Cycle Analyst V3 preview and first beta release

Anyone know what the continuous /max amp rating for the Raw Shunt that grin has? https://www.ebikes.ca/shunt-raw.html?fbclid=IwAR1cjC2H8ufVAZepBAYDDsukezR6EvXm-sPgsEiIzrUckaFMWdbol7WAl-M

Perhaps i can use the low power calibration if this shunt can take 100amp for a few mins.
 
I have a cav3 running it on a 24v 500w motor and it has a strange problem the screen cutsout and resets and restarts and high load around 8-900w only.

its not the battery BMS cutting out because I added an auxiliary battery in parallel to run the cav3 and it would not cut out when run like that.

awsvt is not tripping high on anything. low volt cutout I have put to 10V so its not that.

it should be nothing on the throttle input side either as it ran with the auxillary battery. what could cause this ?

when it cuts out for a second before the screen cuts out, it show LOW something but u never get to read it across the screen.
 
Gab said:
its not the battery BMS cutting out because I added an auxiliary battery in parallel to run the cav3 and it would not cut out when run like that.

So, it does not cut out with the aux battery just to run the CA, but it does cutout when run with only the battery that has a BMS?

If that's the case, then it is very likely to be the battery's BMS cutting out momentarily from voltage sag during the high power draw. If it is not actually cutting out, it's still very likely sagging in voltage below the CA's minimum voltage limit (10v in your case).


LOW VOLTS is the message the CA would show when the battery voltage to it drops below the minimum voltage limit set in the CA menus (10v in your case). It will shutdown and blank the screen at that point (though you may still see the backlight on). WHen voltage rises above that, it'll reboot the CA and function normally again.
 
But does low volts cause CA to shut down and reboot ? It has a throttle plugged in and that does not cut out hence i thought its the cav3 ? Do bms cut out so quick ? The thing is i also tried to run the main pack input of a 2nd battery with higher amp cutout and it still did it ? Hence why i was thinking not the bms. Could the shunt be faulty ? But i bypased the v input of cav3 instead of comeing from that small wire to instead get power direct from fat wires. This seemed to make an improvement but it still does it ? Do i need to run a capacitor resistor to smove the cav3 power wire ?? What values ?
 
Gab said:
But does low volts cause CA to shut down and reboot ?
At the LOW VOLTS point, it means the CA should have shutdown, saving any last values to EEPROM. WHen power comes back above that, it should reboot. (AFAICR, that's how it's worked for me when I've had power connection issues, cutouts, etc., for whatever reason external to the CA).


It has a throttle plugged in and that does not cut out hence i thought its the cav3?
I don't know about that part--if you mean the throttle continues to operate the controller normally, and the motor still runs, then that means the BMS could not be cutting out.

The voltage could still be sagging below the CA's low volts limit, however, causing it to shutdown even if the controller does not (if it doesnt' sag below the controller's LVC, if ti has one).

If the throttle is wired to the CA throttle input, and controller's throttle comes only from the CA's throttle output, then I don't see how any throttle signal could get to the controller to operate it with the CA shutdown.


Do bms cut out so quick ?
Depends on the BMS and why. SOme have overcurrent *and* under/overvoltage protection, and the current limiting might have a delay, but the under/overvoltage protection probably does not have a delay, as it needs to protect the cells from damage by overdischarge or overcharge.

The thing is i also tried to run the main pack input of a 2nd battery with higher amp cutout and it still did it ?
If you are certain the BMS of the battery is not cutting out, then something else must be causing the voltage to sag so low at the CA that it shuts down.

If you ahve a separate voltmeter, you could hook that up to the battery (or the voltage supply to the CA), and see what the volts reads at the instant the CA cuts out.


Bigger wires to the CA shouldn't make any real difference; it doesn't use enough current to need them.


A larger capacitor might help, if attached right at the CA, but keep in mind the controller usually already has a large capacitance, and is hooked up across the same wires the CA is for power. So if that capacitance isnt' helping, you might need anything from several hundred to a few thousand microfarad (uF), with a voltage rating greater than your battery's full charge voltage.

If necessary, you could add a diode in series with the CA's battery + input, and put the capacitor's + on the CA side of that, and the capacitor's - on the battery - input, and that would prevent the system from discharging the capacitor, only letting it charge it. Then only the CA's load would be able to discharge the capacitor. In fact, you could try just the diode and no capacitor, and it would prevent the CA's internal capacitor from being discharged by the system, and possibly prevent the shutdown.


But I'd try to find out why the battery voltage is sagging so much, first, because it generally indicates some problem somewhere, either at the battery or in the wiring (connections, crimps, etc). The CA issue is likely just a symptom of a real problem somewhere.
 
The thing is on the cav3 display voltage is not sagging below 22v. Also in the throttle that doesnt shut down it doesnt go red or show lvc cut out as it can. Its only the cav3 that cuts out and restarts when connected to main pack. If i run ca to a dummy 20v pack it stops this problem... it happens on high load could it be some inteference getting through to cav3 from controller load ?
 
Gab said:
Here is a video... whats
wrong with this ca ? Voltage sags only to 22v from 24v and throttle doesnt even go yellow under load or cut out. Only the ca restarts ?

If i throttle gradually it gets to full power 650w.. only when i do it fast it cuts out

https://vimeo.com/299172587?utm_sou...vimeo-cliptranscode-201504&utm_campaign=28749

Its pretty clear that there is no LowVolts message. Instead the CA fades out and restarts. I get this kind of behavior when something shorts the 5v+ and ground on the CA. So i would assume some sort of wiring issue. Maybe diagram how the CA is connected to the controller, do you have an external shunt or is this a controller that supports CA?

You could test the CA in isolation from the shunt by only connecting the V+ Ground and Throttle pins. Pins 1,2 and 6. If CA works fine in that mode i would assume something wrong with the shunt or speed wire.
 
Gab said:
Here is a video...
I can't view the video; vimeo's site apparently doesn't work on my computer; it just stays blank even with scripts / etc fully allowed.

What does the video show, exactly?

Voltage sags only to 22v from 24v and throttle doesnt even go yellow under load or cut out. Only the ca restarts ?

If i throttle gradually it gets to full power 650w.. only when i do it fast it cuts out

If voltage isn't sagging much, even under the Vmin readout in the CA (not just what you see on the display at the moment of cutout), then that's strange for it to reboot like that with the Low Volts message--the only time I ever see that is when the volts drops below the cutoff.

The other thing that's strange about it is if it's when you accelerate hard/quickly then the voltage sag *should* be greater than when you do that slowly, so if something is causing it to dip below a threshold, then it is happening as I'd expect.


If you can, perhaps you could test using a separate voltmeter measuring at the CA's power input, not just the CA's own voltage measurement (just in case it's not fast enough to show any potential glitch).



madnut said:
Its pretty clear that there is no LowVolts message. Instead the CA fades out and restarts.
Since I can't see the video, I didn't know there was no message. I wonder if that happens only sometimes, since he does report it happened in the original post about the problem. (or rather, he reports "LOW" and the only message I know of the CA can give with that in it is "LOW VOLTS", so that's my assumption).



I get this kind of behavior when something shorts the 5v+ and ground on the CA. So i would assume some sort of wiring issue.
I'd expect a wiring issue that shorts those to happen intermittently, not just at the specific time of using hard throttle like it does for him, though.

I suppose something that causes the throttle to draw too much 5v from the CA would do it; perhaps the throttle itself has a problem internally, so that when very quickly moved it jiggles the problem, but not when it is moved slowly?
 
madnut said:
Perhaps i can use the low power calibration if this shunt can take 100amp for a few mins.

It's 1mOhm. So at 100 amps you are putting 10 watts of heat in a small piece of metal about 1cm x 0.5cm. That will get hot, but being metal the shunt itself is not going to be damaged. I would suggest using heavy 6-8 gauge wire at these currents and then your copper wire will act as an excellent heat sink to pull the heat away from the shunt.
 
Gab said:
But does low volts cause CA to shut down and reboot ? It has a throttle plugged in and that does not cut out hence i thought its the cav3 ? Do bms cut out so quick ?

Everything in the video sure points to and looks like your BMS circuit is tripping and then resetting. And yes BMS circuits do cut out very quick when you exceed their max current draw. You can tell for sure by having something else like a bike light hooked up to the battery output at the same time and see if it goes dark and then turns on again.
 
justin_le said:
It's 1mOhm. So at 100 amps you are putting 10 watts of heat in a small piece of metal about 1cm x 0.5cm. That will get hot, but being metal the shunt itself is not going to be damaged. I would suggest using heavy 6-8 gauge wire at these currents and then your copper wire will act as an excellent heat sink to pull the heat away from the shunt.
I see good point thanks! In the mean time please release the fix for pas in high power mode :)
 
Hi just tried the light plugged into ca and see video attached light doesnt blink !


https://vimeo.com/299527346


Also i dont think its the throttle wire that runs through ca as i ran an auxiliary battery pack to run ca and that is the only time ca didnt trip.


For wireing its standard from the shunt. And one wire for throttle that runs through ca.

So do i need some kind of capacitor resistor n diode on the ca power input wire ? Any suggestions ?
 
I see good point thanks! In the mean time please release the fix for pas in high power mode :)

If you click "Get New Firmware" from the CA setup utility now you'll see a download for CA3.13B1.

CA313B1FW.jpg

This will fix the high PAS behavior in high range mode for ya, and also addresses a few other PAS related glitches that we found from the wider 3.1 release (specifically being too sensitive with 24 pole PAS sensors, and the PAS Start being used instead of PAS Stop threshold for certain cutout timing).

Gab said:
Hi just tried the light plugged into ca and see video attached light doesnt blink !

You are right! It sure had all the hallmarks of a BMS trip, but there would have normally been at least a brief blip in the front light power if that was the case so I swallow my words. I have seen situations of people having CA's reset if the main bus capacitors in the motor controller are either blown or underspec'd causing very high electrical noise on all the lines. Do you have an electrolytic cap handy (at least 470uF) that you could try wiring up in parallel with the battery leads close to the motor controller to see if it no longer does this then? I would try that next.
 
Just got my new CA V3 all hooked up. 60v 12ah lithiumion battery and Grin 40a controller.

40a Controller was too much for the BMS on my battery so I bought the CA V3 to limit the power. I was pretty happy with the results of throttling it back to 20a and 1000W max until I experienced the same problem. BMS seemed to kick out on me again and lost all power. I reset the system and tried again and got the following error message.

Any idea what this means??
 

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madnut said:
justin_le said:
If you click "Get New Firmware" from the CA setup utility now you'll see a download for CA3.13B1.

Cool thanks a bunch, will test tonight.

Ok I have updated and things are much better.
Couple of bugs to report (this is under high power calibration):
1. If I set 2A in the Fast Ramp Threshold, on the device it looks like its actually sets 20 Amps. This results in a very jumpy DD hub bike in PAS mode, not very safe :) (I fix it by setting it on the device itself).
2. If I apply the ebrake and keep peddling, and then while pedaling release the ebrake, the throttle out will climb very slowly around 0.1V/s.
3. I have two presets with #2 as starting one, if I try to switch I get watchdog and a crash. Here is my setup https://1drv.ms/u/s!AmHyrxxOO3jpgYYrteGTTlkYyNXtSw


Feature request:
Not sure if this is doable but in high power mode the smallest power limit I can set is 1kw. I would love to have at least one decimal point so i can create a legal 0.7kw preset. Ideally if we could have 2 decimal points I would set it to 0.75kw.
 
Justin 470 uf across ca input wire fixed it ! Like u said maybe low caps on controller was causing interference??? I put a 800ohm resist inline and problem came back ! So just left the cap and problem solved thanks !
 
teklektik said:
heyDD-
It sounds like a button or perhaps condensation problem that is causing phantom button pushes. In particular, holding the left button depressed on boot sends control directly to Setup - you primary symptom. Buttons not working is likely because one or more is stuck ON.

  1. Carefully unscrew the back and gently pull away the back - it'll be wired to the front display half.
  2. Follow the button cable down to the PCB and unplug it. This will be the same situation as the normal 'two-buttons-not-pressed' condition.
  3. Apply power and see if the CA boots normally.

  • If this works, then your buttons are likely dead. Email Grin for replacement part options.
  • If things don't work, then there may be moisture on the PCB. Leave the case open to dry and try again.
  • If that doesn't work, email Grin and they can give you more informed assistance and repair options.


buttonCable.jpg

Got a replacement face with buttons and everything works perfectly! Thanks for the help
 
I am also having an issue with the new download, when I start assist with peddling it goes up to 2000 w
If Ihold brake for a second then peddle its very smooth. but again forget to apply brake first and it overshoots and get all aggressive.? I did not notice this before ? i should mention assist levels are set to 300-600-900-
 
Hello fellow CA users,

I was hoping someone would look at my CA PAS profile (the hex file which is amended with a txt extension to make it uploadable). We are getting a W flag on the diagnostic screen which to me makes no sense. I do have watt limiting set to 600 watts and it doesn't seem like Im pulling more that 150 to 200w while PAS is engaging, I'm live monitoring the watts as I peddle. So maybe we are hitting the limit somehow right at the beginning of PAS engagement? I have good power at the initial moment the PAS starts but kinda of weak throttling out after it engages. We are only on PAS no actual throttle is being used. One idea is the is that the Torque Scale isn't set correctly. I've messed around with that setting but I'm not sure I understand how its effecting my current profile with our custom sensor. Any help is greatly appreciated!


Motor MG310, PR, 36 volts Ligo x2, CA 3.1
 

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madnut said:
Ok I have updated and things are much better.

Hey good to hear

Couple of bugs to report (this is under high power calibration):
1. If I set 2A in the Fast Ramp Threshold, on the device it looks like its actually sets 20 Amps. This results in a very jumpy DD hub bike in PAS mode, not very safe :) (I fix it by setting it on the device itself).

Ah, that is definitely a bug. It should be that in high range mode, all the amperage displays shift over by a decimal, so yeah 2.0A would become 20A. We will fix that in the next update.

2. If I apply the ebrake and keep peddling, and then while pedaling release the ebrake, the throttle out will climb very slowly around 0.1V/s.

Can you clarify if this happens when you are not using the throttle at all, the power is just from you pedaling? And if the latter, if you momentarily stop pedaling (or pedal backwards for a sec) and then start again does it ramp up much more quickly or is it the same?

3. I have two presets with #2 as starting one, if I try to switch I get watchdog and a crash. Here is my setup https://1drv.ms/u/s!AmHyrxxOO3jpgYYrteGTTlkYyNXtSw

That I can reproduce and confirm that it doesn't happen with the previous 3.12 release firmware, so it was an introduced bug and as a result should be easy to track down.

Feature request:
Not sure if this is doable but in high power mode the smallest power limit I can set is 1kw. I would love to have at least one decimal point so i can create a legal 0.7kw preset. Ideally if we could have 2 decimal points I would set it to 0.75kw.

Oh, that's a total display bug in the setup utility that seems to have been introduced when we switched from using units of kW instead of watts for max power. That'll be a trivial fix. If you update the max power via the button interface you'll see you have both decimal digits present, it's only in the software view that the decimal is cropped off here.

Thanks for this feedback and we'll aim for a beta2 release of the 3.13 code in the very near future that addresses these things.
 
Gab said:
Justin 470 uf across ca input wire fixed it ! Like u said maybe low caps on controller was causing interference???

Glad to hear that was all that was going on. And I would definitely take this opportunity to open up your motor controller and see if the main bus capacitors might need replacement. If they have a broken lead, or are visibly expanded at the top, you should probably fix that right on the motor controller.

Tom on 101 said:
We are getting a W flag on the diagnostic screen which to me makes no sense.

In your setup, you are running in a torque assist PAS mode, which means while you are pedaling whether hard or lightly, the CA is ALWAYS trying to maintain a regulated constant wattage output, hence the W flag should always be capitalized since you are always limiting the output based on a target wattage.

Where did your 160 Nm/V torque scaling and 0.92V offset come from? Right now you have your maximum assist set to 2x, so to get 600 watts of output power from the controller the CA3 will need to see 300 watts of human input power.


Timstephens113 said:
Any idea what this means??
The watchdog error means that some code executed for longer than it should in normal circumstances and the series of numbers aftewords is a dump of the call stack so that we can try and track down where in the code things were running when this happened. Did this occur to you after updating to the 3.13B1 beta firmware, or with the release firmware that was on your CA3 originally?
 
justin_le said:
2. If I apply the ebrake and keep peddling, and then while pedaling release the ebrake, the throttle out will climb very slowly around 0.1V/s.

Can you clarify if this happens when you are not using the throttle at all, the power is just from you pedaling? And if the latter, if you momentarily stop pedaling (or pedal backwards for a sec) and then start again does it ramp up much more quickly or is it the same?

Yeah this is PAS only I am not touching my physical throttle. If I stop pedaling and then resume the ramp up is normal. I haven't tried backwards peddle, I will try that out and report.
 
I apologize if this was covered before but i did not find it on the forum.

I have a throttle hooked to my controllers variable regen input. I noticed that if I keep spinning the peddles (PAS is on) while applying regen via the regen throttle. Then breaking is applied but if I release the throttle the bike tries to run away.

I am assuming what happens is that CA notices that power is dropping and because my PAS is set to power mode it ramps up the out throttle to full trying to get more power. When I release the break throttle the CA is outputting fully open throttle 4V so the bike jumps.

Iv seen that other people hook the right break sensor to the controller regen which should result in the same issue, so I am wondering if this is expected behavior or a bug?

Possible fixes:
1. I am not an EE so i'm wondering what would be a way to wire the throttle so that it would also set of e-break signal on the CA, this should solve the issue.
2. Software wize (I dont know how well this would work but...) I think when the CA sees the power drop from lets say 500W to negative wattage it should put the throttle to low and not allow it to climb until the wattage is zero or positive.
 
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