Grin Cycle Analyst settings help

[sirensynapse]

I have an all axle rear slow wind, phaserunner, ca3, all latest versions, and nothing is working.
Latest firmware, and settings as per GrinEU. GrinCA is not offering any help, and GrinEU is stumped and doesn't seem to want to fix the problem now that he has my money. He said he would have this preprogrammed for me, but didn't touch it, which is evident from the settings it and the controller came with. Thanks, dude.
So can someone who knows their way around this stuff look at my settings and tell me what might be wrong?
The symptoms are:
1 - pedals do nothing. No human power is displayed on CA3, no power is activated when pedaling. No wattage shows on CA3.
2 - the throttle works, but cuts out in 1 second if I push it hard. So it's useless. It's impossible not to push it hard; the thumb trigger has a narrow range and it's very touchy. It cuts out and stays off. Resetting the CA3 brings me back to square one, rinse repeat.
The throttle screen on the CA3 seems to be showing correct function: voltages rise and fall.
The settings here are all from GrinEU directly or ones he told me to adjust after downloading firmware.
I've been fooking with this for three days and I'm royally pissed.
If anyone can help me sort this out, you'll be very appreciated.|
I just edited the bejayzus out of this, so the first 3 comments below are not quite relevant.
The value for regen is set to position, not throttle...fixed that goof, though it was irrelevant.

 

[offGridDownUnder]

What firmware is installed on the CA now? And on the Phaserunner as well.

I have not attempted this yet (in the process of moving), but I understand the CA must be upgraded to the beta 3.2 version firmware to enable backpedal regen and some other features.

 

[DanGT86]

Can you email someone over at ebikes.ca? In my experience they have always been thorough and quick with tech support responses. You can upload a full config file with all the settings to a CA3. Seems like they could send you one to get you close. Especially if you bought all the stuff as a kit. Its not like you are asking them to take the time to configure settings for random diy motors and controllers they are unfamiliar with. If its all their product they should have no trouble sending you a file.

 

[Bobberson]

Hi, just bought a CA3, all axle motor, phaserunner, throttle, etc.
Apparently my man at grintech.eu did not bother to set anything up for me in the computer and I am utterly clueless about what good settings are for most of the options.
Esp. trying to get backpedal regen going.
Can someone with experience help a noob start to sort the basic settings out?
I can go through section by section and ask what I need, if you're patient and willing.
I'm using the PC setup utility to make it simpler than pressing the computer buttons 1000 times.
Thanks

I would like to know all the settings if you find out.

 

[DanGT86]

Did you get anywhere on this?

I have no experience messing with the PAS settings so you will have to get help with that elsewhere. But if I were you I would reduce the throttle up V per second to something way lower. Maybe try 0.5v per second. Its possible the ramp up is too fast and you are triggering some other kind of fault causing it to cut out. Maybe start by disabling all the PAS stuff.

Like most setup processes you need to isolate one thing at a time or you will be chasing yourself around.

If you toggle through the screens one of them should be a diagnostic screen that will show you which thing is the fault. If I recall it will capitalize and blink the letter of whatever fault or limit is active so like V for voltage S for speed etc.

You can set the throttle to bypass mode which will eliminate all of the CA limiting features. This is probably the best place to start to check for wiring problems or mechanical failures. This is the same as having the throttle directly wired to the controller.

The throttle in/throttle out stuff is usually where I start. Most throttles are fed a 5v signal. They will send out around 1v closed and 4v open. The CA will take this signal and scale it to whatever range the controller is looking for. Some controllers will consider anything over 4v to be a fault which prevents a broken throttle from causing full power. Same thing for minimum. If the controller is trying to move a .83v but the throttle wont send out less than 1v then the controller will be trying to creep forward. The goal is to get the CA3 to map the throttle you have to the controller you have such that there is no deadband on either end of the range.

The one screen that displays throttle in vs throttle out is very helpful for diagnosing. I usually look for the minimum throttle V output that makes the wheel start to spin and then set the minimum throttle out voltage to slightly under this number.

Next look for the maximum throttle out voltage that wont fault the controller. Set the max throttle out to something just under that voltage.

I would zero out the fast throttle ramp rate until you get the normal throttle working. That can cause overreactive spikes in throttle voltage and cause faults.

I would disable any temp and speed settings in the CA3 menu to star out. Once the throttle is working properly you can move on to adding one thing at a time. If you have the wrong temp sensor type selected it can easily fault. The temp scale should flash at you.

Looks like your speed limits are already high enough to not cause issues. But if your wheel size is set incorrectly then it could be speed limits cutting your throttle.

Hopefully some of this is helpful. You need to just tackle one thing at a time and make sure things like speed, current, and voltage all look reasonable.

the documentation is pretty good. Maybe just go through this step by step. Good luck.

Cycle Analyst V3 - Grin Products - Product Info

The Cycle Analyst display is our first flagship product released in 2006 and now in its 3rd generation. While the hardware design may be showing its age, it still has capabilities and functionalities that are unmatched by modern ebike systems with their pretty colour screens. This device also...

ebikes.ca

 

[sirensynapse]

Did you get anywhere on this?

Hi, thanks for all that. I will work on it. I just tested the throttle bypass to start, no change.
I'll report what I find out by editing the below text:

One thing I didn't mention: I initially screwed up by not having the cable from motor to ca3 hooked up at all. Dumb, but the manuals are pretty sketchy on wiring. It was only mentioned in the motor manual, but I had started with the controller manual, and it said nothing about anything going motorwards, besides the fat one, so I ignored the little cable. Thought everything would be passing through the controller: wrong.
This created some interesting symptoms. The formerly working human input icon stopped working with the cable on, but a torque error flashing message vanished from the throttle display. But the cutoff behavior and lack of pedals working didn't change. Maybe that means something to someone?
PS Should the human input bar be activated by the throttle alone? It's doing so for me, dunno if that is right or not.
With that motor to ca3 torque cable on, it doesn't actually display at all when I do real pedal input, but does when that cable is disconnected. Go figure...

Throttle up v/sec means the Ramp Up Rate or PAS Ramp Up Rate or Fast Ramp Up Rate? Or all 3?

I don't see any faults on any screens at all.

The throttle actually worked perfectly, first day I rode it, though pedals didn't activate motor. After I tweaked settings and downloaded the "right" firmware for the controller, that went to hell, to current state. Did what grinEU told me to do there....

Changing ramp up rate, 1 or all 3, does nothing.

I seem to have a very narrow throttle range. Starts up at about 1.2v and cuts off below 1.5, but I'm not sure if the voltage is causing the cutoff because it was up to much higher figures earlier without immediately cutting out.
....ja it's cutting out at 1.4something each time now, wtf...

Temp and speed edits have no effect.

Good to know how that throttle works, thanks for the explanation. Feels good to understand bit by bit how this works. It's mostly greek to me so far. I just wanted to input my wheel size and ride, haha. right....

 

[DanGT86]

Its a bit tough to diagnose from a distance. All my ca3 experience has been with the old version where you could measure all the individual connector pins. The modern version is nicer but harder to see what each wire is doing.

Same with the older controllers. With the new phaserunner stuff i dont know what kind of settings might be at fault in the controller vs in the CA.

I just took a quick look at one of the phaserunner manuals. Did you by chance do the motor autodetect? If it was really sent to you without any of the correct settings then perhaps the autodetect cycle must be run to calibrate the controller to your motor.

The old dumb controllers didnt require configuring the software settings.

The one good thing about getting through all the initial settings is that you will get a really good understanding of how ebikes work and will learn a lot of useful diagnosis skills.

Hopefully Grin gets back to you with a basic config file you can use to rule our mechanical or wiring problems.

 

[DanGT86]

I just remembered that the all axle motor has the torque sensor built into the motor so I'm better able to picture your setup.

So it sounds like it might have been close to working right originally and the problem was the torque sensor not being hooked up.
Loading new firmware likely cleared those setting and possibly the motor autotune.

The throttle up volts/sec is the rate that the regular non pas hand throttle voltage ramps up. It should not have effect on the PAS as far as I know.

The fast up rate is a secondary ramp rate to eliminate some deadband when rolling. Lets say you were cruising along at a speed using 5 amps. You let off the throttle to coast. When you reapply the throttle the standard throttle up rate would be taking its time to ramp the current back up. This would feel like a deadzone in the throttle that occurs from a roll but not when taking off from a stop. So they put in a fast up rate will ramp the voltage way faster than you would normally want until it reaches whatever current you have set which is usually a low value like 3 or 5 amps. Thats about where you feel the motor start pulling when coasting.

So if fast was set really aggressively it cold have been triggering an overcurrent fault on you by making the system too overreactive.

I do not think the human power thing should be activating on throttle only. As for it only displaying with the motor torque cable disconnected, maybe what its displaying is a fault due to it being unplugged?

I really wish I knew more about the phaserunner and PAS specifically. I have tons of CA experience but with all old simple controllers.

 

[sirensynapse]

I dunno, the grinEU guy looked at and tweaked my settings multiple times, so I think they should be ok. I wait and see what he and grinCA say, as I keep pestering them.
It really boggles my mind that they don't set this stuff up for us...this is not at all intuitive.

 

[DanGT86]

Can you turn the backpedal regen off in the CA settings to make sure its not triggering?

May want to turn off the regular regen as well just to rule that out.

Can you watch the throttle in/out screen when it cuts out. Id like to know if the CA is cutting the out signal to the controller or if its the controller choosing not to spin the wheel.

 

[DanGT86]

I dunno, the grinEU guy looked at and tweaked my settings multiple times, so I think they should be ok. I wait and see what he and grinCA say, as I keep pestering them.
It really boggles my mind that they don't set this stuff up for us...this is not at all intuitive.

Idk about grinEU but I am very surprised by all of this. I would normally recommend Grin to people for their first ebike build specifically because of the support. I really hope they have not gone downhill with customer service.

 

[sirensynapse]

Can you turn the backpedal regen off in the CA settings to make sure its not triggering?

May want to turn off the regular regen as well just to rule that out.

Can you watch the throttle in/out screen when it cuts out. Id like to know if the CA is cutting the out signal to the controller or if its the controller choosing not to spin the wheel.

Ja hold on, trying that autotune thing first. I just used it and now the throttle will crank up to 3.99v before shutting down, and not as quickly...will revert to downloaded values for my motor and see if that puts it back like it was....then I try your requests.

Jesus, doing same on old settings too. Must have been something else I did to get that effect...tweaking too many things, though was trying to do one at a time.
So the throttle is definitely active from about 1.2 to 1.5. Lots of dead space above that. When I hold it at 3.99 for a couple seconds it conks out. But seemed to be happy ramping up and down til below that without crashing, quick test.
Maybe this is the original working state resurrected somehow. Maybe I just never hit that fat peak while biking the first day because it's harder to over do on a loaded bike...and I wasn't hammering the throttle either.
So, lemme see what I can do with your above bits.

 

[sirensynapse]

Not sure what you mean about the cutout on throttle. You mean voltage?
I just edited the range from 1.2 to 1.5 and it cruises along at max a while but then cuts out. It seems to cut out after maxing out at ANY voltage after a bit... I'll drop the max to 1.3 and try that.
I turned backpedal regen off, don't see any other disable-able regen settings, just one about ebrake regen...proportional yes/no?
1.3 max just messed it all up, jams it up.

How can I tell if it's the CA or controller cutting it out, do you mean?

 

[DanGT86]

Yes I am talking about voltage.

The controller is most likely looking for approximately 1v-4v of throttle. The diagnosis screen on the CA should tell you the following things.
In- is the voltage the throttle handle is sending to the CA
Out- throttle voltage the CA is sending out to the controller.

Imagine you had a throttle that only put out from 2-3 volts and the controller was looking for 1-4v. The CA enables you to set up the in and out voltages such that 2v input from the throttle would equal 1v from the CA to the controller. Same thing for max throttle which would be 3v from the throttle into the CA equals 4v out to the controller. The CA is enabling you to scale any throttle on the market to any controller.

I think most throttles and the phaserunner are around 1-4v. So your 1.3v and 1.5v numbers dont really make a lot of sense.

So lets say you are riding along with the Out displaying 3volts and all of a sudden that drops to 1v and the motor cuts. That would indicate that the CA made the decision to cut the throttle signal due to a fault or a setting.

If the motor were to cut while the out was still reading the same 3v then that would mean the controller decided to cut the throttle for some reason the CA is not aware of.

Those limit flags in the bottom left will go from lowercase to capital if one of the CA limits is triggered.

That screen is your best chance of figuring out if the problem is the controller or a CA setting.

 

[sirensynapse]

Ja, it's the controller then. The voltage doesn't fluctuate even after it cuts out. Thought that was what you were going to say.
And no flags. Nothing changes at all on screen.
I had no clue what the heck those letters means, thanks.

Oops, the S does light up, but it isn't the immediate cause, I think. It goes on and off as I ramp up and down, but does NOT coincide directly with the cutoff. What does the S indicate?

 

[DanGT86]

S should be speed. If there is a speed limit set in the CA that would indicate that the CA limiting output to stay under that setting.

What does your CA say for speed when you are riding?

There is a page in the CA setup where you set your wheel dia or circumference. This is what gives the CA the vehicle speed data. If the wheel dia is set wrong then it could be cutting out because it thinks you are going crazy fast.

The speed data may be coming from the phaserunner based on the number of motor poles set in the motor setup menus.

I believe there was a speed wire that goes from the controller to the CA on grin products that sends that data to the CA.

 

[sirensynapse]

My speed max is set at 199km/hr but I see the CA is maxing out at 49,5 km/h here in my room testing it...maybe that is a limit in the controller?? I'll plug that in and look. My diameter is perfect, triple checked it.

 

[DanGT86]

Does the speed shown on the CA seem reasonable with how fast the wheel is rotating?

And I would turn off proportional regen while you try to figure this out. If possible see if you can find a way to turn the ebrake setting off completely. It will just be one less thing messing with the behavior of the system.

This is of course if you are testing somewhere where you can handle possibly not stopping.

 

[sirensynapse]

Hard to say. I never ride that fast in the real world.
What do you make of the fact that some settings in the controller are different than the same ones in the CA?
See photo.

 

[DanGT86]

On my CA main screen there is a little brake lever logo that moves when the brake lever is pulled to indicate that the CA is sending and receiving brake signal.

 

[sirensynapse]

I don't have ebrakes, just backpedal set up, which it not working anyway.
Does this throttle stuff even have anything to do with the basic pedal power not even working at all?

 

[DanGT86]

Hard to say. I never ride that fast in the real world.
What do you make of the fact that some settings in the controller are different than the same ones in the CA?
See photo.

That looks to me like the controller is considering a throttle input voltage (V out from the CA) of 1.2 to be closed throttle and 3.5v to be 100% throttle.

I would set the CA throttle output to
minimum 1.1v
maximum 3.4v

 

[DanGT86]

I don't have ebrakes, just backpedal set up, which it not working anyway.
Does this throttle stuff even have anything to do with the basic pedal power not even working at all?

That all depends. The fact that your throttle behavior is so weird leads me to believe something is causing the CA to cut your power out. So I was starting the process there. Once you are confident the bike works normally at the speed and power level you expect then the job of configuring the pedal assist begins.

In my opinion twisting the throttle is simpler than trying to simulate pedal power and speed on the test stand so I was starting with throttle to check for major errors.

 

[DanGT86]

I suppose its possible it is set such that it wont operate throttle only without some pedaling being detected but I doubt it.

 

[sirensynapse]

Still cuts out, with those settings. Could it be the speed? Let me reduce the power so it doesn't get so damned fast... It's odd is maxes at 49.5km when limit in CA is higher.