Help turning on this controller/getting this hub working

[matt912836]

Found an electric scooter (ezpasola) on craigslist, paid $50 so I can strip it for parts rather than taking the whole thing with me. Now I regret not taking the wiring harness that goes from the controller to the front of the scooter because I can't for the life of me find the ignition wire. The thing is, the hub motor had a majority of its wires severed right after where they come out the axel, so its possible something shorted at one point. The only kind of life I get is when I short wire TA (blue/brown) with the orange wire which is the power wire for the alarm that came on the scooter, but when I do that I only get 2v out where it should be 5v (for halls, throttle). Could this be the wrong wire and its not turning on the controller? Or is that the ignition and is the controller simply blown? Here are some pics of the controller:


Another thing, while trying to repair the hub motor wires, i only had about a cm or so sticking out the axel along with the extra 2 cm of wire going into the axel with the groove cut out that I was able to strip off and solder onto. Unfortunately when trying to strip the last wire (the small red 5v for the halls), pulling up on the cable with the wire stripper pulled out the red wire a good inch and a half out the axel. It did not come out ALL the way out the axel, and still feels like its attached to something which is stopping it from coming out all the way, now its just out a lot more than the other wires. Did i pull it out from its source and screw up any chance of using the halls if they were good? Is there anyway to tell if the connection is still good with just a multimeter? I tried hooking up the hub to another working controller I had, and it spun, just not from a dead stop. You had to give it the slightest nudge and it would spin up just fine after. Not sure if I had the halls hooked up correctly either. Here is a pic of the wires coming out the axel (notice how much more the red one sticks out), along with a preview of what I'm trying to put it on.

 

[d8veh]

Show the whole controller with all the wires and connectors. Then we can tell you how it works. With what you've shown, it looks like the orange wire is the ignition wire. If it is, it will carry battery voltage. Connecting it to anything else can do serious damage. Don't fiddle with it until you know how it works.

 

[Gregory]

If there is a separate/switched power wire that runs the controller logic it will almost certainly be connected on to those three big power resistors.

 

[matt912836]

I cut most of the wires but I paired them back to their original connections as best as I could.

View attachment 4
Here's all the connections coming out the controller. Top ones are obvious ones, battery connector, phases, halls, and throttle.



Here's the mystery wire bundle. The white and black were one connection, the white leads to BKL on the controller which I assume is for the lights. The two grey ones, one grey is connected to ground and the other is connected to SL, which I assume is self learn.




The orange and black wire connect to an inline fuse which connects to the alarm box. Also, one purple (VK1), one light blue, and TB (blue/light blue) also go to the alarm. The other purple is for the speed on the dash. The two unknowns are the other light blue, TA (blue/brown). The red one is 5v. Keep in consideration this was from an electric scooter, it had turn signals so im sure one of these is for that too.

 

[fechter]

The orange wire is probably the ignition key line that needs pack voltage to turn on the controller. If you power it up, you should be able to measure the voltages on the hall connector. You need about 5v for the hall power and each hall signal line should toggle between near zero to near 5v when you turn the motor by hand. You can test the hall signals this way. If you're not getting 5v, try disconnecting the motor hall wires and see if it comes up.

It might not be too hard to take apart the motor so you can completely replace the damaged wires.

Deciphering all the other wires can be challenging but it should run without a lot of them connected.

 

[matt912836]

The orange wire feeds the battery voltage out to the alarm. it's wired directly to where the main battery lead is soldered, so there is no shorting it to the battery wire as it is wired to it already.

 

[d8veh]

Connect your battery and nothing else. Put a voltmeter between the black battery wire and the left-hand side of any of the big resistors (1st photo). If you get battery voltage, you don't need an ignition wire. If you get zero volts, change your meter to measure continuity. Put one probe on the left-habd side of any of the big resistors and use the other probe to check all the other wires. the one that makes the meter beep is the ignition wire that needs to be connected to the battery positive to power the controller. the main battery positive wire normally doesn't power the controller. You need a switched branch to it.

 

[matt912836]

I got zero volts checking the resistors with the battery connected. I checked for continuity from the resistors to all wires and none of them beep. Only one point beeps from the left side of the resistors and it is to the right leg of transistor mpsa56, the one under the blue capacitor. (Looking at the back of the board it traces to that leg anyway, no need to measure continuity)

 

[matt912836]

Bump. Any one else have any input keeping the things above in mind?

On another note, I hooked up the hub to a controller I know is working, and it seems to be fine for the most part. Except, when you request too much throttle to fast, the hub motor simply stops until you stop on the throttle and try again. I'm pretty convinced this is simply because I'm running it on a 500w 6fet instead of what looks to be a 1000w-ish 9fet, the controller in this thread. Going to try to shunt mod the controller i'm using now to see if that stops it. I'd hate to throw away what seems to be a perfectly good 9fet controller!

 

[fechter]

If you apply pack voltage to the controller, one side of the big resistors should see that. Measure the other side of the resistors. You should see something over 15v but less than 35v.

 

[d8veh]

If I explain how it works, you might be able to figure it out.

The battery voltage comes in through the thick red wire that's soldered to the PCB. It has a route directly to the motor through the phase wires, but it's blocked by the big black transistor things (mosfets), whos default value is off. The controller's microprocessor opens the mosfets to power the motor.

The controller's CPU and all the stuff on the circuit board is powered separately from that main red battery wire. It therefore needs a connection to it.

Sometimes there's a direct connection on the pcb between the thick battery wire and the controller's power point, so the controller is switched on as soon as you connect the battery, but on most controllers it comes from an external branch, which means a wire has to be connected to the battery positive and fixed to the pcb somewhere. Sometimes, there's two wires: one joined to the PCB next to the main battery wire, and one that comes back to the pcb. That's to make it easy to put a switch between them of some sort, often on a LED/LCD panel.

Whichever way it's done, that battery positive to power the pcb will go directly to the RHS of those big resistors, which cut down the voltage on the other side, which is connected to the 12v regulator. The 12v regulator is the thing you thought was a transistor. Then, 12v comes out of the 12v regulator and goes to the 5v regulator. The 5v powers everything on the pcb, the throttle, PAS and motor hall sensors.

Without battery voltage on the RHS of those resistors, your controller is switched off. You need to follow the traces on the PCB from the RHS of the big resistors to see where it should get it's supply from. There must be a direct link to either a pad with a wire soldered to it, or a direct link to the main battery wire, possibly through an on-board fuse.

If you had taken clear photos of both sides of your controller's pcb, I could probably have sorted you out in less than a minute.

 

[matt912836]

This leads me to believe the purple VK might be it. Right side of resistors leads through some smaller resistors next to it, which eventually go to the VK. Funny turn of events, I have no idea how, but all of a sudden the controller measures full continuity across the positive and negative battery inputs. Found out the hard way when the battery almost vaporized the connector trying to plug it in. I haven't touched the controller so I do not know what is causing this behavior. Going to scrap trying to bring it back to life and focusing on the hub motor.


I'm having weird issue with the hub motor. I did the hall test, every hall varies from 0-5v on a multimeter as I slowly turn the wheel, so the halls and wiring are good according to the test. After taking forever to find the right hall/phase combo to the controller, I am able to get the motor spinning properly in the right direction. Thing is, there is absolutely no power from a stand still, or any at all even moving at speed, when placing any type of load on the motor. The only way the wheel spins is off the ground, and sometimes requires a very slight budge to spin (sometimes at a standstill the hub will just make a click noise when applying throttle. Nudging the wheel makes it spin.) the hub will only spin full speed with the first two speeds from the controller, trying to get it to spin full throttle on the highest makes the hub cut out. Also hitting the throttle too hard on the first two speeds also cuts it out. Could this controller simply not be powerful enough for this hub? im using a 6fet ~500w controller to try to get this moving. Came from a scooter with the 9fet I was trying to repair. The hub tries to spin seriously fast on the highest setting on throttle, which leads me to believe the controller is simply not strong enough.

 

[fechter]

A 500w controller should be strong enough to at least ride the scooter. I'd guess the hall/phase combination is still not quite right. There are combinations that will make the motor run, but not efficiently.

Do you have a way to measure the battery current? This would tell you a lot.

 

[d8veh]

Funny turn of events, I have no idea how, but all of a sudden the controller measures full continuity across the positive and negative battery inputs. Found out the hard way when the battery almost vaporized the connector trying to plug it in. I haven't touched the controller so I do not know what is causing this behavior. Going to scrap trying to bring it back to life and focusing on the hub motor.

There's a massive capacitor across the battery wires, so you always get a big spark when you connect a battery. Your continuity meter will charge up the capacitor, so you can get a false reading of continuity.

 

[d8veh]

Funny turn of events, I have no idea how, but all of a sudden the controller measures full continuity across the positive and negative battery inputs. Found out the hard way when the battery almost vaporized the connector trying to plug it in. I haven't touched the controller so I do not know what is causing this behavior. Going to scrap trying to bring it back to life and focusing on the hub motor.

There's a massive capacitor across the battery wires, so you always get a big spark when you connect a battery. Your continuity meter will charge up the capacitor, so you can get a false reading of continuity.