Not that I started out to do it, but I fixed that controller. At least, it runs the wheel off-ground.
I actually set out to weld up the evap cooler tray this morning while it was still relatively cool, but I somehow popped the main breaker to the house, and resetting it didnt' fix the problem. I troubleshot it and tried to find my spare breakers when suddenly everything came back on, and I realized that it probably wasn't anything to do with whatever I did here--there must've been a power surge that popped the breaker and then killed power to the block or whatever.
I can't imagine anything at my end that would cause that without also causing a fire or being pretty obvious....
Being daytime, I hadn't noticed that anyone else's power was out, especially since the laptop's wifi picked up a signal good enough to peek at ES a couple times.
So there was around 3-4 hours wasted; I don't know how long it was for sure, but by the time the power was back on, it was past midday and past 100F and I'd given up on any outside projects.
Anyhow, I was too overheated to think well, and I tried to take a nap after failing to remember what else I had planned for today, and decided today will just be a "day off", since it was already an "off day". I helped a friend in the evening, replacing his ipod touch's messed up touchscreen--fortunatley that went much better than I anticipated and I didn't break anything else on it. :lol: While doing this I was thinkng about the thngs I probably ought to accomplish tonight, and kinda made a mental list of them.
He donated a few lengths of PVC pipe to my solar water heater project, though as I was reaching into the bed of his truck to pick them up when he dropped me off back at my house, and I had just grabbed one end of the pieces, he just drove off, running over my left foot's toes.
Fortunatley the shoes I was wearing are steel-toed, and were stronger than the small amount of the vehicle weight on them for the short time as he drove over them, and nothing bad happened. but it was terribly surprising, and I can't imagine why he drove off at that moment rather than waiting till I was clear of the truck. :?
Anyhow, somewhat dazed and confused and unable to remember what I had been pondering doing earlier, I went in to greet and feed the dogs and let them out for potty time and playtime and such, and passed CrazyBike2 many times and it just bugged me that I'd broken that controller so quickly.
So after doing the various household chores I decided must get done, like clothes washing and prepping a few food ingredients for stuff to make later in the week, and then popping in here on ES a few times, I wanted to open up the controller to see what kind of carnage I'd done.
First, though, I took your advice and poked around at the Eagletree, but right now I can't see well enough or hold my hands steady enough to work on the tiny little thing.
So after a little while of that, I did open up the controller:
No visible damage, though I certainly see what you mean about the crooked-drilling of the FET mounting holes. They must've been drunk that day, or doing it blindfolded with both hands tied behind their back.
but there were sufficient gaps that there shouldn't be any shorting--at least 1mm, sometimes 2-3, between FEt groups.
The controller doesn't really look that messy to me, though I am not exactly the best judge of that sort of thing.
Ohming out the FETs I found the rightmost (from the top, FETs on top) group had one side of the bridge (leftmost, cant' remember if thats' positive or negative side of the bridge) shorted completely out, gate to source to drain less than 1ohm!
I used that soldering gun you sent me ages back in an earlier "care package" to remove the FETs one at a time, and of course it was the last of the three that was dead shorted--the others tested fine. They might be damaged, but I still reused them, at least to see if the controller would work at all. I managed to peel off the gate trace to the leftmost FET, on the top of the PCB, when I removed it. So I had to scrape some coating off the gate trace to the others, and use the FET lead to solder to the top of the trace instead. I replaced the shorted FET with one of the ones I'd bought from you way back when (I still have most of those new in their rail, fortunatley).
Was about to reassemble and test it, when I thought that I had better maybe kinda put the shunts back to something close to what they started out as. So I again used taht soldering gun to melt the solder, and sucked it off off there with the little thumb-cocked springloaded soldersucker I'd inherited from my dad, and then used needlenose to pull off the (presumably) desoldering braid wrapped around the shunts, while continuing to heat the shunts with that gun.
It was starting to smell funny from the PCB heating up by the time I was done. :lol: Thankfully I was running the evap's high-volume fan (no water) to move the air thru the house at this point, with it finally down below 80F outside, at somewhere after 1am I think.
I also enabled regen BK to GND with a solder bridge, though I dont' remember now if I checked that the brake wires are actually hooked up to an external connector or not.... I guess I'll find out later when I go to set up a switch on there.
Anyway, then I carefully but quickly stuffed it all back into the casing, after re-verifying no shorts on anything major, and no escaped solder globs. Reconnected to the bike (except the hall wires, still soldered to the motor halls) stuff and powered on. No smoke yet. Tilted bike to get rear wheel offground and carefully pulled throttle...nothing. Remembered pack voltage high/low switch on end of controller, clicked it, and retried--now it worked!
Then I realized what time it is, and that I'd unintentionally spent at least two hours on this.... Well, at least this time it was productive!
So if I have to, I can now just hop on CrazyBIke2 and ride it...though I need to do some finishing work on the new battery box, which is a larger 50-cal ammocan, already painted white a long time ago--I used to use it as a toolbox, and long ago forgot I even had it till I was looking for something else a week or two ago, I think it was. I realized when I saw it that it should be just big enough for the experimental pack, and it turns out be exactly right to hold that pack and the Methods LVC/HVC system, and *maybe* the HF cutoff switch JEB sent me in a care package a long time back.
Sorry no pics on anything tonight, as I just am too wiped to get back up and go find wher eI left the camera.
I actually set out to weld up the evap cooler tray this morning while it was still relatively cool, but I somehow popped the main breaker to the house, and resetting it didnt' fix the problem. I troubleshot it and tried to find my spare breakers when suddenly everything came back on, and I realized that it probably wasn't anything to do with whatever I did here--there must've been a power surge that popped the breaker and then killed power to the block or whatever.
I can't imagine anything at my end that would cause that without also causing a fire or being pretty obvious....
Being daytime, I hadn't noticed that anyone else's power was out, especially since the laptop's wifi picked up a signal good enough to peek at ES a couple times.
So there was around 3-4 hours wasted; I don't know how long it was for sure, but by the time the power was back on, it was past midday and past 100F and I'd given up on any outside projects.
Anyhow, I was too overheated to think well, and I tried to take a nap after failing to remember what else I had planned for today, and decided today will just be a "day off", since it was already an "off day". I helped a friend in the evening, replacing his ipod touch's messed up touchscreen--fortunatley that went much better than I anticipated and I didn't break anything else on it. :lol: While doing this I was thinkng about the thngs I probably ought to accomplish tonight, and kinda made a mental list of them.
He donated a few lengths of PVC pipe to my solar water heater project, though as I was reaching into the bed of his truck to pick them up when he dropped me off back at my house, and I had just grabbed one end of the pieces, he just drove off, running over my left foot's toes.
Fortunatley the shoes I was wearing are steel-toed, and were stronger than the small amount of the vehicle weight on them for the short time as he drove over them, and nothing bad happened. but it was terribly surprising, and I can't imagine why he drove off at that moment rather than waiting till I was clear of the truck. :?
Anyhow, somewhat dazed and confused and unable to remember what I had been pondering doing earlier, I went in to greet and feed the dogs and let them out for potty time and playtime and such, and passed CrazyBike2 many times and it just bugged me that I'd broken that controller so quickly.
So after doing the various household chores I decided must get done, like clothes washing and prepping a few food ingredients for stuff to make later in the week, and then popping in here on ES a few times, I wanted to open up the controller to see what kind of carnage I'd done.
First, though, I took your advice and poked around at the Eagletree, but right now I can't see well enough or hold my hands steady enough to work on the tiny little thing.
So after a little while of that, I did open up the controller:
No visible damage, though I certainly see what you mean about the crooked-drilling of the FET mounting holes. They must've been drunk that day, or doing it blindfolded with both hands tied behind their back.
but there were sufficient gaps that there shouldn't be any shorting--at least 1mm, sometimes 2-3, between FEt groups.The controller doesn't really look that messy to me, though I am not exactly the best judge of that sort of thing.
Ohming out the FETs I found the rightmost (from the top, FETs on top) group had one side of the bridge (leftmost, cant' remember if thats' positive or negative side of the bridge) shorted completely out, gate to source to drain less than 1ohm!
I used that soldering gun you sent me ages back in an earlier "care package" to remove the FETs one at a time, and of course it was the last of the three that was dead shorted--the others tested fine. They might be damaged, but I still reused them, at least to see if the controller would work at all. I managed to peel off the gate trace to the leftmost FET, on the top of the PCB, when I removed it. So I had to scrape some coating off the gate trace to the others, and use the FET lead to solder to the top of the trace instead. I replaced the shorted FET with one of the ones I'd bought from you way back when (I still have most of those new in their rail, fortunatley).
Was about to reassemble and test it, when I thought that I had better maybe kinda put the shunts back to something close to what they started out as.
So I again used taht soldering gun to melt the solder, and sucked it off off there with the little thumb-cocked springloaded soldersucker I'd inherited from my dad, and then used needlenose to pull off the (presumably) desoldering braid wrapped around the shunts, while continuing to heat the shunts with that gun. It was starting to smell funny from the PCB heating up by the time I was done. :lol: Thankfully I was running the evap's high-volume fan (no water) to move the air thru the house at this point, with it finally down below 80F outside, at somewhere after 1am I think.
I also enabled regen BK to GND with a solder bridge, though I dont' remember now if I checked that the brake wires are actually hooked up to an external connector or not.... I guess I'll find out later when I go to set up a switch on there.
Anyway, then I carefully but quickly stuffed it all back into the casing, after re-verifying no shorts on anything major, and no escaped solder globs. Reconnected to the bike (except the hall wires, still soldered to the motor halls) stuff and powered on. No smoke yet. Tilted bike to get rear wheel offground and carefully pulled throttle...nothing. Remembered pack voltage high/low switch on end of controller, clicked it, and retried--now it worked!
Then I realized what time it is, and that I'd unintentionally spent at least two hours on this.... Well, at least this time it was productive!
So if I have to, I can now just hop on CrazyBIke2 and ride it...though I need to do some finishing work on the new battery box, which is a larger 50-cal ammocan, already painted white a long time ago--I used to use it as a toolbox, and long ago forgot I even had it till I was looking for something else a week or two ago, I think it was. I realized when I saw it that it should be just big enough for the experimental pack, and it turns out be exactly right to hold that pack and the Methods LVC/HVC system, and *maybe* the HF cutoff switch JEB sent me in a care package a long time back.
Sorry no pics on anything tonight, as I just am too wiped to get back up and go find wher eI left the camera.
