how to program a sevcon gen4

darseygodwin said:
You'll have a much easier time with an oscilloscope, but it sounds like your encoder is something like 180 degrees out of alignment.

Read this: https://www.e-kart.fr/images/stories/technique/SEVCON/sevcon-app-note-pmac.pdf
If the link doesn't work, google for "sevcon app note". It explains what you're experiencing.

You probably already know, but keeping phase 1 the same, and flipping leads 2/3 will reverse the motor's direction from forward to reverse.
Next, your cos signal should lead the sin signal by 90 degrees in forward direction, so that's your order of whether or not you need to flip the sin/cos leads to the encoder. If you don't have an oscilloscope you can be very slow with a voltmeter and figure it out.

HOWEVER, if your encoder is fully 180 degrees out of alignment it can turn in the wrong direction, and sometimes it's actually rideable. BE CAREFUL though, because if you're at that point, it can be pretty unstable and race like a banshee with regenerative braking enabled and no load on the motor. This is why the scope is important to use, so you can visually see the encoder's alignment with your phases.

Finally, if everything works, and you've used a scope to guarantee it's well aligned but very rough and sounds bad, it could also be noise. (I'm still measuring PWM noise from the gen4 on my encoder as soon as the contactor closes, that throws off the position whenever I'm pulling more than 300A AC current. That's even with everything heavily shielded and shields grounded.) But it sounds like you're not at that point yet, that it's more likely just encoder alignment.

I am interested in learning more about the sevcon controllers and encoders. I have a govecs 3.4 that uses a 3.9kw parker motor. I would like to attach it to a scope to get the allignment exactly right. but looking in the app note, i see that i need a 4 channel scope for that? or will a 2 channel scope suffice?
 
Yes a 2 channel works fine, that's all I had. Just takes some thought and good note taking to keep organized. The 4 channels let you see everything on one screen, but every measurement in that app note can be done just two channels at a time.

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darseygodwin said:
Yes a 2 channel works fine, that's all I had. Just takes some thought and good note taking to keep organized. The 4 channels let you see everything on one screen, but every measurement in that app note can be done just two channels at a time.

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cheers! ill be going on the hunt for a used scope then so i can have a look.
still lots to learn about my sevcon.

i found out today that my sevcon does not allow for regen braking on neutral throttle. I have been told that this is because the manufacturer of the scooter has disabled this on a deeper level than i have access to. pretty frustrating. surely there must be a way to get different firmware on my sevcon or adapt the existing one to allow for regen?
 
@samv76 ... The true short answer is yes, the firmware can be reflashes to give you access to everything. The honest truth however is that if you have things to learn about the Sevcon and also weren't at a point to truly know if you can use a two channel scope, then my advice is that you honestly don't want to reflash new firmware.

There's multiple layers of P-I control system values you need to tune to get the unit to run even decently safely well, and if it's already running but you just want Regen, then prob not worth it. Lots of people prefer to roll without regen just for the coasting feeling. There are people around here who do have firmware flashes available but I can't help you with it myself. Just be prepared to toss the whole setup of you do.

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darseygodwin said:
@samv76 ... The true short answer is yes, the firmware can be reflashes to give you access to everything. The honest truth however is that if you have things to learn about the Sevcon and also weren't at a point to truly know if you can use a two channel scope, then my advice is that you honestly don't want to reflash new firmware.

There's multiple layers of P-I control system values you need to tune to get the unit to run even decently safely well, and if it's already running but you just want Regen, then prob not worth it. Lots of people prefer to roll without regen just for the coasting feeling. There are people around here who do have firmware flashes available but I can't help you with it myself. Just be prepared to toss the whole setup of you do.

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thx for the advice. For now, i will stick to the current firmware and do without regen untill i get to the point where i have enough knowlegde ( if that point ever comes :lol: )
 
Hi all,
I have this problem now: For the Battery I use a EMUS BMS; for the Motor the GEN4 bcs. I change to a Twizy Motor.
Before I had speed pulses from the old motor to feed the BMS for distance calculation.
Now not anymore.... Is there a way, to generate speed pulses in the GEN4 to feed the BMS?

best regards, Michael
 
2xhp said:
Ingo said:
thanks. i got it :)

Now I'm smarter: you have to swap sin and cos. Swap M2 and M3. then it turn in correct way.

but i still can not record a trace... says me not enough data points.

logs.rar

Hey there Ingo!

It looks like you resolved this somehow. I'm getting the same error:

DVT_error.PNG

I record Uq and Ud for about 10 seconds. Do I need to do it longer? Do I need to go longer? I'm using this great post as a guide:

https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=88647


the motor must freewheeling to record a trace . I didn't know that at the beginning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxA3493vs-I&list=FLONLJEj1g2smxl28BYK99CA&index=21

Thanks in advance.
 
hi all,

I have another problem with my sevcon gen4 size6 and ME1302 motor.

when i give a little throttle (current is low) the motor runs fine (with the wheel off the ground)
but when i give more throttle (current is higher) the motor / controller beginns to make a squeak / whistling noise very loud.

the encorder is aligned

when i take a trace with little throttle the trace looks good but when i take a trace with more throttle the points more to the right and to the left a the whistling noise appears.

View attachment log_101020_202507.csvView attachment log_101020_202714.csvView attachment log_101020_203003.csvView attachment log_101020_203137.csvView attachment log_101020_203323.csvView attachment log_101020_203420.csv
 
Noise?

Check that not only are encoder, main battery leads and phase leads shielded, but absolutely all B- wires are shielded as well. (I assume your pack and controller are floating in comparison to frame)

Darsey
 
I ran motor me1507 with a lathe three Jaw chuck to acquire my trace and when i thought it wasn’t aligned correctly I reprogrammed the controller and started over and ran a trace till the dots looked like they grouped gen4 size4 with the files I had. Till the motor sounded like it was working properly


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Also have to clear and any error codes before running that trace


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Hello Guys,

I am getting this problem Fault.PNG. It won't let me get to do anything (adjust parameters or anything). Running a Gen 4 Size 8 with an ME1303 for now for testing but will be using Yasa 400 later. I want to see if anyone here encountered this and how they fixed it if they did.

Thank you!!
 
Check your can bus wires first tx to rx and rx to tx.


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aymenkhalaf said:
Hello Guys,

I am getting this problem . It won't let me get to do anything (adjust parameters or anything). Running a Gen 4 Size 8 with an ME1303 for now for testing but will be using Yasa 400 later. I want to see if anyone here encountered this and how they fixed it if they did.

Thank you!!
Seems Can bus is not wired correctly. Swap them around


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Robinev said:
aymenkhalaf said:
Hello Guys,

I am getting this problem Fault.PNG. It won't let me get to do anything (adjust parameters or anything). Running a Gen 4 Size 8 with an ME1303 for now for testing but will be using Yasa 400 later. I want to see if anyone here encountered this and how they fixed it if they did.

Thank you!!
Seems Can bus is not wired correctly. Swap them around


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I see communication already. The cAN window shows TX RX in purple
 
darseygodwin said:
Sorry I edited this post a couple times as I was remembering how thing went down for me in the end.

@2xhp, try spinning the motor in the other direction, or swapping the M2 and M3 leads at the controller and trying again. Ingo's comment about flipping sin/cos suggests the motor's turning direction was opposite the sin/cos encoder's direction when it wasn't working. It's been just slightly too long since I did this that it's hazy and I can't remember if DVT needed to be in "forward" or just having the wheel spinning in the same direction as the applied torque direction. When my stuff was backwards I switched DVT to "forward" which spun the motor in backwards in order to take a trace. I then switched DVT back to "Reverse" again to hit the road. Careful that you don't have everything aligned 180 degrees out, because it can first seem ok but then quickly go unstable and race to Mach 10 when freewheeling. As in, be ready to hit the brakes when testing.

Second possibility is that it wasn't turning fast enough to register Ud/Uq values. You can see that right in the vehicle monitor screen though so you might've already ruled that out. Good luck.

Hey!

I think I got a taste of that mach 10 freewheeling today. I touched the throttle and the motor reved up, hitting some limit which caused the controller, gen4 size4, to issue a DSP overvoltage or Current control fault. I will check that my sine and cosine are not mixed up.
Do you know if a DCF from a size 6 will cause problems when running on a size 4? I have altered the values for current to match the size 4 limits.

Thanks

Rikard
 
Ingo said:
it look like the offset is changing when current is given to motorhard Throttle (2).JPGhard throttle.JPGoffset changed...JPGSINCOS Setup.JPGslow throttle.JPG

Hi Ingo!

I use the me1304 in my boat and I dont have the "latency select" value set. Have you tried to remove it?

BR

Rikard
 
@riwi77 haha yea that's a creepy feeling when she takes off.

Honestly not sure what the differences are behind the scenes between the two DCF files, if there is one. I've only ever worked with my size 6, but there is a dcf compare tool in the software, which outputs a CSV file listing the differences between two files. You could save a size 4 dcf and compare with your size 6 file you want to use and see for yourself. Even if they're not 100% compatible it should let you see the difference in any critical settings you're specifically looking for (like P-I gains settings), then you can manually build one yourself.

I did that with someone else's size 6 dcf that I found online just to get an idea where other people have their settings in their "stable" configurations.

Good luck.

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darseygodwin said:
@riwi77 haha yea that's a creepy feeling when she takes off.

Honestly not sure what the differences are behind the scenes between the two DCF files, if there is one. I've only ever worked with my size 6, but there is a dcf compare tool in the software, which outputs a CSV file listing the differences between two files. You could save a size 4 dcf and compare with your size 6 file you want to use and see for yourself. Even if they're not 100% compatible it should let you see the difference in any critical settings you're specifically looking for (like P-I gains settings), then you can manually build one yourself.

I did that with someone else's size 6 dcf that I found online just to get an idea where other people have their settings in their "stable" configurations.

Good luck.

Sent from my SM-N770F using Tapatalk

Just to clarify, some of the settings under motor configuration are “hw-specific” meaning that the apply to the hw resources available in the specific model on gen4? That do make sense and I should find a working gen4 size 4 80V dcf and start from there.
 
There is a controller hardware specific requirement to make the gen 4 controller compatible with sin-cos encoders. So that's one place where there's a hardware specific requirement. I assume that's probably a similar requirement for both size 4 and 6 models.

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riwi77 said:
Ingo said:
it look like the offset is changing when current is given to motorhard Throttle (2).JPGhard throttle.JPGoffset changed...JPGSINCOS Setup.JPGslow throttle.JPG

Hi Ingo!

I use the me1304 in my boat and I dont have the "latency select" value set. Have you tried to remove it?

BR

Rikard


hi,

ok i will test it. thanks!
 
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