Measuring halls on Ezee motor without controller

[jkirkeboe]

I have a Ezee 400W motor with a Infineon 25A controller on a full-suspension bike. It has worked only intermittently lately, and now it doesn't work at all. When given throttle, the wheel only moves a little and then stops.

I have tried to measure the hall sensors with the controller connected, but cannot measure any voltage between black and red. My guess is either the controller is fried or the wires are shorted.

If I disconnect the motor from the controller, can I measure the halls then ? I know I need some kind of power supply, would it work to connect a +5V power source (like 4 NiMhs in serial) between red and black and then measure the halls between yellow/green/blue and black ? What should the reading be then, from 0V to +5V while turning the motor backwards ?

 

[fechter]

Yes, you can measure the halls without the controller. The red/black wires need 5v, but it's best to feed the 5v through some kind of current limiter in case there is a short. Something like a 100 ohm resistor or a small 12v light bulb would work. You could do without any limiting, but if one of the hall sensors is shorted, somthing is going to start smoking (hey, it was bad anyway). I use a 9v battery for testing.

Once you get the halls powered, then measure voltage from the red wire to each of the 3 hall signal wires. When rotating the motor, you should see each hall signal toggle back and forth from 5v to near zero.
Some hall sensors have an output that pulls down (open collector), so you need to measure against the +5v supply. Some halls have a built in pull up resistor, so you could measure against either the black or red wire and get a reading.