Basic question: What does

[therobby3]

Maybe this is a vague question, but what exactly goes into matching a controller up to a motor? I've got two ev projects complete now, but both use motors from QSMotors which were already paired and set up with a controller from them. I can modify various parameters of the controller, but I still don't know how would one go about setting them up if they weren't already pre-set.

While I know what some of the more obvious parameters of my controller do, I also see on my two controllers that there are a whole lot of random parameters that I have no idea what technical thing they control. And even if I did, I would have no idea what value they would be set to if they weren't already set for me!

I ask this because I am looking at a controller for an ME1507. While it'd be nice to have a controller that was pre-setup for it, I'd also like the knowledge and personal experience of knowing how to "program" one myself. I just don't understand how one goes about setting values of a controller? Is it just a whole shat ton of trial and error?

 

[john61ct]

The better advice you can get from an expert on a particular controller

and ideally in conjunction with at least a similar type and size of motor

the less guesswork, trial and error will be involved.

For say Sevcon units, notoriously difficult but very sophisticated and robust,

I would happily pay hundreds of dollars per hour for that kind of help,

including access to their unfortunately proprietary software.

Even more happily, would spend thousands for certification courses / structured self-learning programs to become that expert, even willing to travel anywhere in the world if well recognised by say the Sevcon authorised dealer network.

Spending dozens (hundreds) of hours with excellent google-fu reading from the various forums will get you say 20-30% of the way there

more so if you are already a motor/controller "Power Engineering" student at a decent college / university programme already.

Now all that aside, there are I am sure some very simple and/or well documented controllers out there

where hundreds of free experts can help you out here.

However that begs the question, which ones fall within your Venn diagram of capacity and features you want (need) for your particular use case?

For some ideas for example on "true FOC" style controllers, powerful, efficient but complex

check out this thread, especially from this post until the end

https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=105139&start=100#p1681439

on the topic of self-education.

Or another option get your hands on a Nucular (good luck!) and spend time in Vasili's Telegram chat channel.

More realistically, get into the world of VESC, parse out the FOSS code projects, get help from the likes of @stancecoke ...

Hopefully the brain trust here will chime in for other "faster track" options