how do i know if i destroyed my controller /motor?

[emaayan]

i was trying to match an infinion controller to mac drive, and it seemed to work, then it didn't. i didn't go WOT i had a 5 amp circuit braker in the middle and volt meter, and yet nothing works not , throttling doesn't give me anything.

 

[wesnewell]

Most controllers pull 15-40A. A little 5A breaker won't last long. Use a 30-40A fuse.

 

[d8veh]

The easiest way is with a Ebike tester. You can get them from Cell-Man or Ebay:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1PC-24V-60V-Quick-Electro-Scooter-E-bike-Car-Brushless-Motor-Controller-Tester-/370852355010?pt=UK_Motorcycle_Parts&hash=item565885dbc2

You can do nearly all the tests manually with a normal multimeter, but it's best to have a friend to help because you run out of hands.

 

[teklektik]

i was trying to match an infinion controller to mac drive, and it seemed to work, then it didn't. i didn't go WOT i had a 5 amp circuit braker in the middle and volt meter, and yet nothing works not , throttling doesn't give me anything.

Well - the 5A breaker and only using only a little throttle was a good plan while you are just matching phase colors, but depending on the breaker, it might not like the arcing from the capacitor charge current in-rush when turning it on.

You seem to know about doing the phase and hall mapping, but that's a little unclear - it's also not clear exactly what is not working... so here's a bunch of things to test (some sort of dumb, but... ):

• Power up the controller to draw a little of power and probe the connectors:
• Do you have battery voltage at the battery connector? If not and you didn't first charge the battery when you got it, the BMS may simply have shut down. If no volts, then charge it.
• Do you have battery voltage on the other side of the breaker? If not, try jumping the breaker - it may have toasted contacts.
• Measure the voltage at across the Gnd and +5v pins of both throttle and/or the hall connectors (red/black).
  • If either one measures 4.5v-5v then the logic supply is good.
  • If voltage is not present on either, then the controller logic supply is either switched off or dead. Check for the small gauge red 'ignition' wire and verify that it's hooked to Vbatt+.
  • If present on only one then the other connector (without the voltage) has a broken Gnd or 5v connection.

If you got this far then the controller is powered, the logic power supply is good, and the halls and throttle have power.

• Power the controller down and unplug the halls and phases.
• Use your meter to test for continuity between each of the phase and hall connections and the motor case. There should be none - no lead should be shorted to the case.
• Spin the wheel backward (so the clutch engages) - it should turn with just minimal drag from the gears - note the level of drag for comparison.
• Short the Y+B phase wires together and spin the wheel backward - there should be noticeable drag as the dead short loads the motor in 'regen mode'. Repeat for the other phase pair combinations: Y+G and B+G. If any pair does not have drag then there is a broken phase wire.

If you get this far then the phases and phase wiring are okay.

• Just take a moment to examine the hall and throttle connections for wire breaks near the connectors.
• With the phases disconnected and the controller powered down, try to rotate the wheel backwards. Note the amount of drag. Now connect the phases and try to rotate the wheel backwards again. The drag should be the same. If there is more drag then you probably have shorted FETs.
  
• Connect the halls, power up the controller, and using your meter check the voltage from the black hall lead to each of the three hall wires (B,G,Y) individually while slowly turning the wheel backward (so the clutch engages). For each hall the voltage should switch up and down about every 2 degrees of wheel rotation.
  • You have to turn the wheel extremely slowly and carefully when testing a MAC because of the 1:5 speedup of the rotor caused by the internal gearing - the hall transition is very easy to miss with a meter. If you are using an auto-ranging meter - lock it to 'volts' range so it won't waste time doing ranging.
  • If this was DD instead of MAC (no clutch and gears), the signal would change 5 times more slowly (10 degrees or so) and the wheel could be turned in either direction to test.

If you got this far then the halls should be okay.

• Power up the controller.
• For a hall throttle, probe the throttle connector and verify that the throttle sense wire varies from about 1v to 4v (more or less) as you advance the throttle from ZERO to WOT. A resistive throttle (Magura) should have a larger range of 0v - 5v (or close to it).

If you got this far the throttle is supplying a workable input voltage to the controller.

If all this worked, then your controller/motor/throttle all should be good - if not then you probably have FET or other controller issue. If things seem to be alive,try resuming your search for the proper hall/phase mapping....

Needless to say, it's easy to short things out when doing all this stuff - alligator clips are really not advised. A safe quick approach is to probe the pins in the connectors from behind, slipping the meter probe into the backside to hit the rear of the pins. Better is to take a few minutes prior to testing and make up some connectors and jumpers that will give you secure meter connections, make it easy to probe connectors, and that won't short to neighboring pins, etc. For instance, a pair of male/female hall connectors wired as a passthru with the wires tapped to a terminal strip or aux connectors to get access to the live signals will make this all go reliably and quickly. This isn't strictly necessary, but....

Ebike testers are readily available on eBay and are a good investment since sooner or later something will go wrong (also available from Lyen and EM3EV). It's a good plan to extend the wires on your tester and add appropriate connectors to match your build. This will let you safely diagnose problems in just a couple of minutes. You need connectors for M+F phase, M+F halls, and mating throttle - it's easy to order these extra connectors from your controller/motor vendor at the outset.

Here's a link to a quickie manual for the ebike tester.

 

[Cowardlyduck]

Awesome post teklektik. That will also help me further diagnose my issue which noone replied to.
http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=52695

And that Ebike tester sounds very useful also, Ill be getting one.

Thanks!

Cheers

 

[fechter]

If the controller will inhibit output if it detects one or more of several possible fault conditons. These include throttle signal, hall signals, battery voltage, and phase current. If any hall wire or throttle wire is misconnected it should prevent output. Some controllers have a status LED that will blink a code telling you what's wrong.

 

[emaayan]

well i already have the ebike tester, but cell man himself told me that won't help phase matching.

the whole point of 5 amp braker is for it not to last long, bu i dont' think i even got close to that, before the braker i also had a amp meter set on 2 amp, and it read around 0.02 when i pulled the throttle. (i have a mid drive set on gear number 1).

and battery is very well charged up, it has 56 volts. so no bms shutdown.

 

[fechter]

Next would be to put your voltmeter or tester on the hall signal wires and verify all of them are toggling when you turn the wheel slowly backwards. They should alternate between near zero and near 5v.

Also check the throttle signal voltage. It should go from about 0.8v to 4.5v as you advance the throttle.

If any of these signals aren't in the right range, the controller shuts down. Also make sure the ebrake line is disconnected.

 

[emaayan]

well something REALLY weird is going on, everything was connected, and i started to turning the wheel back slowly, then it JUMPED forward, scared the crap out of me, when it jumped i was able get a response from the throttle. but not always,it would seem that only of the wheel is in a cetrain positions then i can get a response.

edit:

i reinstated all the original connections i had before staring all of this matching phase sensors according the theoretical schema, and matching the colors of the phase wires to each other, and pushing the throttle worked, but here's the thing the reason i started to continue test is that i remember the chart saying if the engine is "noisy" but i have a MID-DRIVE engine, noise is it's middle name. i've uploaded a video if how it sounds now http://youtu.be/k5iQwHxExXQ and you check my channel (wow , do i sound like a spammer) for previous clips with the original sound. it DOES sound different, but it might be due to the fact that ecospeed somehow manipulated their controller to emit a syn wave.
btw this is a direct power link, no circuit braker in between, and throttle is wot , but the in first gear only.

so is this a bad noise or a good one? how can i be sure?

 

[teklektik]

well something REALLY weird is going on, everything was connected, and i started to turning the wheel back slowly, then it JUMPED forward, scared the crap out of me, when it jumped i was able get a response from the throttle. but not always,it would seem that only of the wheel is in a cetrain positions then i can get a response.

This can be normal for mismatched phases.

If you try a phase/hall combo and nothing turns, it doesn't mean you destroyed something - it just means that combo doesn't work.... If you turn the rotor a bit, a hall will trigger a phase and something will happen - it just won't be normal 'proper' wheel motion - in other words - exactly what you are experiencing...

You have a MAC - turning the wheel forward just slips the clutch - the rotor doesn't turn and the halls aren't activated. You need to turn it backwards to engage the clutch and turn the rotor. You were no doubt turning the wheel forward before and nothing happened because you weren't actually turning the rotor - the magnets were sitting still relative to the halls. Now you turn it backwards and you get some kind of activity - just not proper motion because the phases are messed up.

Just go back to trying the six phase/hall combinations. All should be well shortly...

EDIT - okay - while I was typing this you went back to other phase combos, got the motor running, and edited the post above, so the dead motor/controller issue as originally posted seems addressed -- mid-drive noise is a whole other thing.... :wink:

 

[emaayan]

i do have a mac motor, but like i said, how do i know if current configuration works, if i don't know the difference between a smooth rotation and noisy one, that's why i posted the youtube clip.

 

[teklektik]

Normally you may find a 'good' combo and a 'false positive' combo. Both appear to spin the wheel correctly but the false positive draws a lot of power compared to the 'good' combo and may sound harsh. I would try the remaining hall combos and check the power draw at WOT on the stand (brief test - no load) for the two that appear to work. The lower power one is the right one.

It's impossible to hear any motor harshness with all that chain noise (if you want to use sound instead of or in addition to power draw as a cue). With no mid-drive experience in phase matching, I would do the phase combo testing without the motor chained up (running free), but that's just a guess for a workable procedure.... (hmmm - but of course, with the jackshaft chained up, there would be more load, so... ??)

A post of interest...

 

[emaayan]

well once i hit a combo that caused the motor to go back, i reversed the connections like the phase combo image said, but then i got nothing.

 

[dogman dan]

One thing that has caused me a lot of trouble, is trying the right phase combo, but having one contact making poor contact.

It can have you tearing out the hair. Once you test and are sure all components are working, then start fresh on trying the combos. I'd ditch that 5 amp breaker myself. Eliminate all possible complications when trying to match the phase order.

 

[emaayan]

already ditched, but unfortunately so far from all the combo's i've tried it would appear i've reached only one that somehow works, when i say somehow , i mean that amps are starting from 2 amps, and are slowly increasing as i push the throttle but susddenly spiking to 9 amp when the throttle reaches the end.

 

[dogman dan]

That's got to be a false positive order. If all checks out on the tester, It almost has to be that you don't always have good contact when you test various combos.

You know how it is, 90% or more of ebike trouble when the battery is ok is the damn wiring and plugs.

 

[emaayan]

that's about 90 % of all problems with electornics and hardware. the thing i'm most afriad of is screwing up the motor, i don't even know what's the indication of such a thing, these motors are very hard to find.

 

[Ykick]

You were given a link in the last post of YOUR THREAD months ago. Did you bother to study the excellent phase/hall combo chart I posted the link to? It would appear not....

http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=51120&hilit=+Hall+phase+combo

 

[emaayan]

you mean that one originally posted by accountant? i not only studied it, but i saved the picture on my pc and copied it to my dropbox just in case i loose the link or loose what i'm looking for , it's what being hanging on my screen for the past couple of days, it's just a little annoying i can read the letters straight,but that's what i originally said by not knowing what it refers to a "noisy rotation" that's the term used there. when i got to the part of reverse rotation, i fliped the wires like it said , and then i stumbled on the case where it rotates only when wheel is in a certain few positions.

 

[emaayan]

finally!! victory, in case there's somewhere a repository of combinations, this is what works for me (Mac motor from ecospeed, + infinion 4110 controller from em3ev, (i understand ebike.ca has a modified version) )
i have no idea why this works, but it does. (wot reaches only to 2.3 amps).
phase:
MAC Infinion
Green C A Blue
Blue B B Green
Yellow A C yellow

hall:
MAC Infinion
Green C B green
Blue B C yellow
yellow A A Blue

 

[fechter]

finally!! victory, in case there's somewhere a repository of combinations, this is what works for me (Mac motor from ecospeed, + infinion 4110 controller from em3ev, (i understand ebike.ca has a modified version) )
i have no idea why this works, but it does. (wot reaches only to 2.3 amps).
phase:
MAC Infinion
Green C A Blue
Blue B B Green
Yellow A C yellow

hall:
MAC Infinion
Green C B green
Blue B C yellow
yellow A A Blue

Repository: http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=6241

The MAC/BMC motors are particularly difficult to match up for some reason.

 

[emaayan]

well no this thing acts like someone placed an afterburner in it's ass and lit up the torch, i get around 50 kph while previously i only got 40.