hieronymus said:
When Min Throt Output is 1.2V and Ebrake Throt Output is 0.8 or lower, the wheel gradually comes to a stop with no regen when the throttle is released, and comes to a halt under regen when the ebrake tripwire sensor is triggered.
That would be normal. If you set the ETO to less than 0.8, then using the lever will trigger regen at that fixed level. Lower voltage will be greater braking force.
Making the above observation, I'm wondering if there was some misunderstanding/miscommunication on my part. My intuition/expectation would be, roughly, that as the throttle lever is released, the motor would progressively ease off, and as the lever is further released, it would reach a point where proportional regen would start to kick in, and the amount of regen braking would increase progressively as the lever is further released, until the lever is fully released, when maximum regen braking would occur. Is this correct?
Unfortunately it does not work this way, though the manual does not clarify the actual operating usage. (simply states that the braking force can be further increased by the throttle, in a way that makes it sound like it should work like you expected.
)
The way it actually works is that the throttle lever position must be *increased* to increase braking force beyond whatever is preset at the ETO for brake-lever-only braking force.
To use proportional regen with the CA as "interpreter", you pull the brake lever first to activate the mode, and then the entire range of the throttle controls braking force just like it would motor power, where letting go of the throttle creates no braking force beyond whatever ETO is set to, and max throttle creates max braking force.
Since I don't like this, as it is not intuitive (as you found
), and it is not how your muscles are trained to use these controls in non-thinking emergency situations, I did this:
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=105460&hilit=proportional+regen
to simply use the brake lever as the entire control system. It works perfectly.
My ETO is set to 0.79, and my MTO is set to 1.2v, IIRC, because I do not want any initial lever-created braking force, I want full control from zero to full braking.
I have no mechanical rear brakes (just the regen) on the SB Cruiser trike (until someday I can rebuild the whole backend to accomodate them), so the cable from the left lever pulls a cable operated throttle (COT) that "replaces" the actual throttle (which is another COT pulled by a cable from a metal ATV thumb throttle, since all the plastic ones suck). The process is that I pull the brake lever just a little, which has the ebrake switch in it. That switch then turns on three relays. The first relay is the brake light. The second disconnects the actual throttle signal wire from the CA, and connects that CA signal input to the brake-lever-pulled COT's signal wire. The third engages the ebrake line into the CA to tell the CA it is now in proportional regen mode, and the CA outputs the ETO value (in my case, 0.79v, so there is essentialy no braking force). Now as I pull the brake lever further, the COT voltage increases and the CA decreases the throttle output signal, until at max lever pull the output is 0.0v for max braking force.
A cheap dual-pull lever with separate cable adjusters, and a magnet and reed switch glued to the lever and body, or the Tripwire or equivalent, would work for this system and be able to pull a mechanical cable brake as well as the COT for variable regen, and they could be adjusted for tension so that regen force is greater than mechanical force at the start of lever travel, and once regen is maxed out then the rest of the travel is mechanical in case you need both kinds of brakes.
The ATV throttle I use has dual-pull separate adjusters, *and* a built in switch, but it's cable-pull ratio is insufficient for my Avid BB7 MTN type brakes (it might work fine for the Road version) I use on the front wheel, so I am not presently using the COT regen control on the right lever for all-wheel braking, just on the left for rear-only braking, until I eitehr get a Road version of the BB7 to try out or make a pulley (like the Travel Agent in reverse) to modify the cable-pull ratio.
A different system could be used, with a potentiometer-based throttle, to create a detent on it that "catches" it at the 0.8v level and holds it there, so that you must deliberately push it down past that point to start proportional regen braking, and hook this throttle to the controller's throttle port directly, rather than go thru the CA. However, you will get very little travel for that tiny voltage range with a typical pot, so you would need to use a logarithmic pot instead, and make sure it's wired and mechanically setup so the least amount of resistance change is at the low end, and the greatest is at the full-throttle end, so you get more travel per volt at the low end for this braking function.
However, that means you can't use any of the CA's limiting functions or PAS/torque sensors, as they all require the controller get it's throttle signal from the CA itself. (it could be done, but is significantly more complex to design and build the system so that the controller sees both throttle controls, after a fashion).
