Cycle Analyst V3 preview and first beta release

[izeman]

sorry if this has been answered before - i didn't find it.

i love ca's cruise control. but it gets disabled by itself all the time. sometimes it works for 2s, sometimes for 5s. but not for very much longer. i set enable time to 2s, and raised voltage raise to 0.5v.
but it still get's disabled. no brake, no touching the throttle. any ideas?
btw: i enabled the infineon's cruise control which never worked btw. should i de-program that first?

 

[rscamp]

sorry if this has been answered before - i didn't find it.

i love ca's cruise control. but it gets disabled by itself all the time. sometimes it works for 2s, sometimes for 5s. but not for very much longer. i set enable time to 2s, and raised voltage raise to 0.5v.
but it still get's disabled. no brake, no touching the throttle. any ideas?
btw: i enabled the infineon's cruise control which never worked btw. should i de-program that first?

Interesting. I have the same issue with an R/C setup. Sometimes it will go a lot longer than 5s but it most often disables itself as you describe.

 

[izeman]

.. However, there as been a trend towards higher and higher pole count PAS sensors from most suppliers, and it should be that any PAS sensor with like 10-12 magnets will have a snappy and nice response, while those with 5 or 6 magnets will seem a bit laggy. So if you are shopping for a suitable PAS device, more poles = better. Otherwise they're all pretty much the same so it shouldn't matter where you get it from.

don't want to hijack this thread, but it may be interesting to others: who can recommend a good source for 10-12 magnet pas wheels?

 

[justin_le]

sorry if this has been answered before - i didn't find it.
i love ca's cruise control. but it gets disabled by itself all the time. sometimes it works for 2s, sometimes for 5s. but not for very much longer. i set enable time to 2s, and raised voltage raise to 0.5v.
but it still get's disabled. no brake, no touching the throttle. any ideas?

I think it might be that you have your Min Throttle value set too close to the actual minimum throttle, and are getting occasional sampling from noise etc. that just cross the min throttle threshold so the CA thinks that you are just starting to engage the throttle and hence disables the autocruise. Can you tell me what your Min Input voltage is set at and what voltage you actually see on the throttle input when it is off?

I've been using autocruise all the time for months and have never had it cut out without either hitting the throttle or hitting the ebrakes, so I suspect it might be from the thresholds being too close in your setup.

btw: i enabled the infineon's cruise control which never worked btw. should i de-program that first?

You should definitely not have a controllers auto-cruise running at the same time as the CA3, but I don't think this is at all related to the problem mentioned above.

-Justin

 

[rscamp]

I think it might be that you have your Min Throttle value set too close to the actual minimum throttle, and are getting occasional sampling from noise etc. that just cross the min throttle threshold so the CA thinks that you are just starting to engage the throttle and hence disables the autocruise...

To interject, you are probably right, Justin - at least in my case. This puts 2 + 2 together for me. I changed to power throttle control recently and noticed the occasional throttle blip at zero throttle. I'm not sure why this throttle mode exposed the issue when the Pass-Thru mode didn't. But anyways I haven't checked cruise since I adjusted Min Throttle and obviously I should now...

 

[izeman]

I think it might be that you have your Min Throttle value set too close to the actual minimum throttle, and are getting occasional sampling from noise etc.

thanks justin. this may be the solution. i chose very close min/max throttle values to have almost no dead zones at the throttle. i will raise that. can't check atm, but i guess it was 0.02v below/above the real values. maybe to less. i will check and reply.

 

[justin_le]

thanks justin. this may be the solution. i chose very close min/max throttle values to have almost no dead zones at the throttle. i will raise that. can't check atm, but i guess it was 0.02v below/above the real values. maybe to less. i will check and reply.

OK. That's got to be it for sure then. I would usually recommend at least a 0.1V dead band, just to account for drift errors that can be present in the throttle off voltage anyway over time and temperature. At 0.02V you could have situations where some days you turn on the bike and it starts to slowly accelerate since the throttle off voltage has shifted up a bit. That said, I do get the appeal of trying to have zero dead band at all, and could tweak the code a bit so that you need to be a tad higher than the throttle min voltage to release the autocruise.

-Justin

 

[izeman]

...At 0.02V you could have situations where some days you turn on the bike and it starts to slowly accelerate since the throttle off voltage has shifted up a bit.

you tell me guess what happened today *ggg* CA showing 25W and i didn't know why. when i pulled the e-brake it stopped. now i adjusted voltage, and everything is fine. thanks!

 

[mrbill]

Hi All:

I came across a small problem yesterday when I was out riding, testing the latest update (CA3_Prelim5_NoCal).

I'm running with a "Power" throttle, PLim -> MaxPower = 600 watts, PLim -> MaxCurrent = 45A, PLim -> WGain = 50, and PLim -> AGain = 50. System voltage is "24 volts nominal", or 8s LiFe. Controller (Lyen 12-FET) current limit is set to 55 Amps.

Was climbing a hill and as the hill steepened my speed slowed as the Power began to limit me to 600 watts which is all well and good. As the hill steepened further, I began to feel a surging and release cycle, about 1 second per cycle. Checking the diagnostic screen I could see that the power limit was binding and that the current was being limited ("a" switching to "A", then back to "a") at approximately "23a", in rhythm with the surging.

So, why is the current apparently being limited at 23 Amps when I entered a current limit of 45 Amps?

I did not have this problem with the prior release. Pass-thru throttle mode correctly limits current to 45 Amps.

Is it merely coincidence that current is being limited at approximately half my instructed limit? 45/2 = 22.5 => 23 (when rounded to the nearest)

[Addendum: Well, I sort of see why the current limit is "23a". It's roughly the current that can be expected with a power limit of 600 watts when using an 8s LiFe battery. This still does not explain why the current limit constraint is shown as binding when I had set it to 45A.]

 

[justin_le]

Tried all sorts of settings from the default to equal 10 and 10, to really low figures. Most tests were done with the start number being number being higher the stop number. With this new information, I will continue testing today. I need to have a closer look at the Human power bar drops off again but I think it does.

Hey Kepler, if you're still having issues with this could you also try with the quadrature mode both enabled and disabled? (you may need to change the direction polarity setting when you switch between them). It could be reveealing if you get this cutout behaviour in one case but not the other. -Justin

 

[Kepler]

Ok will give that a go.

Got it working a lot better now with a just a few dropouts on each ride. Not perfect but liveable. I have the trq assist factor set to 4 so the AUX has more range to scale with. Also have set the Assist Start to -40W as assist is more consistant with a bit of assist when ever the pedals are turning.

I really like to ride with the screen showing Human Watts and Cadence. I like to keep my HW at around 150W and my cadence between 75 and 80 RPM. I then set the level of assist to give me an current usage that will suit the distance I plan to ride. Typically I look for around 4A on flat road which is around 280W plus my 150W input. gives me around 35km out of my 18S 5ah pack at decent road speeds of around 35 kph to 40 kph.

Here are most of my settings as they stand.

 

[pendragon8000]

View attachment 1

Hi Teklektik, I just downloaded the pdf above and had a look through the temperature setup and found there is no sugested limits. thats why i down loaded it. im really not sure what would be preferable:

sharp limit so max power can be had all the way up to 100C and ramp down to 130C

or

soft limit from 80C to 130C so even though the motor might have never over heated it still has reduced power output.

also 1 question, does the temperature limit aply as a proportion of the power limit or is it a seperate limit so if you use the aux switch to reduce power, will the temp limit proportionaly aply to that?
thanks

 

[electricwheels.de]

G'day folks,
I try to set up the CA V3 with a Thun Torque Sensor and an external poti in a way that the amount of support by the motor can be adjusted with the poti.
What are the settings here?
I noticed that Prelim 5 has the 'PAS LEVEL' setting eliminated - wasn't it here that I could achieve this?
Thanks for your help

 

[justin_le]

sharp limit so max power can be had all the way up to 100C and ramp down to 130C
or
soft limit from 80C to 130C so even though the motor might have never over heated it still has reduced power output.

If you want to hit but not exceed a certain motor temperature then having the the max and threshold temperatures about 10-15 degrees apart will do that quite effectively. But if you want to start noticing a drop in power as the motor warms up (apart from the natural drop in power that is due to the higher winding resistance), then you can spread it further. There is no right or best way, it just depends on how you want it to behave.

also 1 question, does the temperature limit aply as a proportion of the power limit or is it a seperate limit so if you use the aux switch to reduce power, will the temp limit proportionaly aply to that?

The temperature rollback applies to your batter AMPS limit. So if you have an 80A current limit, and a threshold temp of 100 degrees with a max temp of 120 degrees, then your current limit at 100oC is still 80A, but at 110oC you'd be limited to 40A, and at 115oC it would be just 20A etc. until at 120oC you'd have a 0 amp limit and there'd be no power.

-Justin

 

[justin_le]

I try to set up the CA V3 with a Thun Torque Sensor and an external poti in a way that the amount of support by the motor can be adjusted with the poti.
What are the settings here?
I noticed that Prelim 5 has the 'PAS LEVEL' setting eliminated?

The setting of "PAS Level" is still there in the Aux limits menu, perhaps you skipped through it without noticing? If you have a torque mode PAS, then this will scale the assistance from 0-100% of your assist factor setting. If you are in AutoPAS mode, then it will scale the background watts you have while pedaling in the same manner. -Justin

 

[teklektik]

Oops - so many changes... I forgot there was the AuxPot change to the UUG as well...
Here's a snippet until the new version comes out:

 

[Kepler]

Hey Kepler, if you're still having issues with this could you also try with the quadrature mode both enabled and disabled? (you may need to change the direction polarity setting when you switch between them). It could be reveealing if you get this cutout behaviour in one case but not the other. -Justin

Disabled the quadrature mode. Seems to have made the PAS more stable. Also seems more reactive to setting changes. I found I could really tighten up the motor start / stop. I think its just about perfect now. Ended up setting start to 18 rpm and stop to 9 rpm. This will fire up the motor in about 1/4 of a crank rotation and shut the motor down practically as soon as l stop pedalling but without any annoying dropouts. Very pleased and well worth all the effort in getting right.

 

[justin_le]

Disabled the quadrature mode. Seems to have made the PAS more stable. Also seems more reactive to setting changes. I found I could really tighten up the motor start / stop. I think its just about perfect now. Ended up setting start to 18 rpm and stop to 9 rpm. This will fire up the motor in about 1/4 of a crank rotation and shut the motor down practically as soon as l stop pedalling but without any annoying dropouts. Very pleased and well worth all the effort in getting right.

OK, great to hear that you've got it dialed and thanks for sharing the settings that did this.

I may just drop the quadrature mode option since it seems more than anything to just add confusion. The one thing that quadrature does do is prevent you from being able to rock the pedals back and forth right at the encoder transition point and fool the CA into thinking that you are pedaling. Depending on how you installed the THUN sensor, this transition point may be at a natural rest point for your pedals when you aren't spinning the cranks, but it's all pretty unlikely to ever come up as a problem. Other than this, in theory the quadrature mode could be a bit quicker to shut off the output if you pedal backwards slightly, which doesn't really justify adding it as a feature if it's good enough without.

-Justin

 

[Kepler]

I actually tested rocking the pedals back and forth and jumping up and down on the pedals to see if it would fire up the drive. All stayed nice and stable. 8)

 

[hjns]

Hi Justin,

I just tested the CA analogger with the B22 version. I have two output configurations: "low" and "high". Both are power-throttle settings with "low" limited at 500W "in case" and "high" essentially unlimited at 10kW. After every boot, the CA will start in "low". I will then manually switch to "high" by holding the left button and pressing the right button. This works fine.

My problem is that in "high" position, the CA analogger seems not to receive any data from the CA. I tested this twice. In "low", the data will start flowing. Once I switch to "high", data stops. The CA analogger does keep logging GPS data, so I know it is not the connection between the CA and Analogger, or the Analogger itself.

Any idea?

 

[justin_le]

Any idea?

No idea at all, but I'm looking into this right now and thank you for bringing it to my attention! -Justin

 

[Diamondback]

just thought i would add to the quadrature mode disabled setting.

today i too tried disabling it, and had only a few drop outs. it was overall much much better than with it enabled.

it hasn't stopped my surges on initial pedal input though.... i have not yet updated to the latest FW though.
I'm still running B23 and i won't get a chance to update to prelim 5 till i get back from the tour.

also, i did mention it in a previous post, but i think it kinda got missed.....
can we possibly have the assist level briefly displayed on the screen if the knob is adjusted ?
same way that you said it would briefly display mode changes on the screen.

Jason.

 

[justin_le]

today i too tried disabling it, and had only a few drop outs. it was overall much much better than with it enabled.

OK, I think by implementing the explicit quadrature functionality I was maybe trying to solve a problem that didn't really exist. With quadrature disabled, the CA still handles a quadrature encoded inputs fine and can differentiate between forwards and reverse pedaling. It's just only looking at the rising edge of the PAS signal and not the falling edge too.

it hasn't stopped my surges on initial pedal input though.... i have not yet updated to the latest FW though.

There are a lot of tweaks to the starting behaviour with the prelim5 code, so hopefully you'll find this first pedal response improved. A slower ramp-up rate can also help.

also, i did mention it in a previous post, but i think it kinda got missed.....
can we possibly have the assist level briefly displayed on the screen if the knob is adjusted ?

No I caught that and thought it was a great idea, but it's a bit more involved than it might seem so I'll save this for say a V3.1 release, which would mostly be focused on display tweaks and offering display customizations. For now I'm trying to lock things down for the stable V3.0 firmware.

-Justin

 

[Kepler]

Set your Watt gain down a bit. Default is 50. I run mine at 10. This should soften up the surge on start up.

 

[teklektik]

also, i did mention it in a previous post, but i think it kinda got missed.....
can we possibly have the assist level briefly displayed on the screen if the knob is adjusted ?

I caught that and thought it was a great idea, but it's a bit more involved than it might seem so I'll save this for say a V3.1 release...

+1
Cool. This sounds like a really helpful feature - good idea!