Help with controller that has no phase output

Hi all, I got an ebike that's part of a conversion kit from a guy who builds them the other month, all's been great until recently when I went to change the triangle bag for a larger one. I took pics of all the connections etc and did the wiring 1 by 1 to be sure but when it was all connected back up it wouldn't work! It would power up fine but when I hit the throttle, nothing! I ended up testing a load of things and got nowhere so brought 1 of those ebike testers which showed everything was in working order apart from the phase wires coming from the controller itself output nothing and show nothing on the tester. Is there any way to fix what's damaged in the controller itself if the parts are cheap enough? I've ordered a new controller & screen already but wouldn't mind fixing and keeping the old 1 as a backup if possible so just want to know where to look, what to buy & replace if someone's experienced this issue before?
Thanks for reading.

h4x0rm1k3 said:

I ended up testing a load of things and got nowhere so brought 1 of those ebike testers which showed everything was in working order apart from the phase wires coming from the controller itself output nothing and show nothing on the tester.

Click to expand...

When you say you tested a load of things, does that mean you changed/swapped wiring? Can you explain things you tried?

If you have a multimeter, do you have 5v from the throttle connector, between the red and black conductors on the controller side connector? Are you using PAS as well?

You hooked up the three Hall sensor and the phase wires for the motor tester? Well, if the motor didn't turn, the lights on the motor tester won't light either.

Bummer that you just moved the controller to a bigger bag, wire by wire and it doesn't work. Are your brake levers closed? Most kits use brake lever switches, and if the brakes are hanging loose, that keeps the motor from turning.

Thanks both for replying, basically it's a chinese, no name controller, it does have brake connectors but I don't use them as I have hydraulic brakes, there's no PAS connected either but is an option and I use throttle to control it which is working fine as tested by myself with a MM and the tester itself shows up with the 5V line being live and throttle working as it should be. The 3 phase wires to the motor plus the sensor wires along with it's power leads also show as fine when hooked up to the tester and spinning the wheel cycles through the 3 lights without issue. It's when I hook up the phase wires from the controller I get nothing on the A,B,C lights on the tester, not even with the throttle being connected and used like the 'manual' says. As for what i've tried, i've tried reconnecting wires, checking for shorts with a MM and checking for voltage on the relevant lines too. The only wires that give no output are the phase ones on the controller.

EDIT:- I've attached a picture of the tester, the point it's failing at is 1 of the 2 bottom tests where it tests the angle of 60 or 120 degrees, it's all hooked up exactly as in the diagram but I get no output on the A,B & C light as it says it should do. All the other tests I ran from that manual worked fine, all lights displayed as expected etc.

Those controllers will typically have several conditions that will inhibit the output. Brake switches you've eliminated. Other possible ones are battery voltage too high or too low, throttle signal voltage out of range, "Anti-thief" wire, overtemperature, invalid hall sensor signal. There could be others.

You've checked most of these, so hard to guess exactly where the problem is. The throttle signal voltage should be about 1v to 4v as you advance the throttle. You can measure this with your meter. If the throttle wires got swapped around, this reading would be out of the normal range.

fechter said:

Those controllers will typically have several conditions that will inhibit the output. Brake switches you've eliminated. Other possible ones are battery voltage too high or too low, throttle signal voltage out of range, "Anti-thief" wire, overtemperature, invalid hall sensor signal. There could be others.

You've checked most of these, so hard to guess exactly where the problem is. The throttle signal voltage should be about 1v to 4v as you advance the throttle. You can measure this with your meter. If the throttle wires got swapped around, this reading would be out of the normal range.

Click to expand...

Thanks for that info, the meter displays the throttle works by twinkling the LED according to how much voltage is going through it so it seems to be fine, my MM read the right voltages when used or not too. As for the other 'extra' wires, there's only 4 if my memory serves me correctly, 2 are possibly for the brakes, 1 is the PAS which is the 3 wire 1 and then there's the learning wire too, the rest are all filed with the basics to get the ebike running as it were. As far as i'm aware there is no alarm although 1 of those 2 wire ones I think are for the brakes could be, they both have 2 wires and the same colour too and both measure 5V. The battery wasn't fully charged but was around 3 quarters roughly and the hall sensor wires you mentioned were already checked and tested fine, both motor & controller side and phase wires only work on the motor side as mentioned previous.
Is there anything specific inside the controller that controls the phase wire pulses that might be at fault? I'm intending on opening it up anyway so any ideas/suggestions where and what to look at are welcome.

Most every controller I own uses a scheme where battery power is applied to a controller input wire to turn it on. If you see five volts on some wires, it means the controller is turned on. You might want to verify it goes away when whatever switch is used to turn on the bike is turned off. You have verified that the throttle output, when connected to the controller varies between 1.4 and 4.3 volts?

Does the bike have a display with different PAS levels. Usually, throttle is not active in PAS 0. I know the PAS sensor is not connected, but you still have PAS levels.

Learning wires must be open, by the way..

docw009 said:

Most every controller I own uses a scheme where battery power is applied to a controller input wire to turn it on. If you see five volts on some wires, it means the controller is turned on. You might want to verify it goes away when whatever switch is used to turn on the bike is turned off. You have verified that the throttle output, when connected to the controller varies between 1.4 and 4.3 volts?

Does the bike have a display with different PAS levels. Usually, throttle is not active in PAS 0. I know the PAS sensor is not connected, but you still have PAS levels.

Learning wires must be open, by the way..

Click to expand...

Hi, I can confirm the voltage is present when battery is in on position and there's 0 voltage when it's off unless the tester is attached which supplies it's own voltage. The throttle varies it's voltage too between 1&4V roughly and I had PAS turned on to the highest level already as it was all previously working and all menu settings corrected and adjusted as required for the setup I'm running which are still present and correct today and the learning wire is disconnected.

I guess it's time to post all those pictures you took. Add comments too,

docw009 said:

I guess it's time to post all those pictures you took. Add comments too,

Click to expand...

I can confirm it's definitely the controller, new controller & screen fitted just now, same exact settings in the screen menu and it fired straight up no problem.

The new controller seems to be absolute trash. I've got no speed sensor, no ODO, basically nothing on screen apart from battery meter & wattage. Wattage at the wheel is very bad, I barely see 300 watts being pulled, if that and the ride is slow as all hell. I've set the menu up how it was set on the other SW900 so it should be similar being as it's supposed to be a 1000-1500W controller and the motor is definitely 1000W as it used to display over 1000W flat out before and reached upwards of 60Kmph! Am I maybe missing something here? The wheel spins freely when powered up etc so I have no idea what's going on, it seems to work as it should do otherwise, just p**s poor speeds and wattage output!

Some controllers have a 3 speed switch that typically defaults to speed 2 if nothing is connected. Did they give you a wiring diagram?

fechter said:

Some controllers have a 3 speed switch that typically defaults to speed 2 if nothing is connected. Did they give you a wiring diagram?

Click to expand...

Nope, no diagrams as such, only a picture with labels of what each lead is for and is pretty much the same setup as I had before for cables. As far as i'm aware all settings are done in the hidden menu which are all set up as before.

Click to expand...

Super confusing. Is this the sequence of things?

1. old controller, old triangle bag (=battery holder?) before Monday 7/22: all good, 60 km/h
2. new triangle bag, old controller on Monday 7/22: controller & display power up, but no power on phase wires to motor
3. new triangle bag, new controller & display @ 7/23 1:21pm : all works great, confirmed that old controller is the culprit
4. new triangle bag, new controller & display this morning, 7/24 8:08am: all crap, motor runs, but very low power

What exactly was working yesterday (7/23) at 1:21pm? Did the motor run? At what speed? (by speed I mean speed under load.)

Gruesome said:

Super confusing. Is this the sequence of things?

1. old controller, old triangle bag (=battery holder?) before Monday 7/22: all good, 60 km/h
2. new triangle bag, old controller on Monday 7/22: controller & display power up, but no power on phase wires to motor
3. new triangle bag, new controller & display @ 7/23 1:21pm : all works great, confirmed that old controller is the culprit
4. new triangle bag, new controller & display this morning, 7/24 8:08am: all crap, motor runs, but very low power

What exactly was working yesterday (7/23) at 1:21pm? Did the motor run? At what speed? (by speed I mean speed under load.)

Click to expand...

That is basically the gist of it yes apart from the triangle bag is what's holding the controller, it was very constrained before so I decided to get a slightly larger one, the battery is where the bottle holder used to be and not in any bag of any kind. At 1:21PM on 7/23 (i'm in the UK so it was more like 7-8PM when i'd fitted it all) it was late so the only test I could do was to spin the wheel via the throttle to confirm it at least worked. The full test was yesterday and was terrible, I could barely get i'd say 10 MPH out of it and the most I seen for wattage output was 300W and that was only briefly as it was all over the place, quite often at 0W! I think the easiest way would be to link the controller i'd brought which is this one - https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0C7G6P9GL . The menu is setup to work from throttle only, no PAS, speed limit 100 and anything that could or needed to be set I copied over from the original screen, so, in theory it should be working. There seems to be no chugging from the back wheel so I believe the phases to be all fine although that is probably where i'm going to start looking later today as it is a tri mode controller so I can remove the hall sensors and 'hope' that it learns to go fast again.

EDIT:- I forgot to mention that I did set the battery in the menu to 48V as well, in fact it was already set as that

Thanks for the clarification.
So point 3. should read: new controller does spin motor at idle (no load)

So between 1. and 2. you merely moved the controller to a new bag, and redid all the connections at that time, I assume.
And the difference between the new controller and the old controller is that the new controller does spin the motor, whereas the old one stopped to do that after the relocation.

Maybe some pictures would be good. We do know from your username you're an awsome haxor, but it might be good to see the wiring. No offense.

Gruesome said:

Thanks for the clarification.
So point 3. should read: new controller does spin motor at idle (no load)

So between 1. and 2. you merely moved the controller to a new bag, and redid all the connections at that time, I assume.
And the difference between the new controller and the old controller is that the new controller does spin the motor, whereas the old one stopped to do that after the relocation.

Maybe some pictures would be good. We do know from your username you're an awsome haxor, but it might be good to see the wiring. No offense.

Click to expand...

Yes sorry, I will get on to the pics a bit later, I got a real bad back overnight so am a bit stuck at the moment while waiting for meds to kick in! The Amazon link to the 2nd controller does have all the info & pinout pics I could provide though if that might help in the meantime? The 1st controller i'll dig out and take some proper pics of later along with how it was all hooked up. I needed to move to a new bag as the other was far too small to also hold an extra battery for my lights as I have them on a separate system on it's own.

Are there any reset to factory default options available on these Chinese kits using the SW900 screens do you know? I might try doing a factory reset if it's possible on the 1st controller and see if it was stuck in some kind of locked mode.

Sorry, I meant pictures of your wiring. Yes, I know, wiring is personal, this is kind of intrusive, yadayadayada, but really, somebody might spot something.

Gruesome said:

Sorry, I meant pictures of your wiring. Yes, I know, wiring is personal, this is kind of intrusive, yadayadayada, but really, somebody might spot something.

Click to expand...

No problem, i'm quite good with wiring and to be honest most of the plugs will only fit specific plugs. I've just been reading another thread on here and it seems my phase wires could be the culprits so before posting pics and sending people down rabbit holes i'll give running it sensorless a try 1st and if I get a decent result from that i'l either leave it at that and give it a test run or if after the test run I feel it's not running right i'l connect the sensors back up and work out which phases go where.
If I get nowhere some pics will follow!

Did I miss the part when you used the “self study” or learning wire for the controller to set the correct phase firing sequence?

TommyCat said:

Did I miss the part when you used the “self study” or learning wire for the controller to set the correct phase firing sequence?

Click to expand...

At the time I didn't think I had to as the wheel spun and spun the correct way, it wasn't until the following day when I could actually ride it I found I had an issue. Either way I think i've fixed it now, I disconnected the phase sensor wiring connector as the controller is a tri-mode so could do that and turned it back on and turned the throttle and boy did that wheel spin, MUCH faster than it did before so I need to tune that up. However, I did notice as I turned it on that PAS said 1, so I did turn that up to 5 so it could be either that fixed it, i'll find that out once my back isn't killing me as much as it is now. I still had no other info on the display though so I do need to look in to that and didn't have that much time to look at what wattage it was putting out that it does show as I needed to hit the brake quickly the wheel took off that fast! I may try my old SW900 screen with it, see if that one works at all if I can't figure out what's causing no info to be displayed, it's all 000's all the time.

h4x0rm1k3 said:

If I get nowhere some pics will follow!

Click to expand...

I think we've figured out already that there won't be any pics.

Make sure P9 and P10 are set correctly.

Note that the SW900 is one of those oddball displays that is compatible with a few different controller manufacturers, and firmware compatibility may even be down to a particular model, not just manufacturer. If the old and new controllers aren't the same model, the displays may or may not work when interchanged.

You need the hall plug connected to get speed or odometer readings. You connected the phases and halls in the wrong combination, which led to your slow speed and relatively high current for that speed. It's not hard to fix, but since you have the system running, maybe you'd be better off riding sensorless without a speedo, rather than risk frying your controller. Of course, this could have been easier to diagnose with pics. Good luck.

SW900 manual for general reference. Note: Available functions and set-points are specified by individual venders and not all may be included.

https://f.hubspotusercontent10.net/hubfs/7933366/Hub Drive Display Manual.pdf

TommyCat said:

SW900 manual for general reference. Note: Available functions and set-points are specified by individual venders and not all may be included.

https://f.hubspotusercontent10.net/hubfs/7933366/Hub Drive Display Manual.pdf

Click to expand...

Before I start/finish and give you all a giggle, thanks to all for all your help, it has helped me in the end as it gave me ideas where to look and also learnt me something new in the process! Both controllers are ok, the 1 I brought and the 1 I was replacing and thought had an issue, it turns out there was no issue at all and it was only when I hooked up the old screen to the new controller to begin with that I knew i'd stumbled on the problem, you can laugh with me in this too, the wheel wouldn't turn and straight away I knew to look at the PAS on the screen and what do you think it was saying? That's right......0, as in basically off, no speed, nada, kind of like an off switch! As soon as I switched it to 1 and hit the throttle the wheel came to life.
So, I then dutifully switched the controller over to the 'non working' one, turned it on and hit the throttle and what would you know, the wheel spun.....FML! So, EVERYTHING is working and i've learnt a new lesson about PAS today, I certainly won't be forgetting that 1, like ever! Old screen works perfectly with both controllers too so I think there may be some other fault in the new screen or something hasn't set right so i'll double check that. I'll be keeping the controllers anyway, always handy to have as a spare if it's needed, I might even find 1 is better than the other like I think the newer 1 might be as it seemed to spin the wheel much faster than the other does but I also don't want to wreck the 1000W motor and I have no idea what the max amperage of my battery would be either and only know as much as it's a 48V 15mAh pack and the similar ones I can find on google with a model number of sorts I found on the pack itself say it 'should' be capable of 20A continuous and 30A max, how true that is I don't know but either way I only want to run the wheel around 1-1200W max, I wouldn't mind knowing what I could get out of it if I wanted to briefly though so wouldn't mind finding out the amperage of the battery pack at some point, is there any kind of equation about for it?

docw009 said:

Usually, throttle is not active in PAS 0. I know the PAS sensor is not connected, but you still have PAS levels.

Click to expand...

We have a WINNER! Congratulations to Doc.

Thank you for the update OP, great to hear you got em working!