL-USB cable into the PC, it get's assigned com3. In the Setup Utility, it shows up as "\\.\com3" in the drop down list. I have the executable CA3 setup utility file (*.exe) and its folder directly residing in C:\.

I've tried three different laptops running - XP, Win 7, and Win 10. Taking care that I installed the correct FTDI drivers. All show the same pop up window. I also went thru the trouble of making my own TTL - USB cable with an FTDI board I was using for an Arduino and I still got the same message.

Did I incorrectly install the software? I run the executable as an Administrator too...still I get the issue.

Thanks in advance.......

by the way, I have a second unit - CA3-DPS and it too cannot connect. Also where can I find the Sempu pre-configured setting values? I'd like to enter them manually for now if possible.

My settings are:

PAS Poles: 24 Pulses/Rev
Pas Signal Type: 2-Wire
PAS Direction Polarity: 5V = Reverse
Device Sensor Type: Custom TRQ
Torque Scale: 20.0 Nm/V
Zero Torque Offset: 1.49

My torque scale was set by feel, but got a bit more generous when I set my "Assist Start Level" to 0 HW. I'm not sure what the default is.

Silverexpress01 said:

The CA3-DP has ver. 3.1B13 of the firmware, and it does not have Sempu listed as a PAS torque sensor.
...
Also where can I find the Sempu pre-configured setting values? I'd like to enter them manually for now if possible.

Click to expand...

interrupted said:

After flashing the newest firmware it seems like the CA or at least the serial com interface crashed, i was not able to read/write anything from/to the ca. it always ended up in a timeout.

Click to expand...

Silverexpress01 said:

I've been attempting to connect the CA3-DP to a PC, so that I can upgrade the firmware and have been receiving the following message in a popup,

"Unable to communicate with the Cycle Analyst in a timely manner. Please make sure the device is properly connected. Please cycle power to the device and try again.
...
Windows 10 stating they did not.
...
I've tried three different laptops running - XP, Win 7, and Win 10.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the OS platform information, this is helpful.

Yep - it seems there is some sort of comms snafu with the 3.1/3.11 firmware and Setup utility 1.54. The suspicion at this time is that it's timing related and that revisions to the CA serial I/O beginning in 3.1 have disrupted things for faster hardware platforms. This stuff runs fine on older slower machines and has occasional issues on faster ones. However, as you report, it seems there are other hardware platforms that have been strongly affected. Unfortunately, we didn't see these more severe situations in the beta tests.

• One thing you can try is to select "Reset settings to defaults", turn off the CA, then launch the download and immediately power up the CA. This will essentially bypass the 3.1/3.11 comms firmware and use only the bootloader code which is the same across all firmware versions. The Setup Utility may complain at the end after verifying the FW Update, but the new FW will be correctly in place and you should be able to configure settings locally using Console Setup.

>> Please give this a try and let us know it this is effective as a workaround for you.
>> Also, what hardware are you running on?

Apologies for the comms issue - Looks like a 3.12 patch release is going to be needed...

I did experience the same communications issue with 3.11b2 and the final 3.11. But fortunately after some retries I could read/write the configuration with Windows 10.

But today, I have experienced a more severe issue:
- Yesterday I did an upgrade to 3.11. I had 3.11b2 running before without problems.
- After upgrading (and some "hardware work" such as shrink wrapping some connectors) I did a test ride and everything went smoothly
- Today I connected the batteries and the CA booted to an error message: "SLOW PWR UP". Even disconnecting and restarting did not help.


When at the "SLOW PWR UP" message I can use the CA buttons to browse through the settings and they seem to be correct. Things like the break switch indicator are working well, but booting to the main screen does not work any more. It always stops at "SLOW PRW UP". What does this message mean?

I don't know if it's important, but my CA is one of those with the boot issue. I have implemented the boot loader fix a while ago and even then it sometimes boots to a blank screen and needs to be rebooted. As this is rare, I have never fixed it by adding another boot delay using the special boot issue firmware again.

My setup: Im using a CA3 directly connected to a Phaserunner Controller. I switched to new batteries yesterday: 8xLiGo 36V.
I will send an e-mail to Grin support too.

amberwolf said:

What version are you using? In 1.54 Windows version that I have here, I can enter 0.90 in either Zero Throttle Threshold field (in the Throttle In Settings section) or in Min Throttle Output field (in the Throttle Out Settings section), and it retains that when I change to a different field or section. It also retains it if I save the .hex file, close the program, and reopen it.

Click to expand...

I'm now at CA 3.11 with CA utility 1.54 window version. La my laptop run Window 7 with AZERTY and french regional parameters.
I can enter a "." but without any value, as soon as a value is added in the field the result become "0.00V".

k.ewin said:

Le Gobbi said:

Hi,

Maybe it is written in the 167 pages of this post, but could some one tell me how to record a value with a dot in the CA setup utility soft.
I'm not able to record for example 0.9 V in the Min Throttle input field.

Thank for your support

Click to expand...

In Windows issues like that are quite often related to Region settings. AFAIK in France the decimal separator is not a dot, but a comma. You could try entering "0,9" or play with Region settings. (E.g. execute intl.cpl and change the number format in additional settings.)

Click to expand...

I tried different way to add a separator :
- keeping the initial value and chage some number to keep the initial separator
- Using "." or ","

Your solution is working, by changing the separator in intl.cpl it's solve the problem.

Thank you

interrupted said:

Hi!

i just upgraded my CA to 3.11 and had some (new) strange things happening. After flashing the newest firmware it seems like the CA or at least the serial com interface crashed, i was not able to read/write anything from/to the ca. it always ended up in a timeout. sometimes writes where successful but the windows tool said "nooo i had a timeout". quickfix: reboot the ca and try again several times. after 2-3 tries it worked.

since strange things happened in the past after upgrades i decided to kick my ca with factory defaults and rebuild my configuration -> issue remains the same

what i did not try yet is downgrading...

so, this is not a high prio problem its more one of the annoying ones since it works after 2..3 times

anyway, maybe nobody wasnt aware yet

Cheers,

Juergen

Click to expand...

you have the "old" digital input with normal diodes ?

teklektik said:

Silverexpress01 said:

The CA3-DP has ver. 3.1B13 of the firmware, and it does not have Sempu listed as a PAS torque sensor.
...
Also where can I find the Sempu pre-configured setting values? I'd like to enter them manually for now if possible.

Click to expand...

CA3.11_SempuDefaults.png

interrupted said:

After flashing the newest firmware it seems like the CA or at least the serial com interface crashed, i was not able to read/write anything from/to the ca. it always ended up in a timeout.

Click to expand...

Silverexpress01 said:

I've been attempting to connect the CA3-DP to a PC, so that I can upgrade the firmware and have been receiving the following message in a popup,

"Unable to communicate with the Cycle Analyst in a timely manner. Please make sure the device is properly connected. Please cycle power to the device and try again.
...
Windows 10 stating they did not.
...
I've tried three different laptops running - XP, Win 7, and Win 10.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the OS platform information, this is helpful.

Yep - it seems there is some sort of comms snafu with the 3.1/3.11 firmware and Setup utility 1.54. The suspicion at this time is that it's timing related and that revisions to the CA serial I/O beginning in 3.1 have disrupted things for faster hardware platforms. This stuff runs fine on older slower machines and has occasional issues on faster ones. However, as you report, it seems there are other hardware platforms that have been strongly affected. Unfortunately, we didn't see these more severe situations in the beta tests.

• One thing you can try is to select "Reset settings to defaults", turn off the CA, then launch the download and immediately power up the CA. This will essentially bypass the 3.1/3.11 comms firmware and use only the bootloader code which is the same across all firmware versions. The Setup Utility may complain at the end after verifying the FW Update, but the new FW will be correctly in place and you should be able to configure settings locally using Console Setup.

>> Please give this a try and let us know it this is effective as a workaround for you.
>> Also, what hardware are you running on?

Apologies for the comms issue - Looks like a 3.12 patch release is going to be needed...

Click to expand...

The hardware are as follows,

Windows XP Hardware:
1. Lenovo S10
Intel Atom CPU N270 @ 1.60 Ghz
1.99 GB of RAM
599 GB HD
32 bit O/S

2. Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
Version 2002
Service Pack 3

Windows 7 Hardware:
1. Hewlett-Packard IdeaPad
Intel Core i7-4810MQ CPU @ 2.80 Ghz
32 GB of Ram
64 Bit O/S

2. Microsoft Windows 7 Enterprise
Service Pack 1

Windows 10 Hardware
1. Lenovo Win7 PC Y-550P
Intel i7 CPU @ 1.60GHz
8GB of Ram
64 bit O/S

2. Microsoft Windows 10 Home (was Windows 7)

I am currently using the Windows 10 hardware, but will be switching to the tiny Lenovo Atom running Windows XP.

teklektik said:

• One thing you can try is to select "Reset settings to defaults", turn off the CA, then launch the download and immediately power up the CA. This will essentially bypass the 3.1/3.11 comms firmware and use only the bootloader code which is the same across all firmware versions. The Setup Utility may complain at the end after verifying the FW Update, but the new FW will be correctly in place and you should be able to configure settings locally using Console Setup.

>> Please give this a try and let us know it this is effective as a workaround for you.
>> Also, what hardware are you running on?

Apologies for the comms issue - Looks like a 3.12 patch release is going to be needed...

Click to expand...

It did not work with the Windows 10 laptop. I will try the slower Lenovo S10 Atom running XP later this afternoon.

k.ewin said:

- Yesterday I did an upgrade to 3.11. I had 3.11b2 running before without problems.
- After upgrading (and some "hardware work" such as shrink wrapping some connectors) I did a test ride and everything went smoothly
- Today I connected the batteries and the CA booted to an error message: "SLOW PWR UP". Even disconnecting and restarting did not help.

When at the "SLOW PWR UP" message I can use the CA buttons to browse through the settings and they seem to be correct. Things like the break switch indicator are working well, but booting to the main screen does not work any more. It always stops at "SLOW PRW UP".

What does this message mean?

I don't know if it's important, but my CA is one of those with the boot issue.

Click to expand...

The "Slo Pwr Up" message was instituted as an indicator that the battery voltage has been applied but has not risen above the Shutdown voltage. This can happen with precharge switches or when pedaling with the main power disconnected (e.g. on a stand) where regen 'sort of' powers things up. This was a source of memory corruption that was addressed last year and the message is a way of indicating that things are starting up but the voltage isn't there yet. When the voltage rises above the Shutdown voltage the CA finishes the startup sequence and becomes active.

Since you are seeing this all the time instead of as a transient screen, I would guess that your voltage calibration has somehow become corrupted. This would cause the CA to think the voltage is other than it is (too low in your case) so it will be misled and never complete the power up sequence. It may be that other calibration settings are NG as well.

Reset Calibration to Defaults
The fastest means to remedy this is to upgrade the firmware again but select both checkboxes so a new default calibration will be put in place. This will differ from your particular device-specific calibration by a few percent but will work okay. This is should get things going.

Restore Device-specific Calibration
Optionally, you can then restore you original per-device calibration from an old setup file that you have read from your CA. Load up that setup file and enable Preferences/'Show Protected Settings'. The calibration settings will appear in the Calibration category. Read your CA into a different tab (I like to use a whole different Setup Utility), and manually copy over the old calibration settings into the present CA settings. Check the boxes for the protected settings and write the settings back to the CA.

It's unclear that any of the other things in play with your original re-flash could have caused this, so I will cut a ticket to look into this possible corruption issue.

Silverexpress01 said:

The hardware are as follows,
...

Click to expand...

Interesting. Thanks.

Silverexpress01 said:

It did not work with the Windows 10 laptop. I will try the slower Lenovo S10 Atom running XP later this afternoon.

Click to expand...

Hmmm, somewhat surprising.
Poo..

teklektik said:

Silverexpress01 said:

It did not work with the Windows 10 laptop. I will try the slower Lenovo S10 Atom running XP later this afternoon.

Click to expand...

Hmmm, somewhat surprising.

Click to expand...

Can you please describe exactly how this failed?
(e.g. Never started, hung in the middle of download, verify failed, etc....)

teklektik said:

teklektik said:

Silverexpress01 said:

It did not work with the Windows 10 laptop. I will try the slower Lenovo S10 Atom running XP later this afternoon.

Click to expand...

Hmmm, somewhat surprising.

Click to expand...

Can you please describe exactly how this failed?
(e.g. Never started, hung in the middle of download, verify failed, etc....)

Click to expand...

In attempting to install newer firmware the Setup Utility produces a popup stating that it is unable to find the CA3 within the time limit of 30 seconds. I just tried the XP laptop and it did not work either.

Silverexpress01 said:

In attempting to install newer firmware the Setup Utility produces a popup stating that it is unable to find the CA3 within the time limit of 30 seconds. I just tried the XP laptop and it did not work either.

Click to expand...

Although there does appear to be some comms issue with 3.1/3.11, it seems you are experiencing different symptoms and a different problem.

Following the procedure outlined above of powering up the CA after the update is initiated causes the CA to go directly into the bootloader code, bypassing all application firmware -- it makes no difference what firmware is presently loaded because it never runs. Since the SU is saying that it cannot find the CA and is timing out, it looks rather like you have a driver or cable issue. Since you have tried this on multiple machines, that makes me think it's not a bad driver, but the cable.

You were careful to say "attempting to install newer firmware" - does that mean there is some Setup Utility or CA firmware that does work and can communicate and either read/write settings or update firmware?

teklektik said:

Although there does appear to be some comms issue with 3.1/3.11, it seems you are experiencing different symptoms and a different problem.

Following the procedure outlined above of powering up the CA after the update is initiated causes the CA to go directly into the bootloader code, bypassing all application firmware -- it makes no difference what firmware is presently loaded because it never runs. Since the SU is saying that it cannot find the CA and is timing out, it looks rather like you have a driver or cable issue. Since you have tried this on multiple machines, that makes me think it's not a bad driver, but the cable.

You were careful to say "attempting to install newer firmware" - does that mean there is some Setup Utility or CA firmware that does work and can communicate and either read/write settings or update firmware?

Click to expand...

Thank you for the assistance. I am planning on visiting the LBS that I purchased the CA3 from today. I'll see if he will exchange the cable for another.

I meant newer than 3.1B13 - which by the way is working just fine for what I need. Truly enjoying the Sempu torque sensor and all the PAS parameters available for the user.

teklektik said:

Since you are seeing this all the time instead of as a transient screen, I would guess that your voltage calibration has somehow become corrupted. This would cause the CA to think the voltage is other than it is (too low in your case) so it will be misled and never complete the power up sequence. It may be that other calibration settings are NG as well.

Click to expand...

Thanks to your support my CA3 is booting again. 8) I reinstalled the latest Firmware 3.11 resetting everything just to be sure and then I restored an older backup (I think is has been done with 3.11b2). Now everything is fine.

Before I did this, I have been able to read the (miscalibrated) parameters from the CA and saved them. Looking at them they clearly have been corrupted. Even the shunt value was completely wrong, so it is quite clear why the CA did not boot.

I will sent you the corrupted settings via PM and hope that it would help to find the root cause of the issue. I do not understand why my test drive worked perfectly and the next day the settings were corrupted. I have not changed anything in between.