Votol EM-100 & EM-150 controllers

[BareKuda]

I bought the Em30s controller it kinda works but there is no regen. Low brake doesnt work at all high brake stops the throttle input but it doesnt trigger regen. I suppose it doesnt matter whether it's low brake or high brake once the brake input is there there should be regen. But there isnt. Any suggestions? I think it doesnt have regen it's advertised as having regen but it hasnt actually. I tested it with a Qs mid motor the strange thing is if I set the correct 5 pole pairs it spins very slowly so I have to set around 17pp to reach the normal no load speed. Other than these it works kinda well but without regen it's completely useless for me.

I have the EM-30S too and regen works for me. I have a hub motor with 26 pole pairs or surface mount magnets and you have an inrunner with 5 pole pairs of V-Type magnets. Its best to have these set correctly so the controller can base other calculations on that.

Lots of quirky things about the settings. You need Hill Decent Brake on for the 3-gear setting to work, and the rpm you set there is the fastest it will run. Just to get the party started, you can set that rpm to the base speed of your motor, that way it ignores flux weakening until you are ready to start tweaking those.

If you know your brake signal is getting to the controller by the fact the front brake interrupts throttle, then the regen amount is set on page 3 to the right of the motor settings in the EBS RATIO% Box. Start with 25% and it will definitely be noticeable.

But you have to be careful if you have a lithium battery with BMS, and you charge to 100% and get up to max speed and then get regen that tries to charge your battery too fast and the BMS blocks it, then the voltage goes through the roof and locks the motor and blows mosfets.

If you post screenshots of all pages including port settings, someone here can probably help.

 

[BareKuda]

hi guys, i have a simple question let's say even maybe stupid, what is the purpose of the area of "start voltage" and "the end of voltage" i have a deadband at 1/4 when i twist the throttle before it really start, do you guys know what value should i put if i want to start immediatly ?

Start voltage is what the controller sees as 0% throttle.
End voltage is what the controller sees as 100% throttle.

What I did was used my multimeter and measured my throttle signal at minimum and maximum. In my case it was 0.80v-4.60v. The safe settings for me would be 1.0v-4.4v, but wanted to decrease dead-band slightly so I used 0.90v-4.50v.

The start voltage is the one you must give some buffer to because if you set it too low your controller will either think you are twisting the throttle when you turned kn the controller and not run the motor, or worse, let the motor start as soon as you turn on the key.

Most of the throttle dead band is in the design of the throttle. My starting dead band is ok but the last 1/3 twist does nothing. All dead band.

I believe the more expensive hall throttles and the potentiometer throttles have lower dead-band.

 

[Sattva Ram]

I bought the Em30s controller it kinda works but there is no regen. Low brake doesnt work at all high brake stops the throttle input but it doesnt trigger regen. I suppose it doesnt matter whether it's low brake or high brake once the brake input is there there should be regen. But there isnt. Any suggestions? I think it doesnt have regen it's advertised as having regen but it hasnt actually. I tested it with a Qs mid motor the strange thing is if I set the correct 5 pole pairs it spins very slowly so I have to set around 17pp to reach the normal no load speed. Other than these it works kinda well but without regen it's completely useless for me.

I have the EM-30S too and regen works for me. I have a hub motor with 26 pole pairs or surface mount magnets and you have an inrunner with 5 pole pairs of V-Type magnets. Its best to have these set correctly so the controller can base other calculations on that.

Lots of quirky things about the settings. You need Hill Decent Brake on for the 3-gear setting to work, and the rpm you set there is the fastest it will run. Just to get the party started, you can set that rpm to the base speed of your motor, that way it ignores flux weakening until you are ready to start tweaking those.

If you know your brake signal is getting to the controller by the fact the front brake interrupts throttle, then the regen amount is set on page 3 to the right of the motor settings in the EBS RATIO% Box. Start with 25% and it will definitely be noticeable.

But you have to be careful if you have a lithium battery with BMS, and you charge to 100% and get up to max speed and then get regen that tries to charge your battery too fast and the BMS blocks it, then the voltage goes through the roof and locks the motor and blows mosfets.

If you post screenshots of all pages including port settings, someone here can probably help.

Thanks I contacted SIA and managed to solve the problem. Only slide regen works tho. Do you have low brake or hi brake activated regen?

There's another issue I tried to test the controller with a mid qs but no matter what it only reached 650 revs. It will be used with a hub motor tho so 650 no load is just perfect. It'd be nice to know tho whether it can reach higher revs...Also I tried with 48 volts and it also reached 650 but the flux weakening kicking in at 450 was very audible. It seems to me that 650 is the max no matter what...

I post my settings later maybe we can exchange notes

Thanks

 

[BareKuda]

Thanks I contacted SIA and managed to solve the problem. Only slide regen works tho. Do you have low brake or hi brake activated regen?

There's another issue I tried to test the controller with a mid qs but no matter what it only reached 650 revs. It will be used with a hub motor tho so 650 no load is just perfect. It'd be nice to know tho whether it can reach higher revs...Also I tried with 48 volts and it also reached 650 but the flux weakening kicking in at 450 was very audible. It seems to me that 650 is the max no matter what...

I post my settings later maybe we can exchange notes

Thanks

I use HIGH BRAKE, since thats how my electric scooter is wired. My system is 60v (73.5v at peak charge, 75v is my over voltage). I dont use any 60v to 12v converter fir high brake and so far its still working. Im still waiting for Carrie to anwer my question “What is the allowable voltage range to activate high brake”? I think those using 72V or higher have a risk and might need the converter. Anyway the Siaecosys drawings doht show any voltage so i will assume its just battery voltage like every other Chinese controller uses for high brake.

When i hooked up my controller i made sure to follow the wiring diagram and then when i changed my port settings i made sure they matched the wiring diagram. I assume any port such as low brake needed to be oulled down from 5v would not like to have 70v coming in as high brake, lol.

So from the wiring we see purple is the high break signal to PIN 1. I downloaded as many port setting images as i can find and i see high brake is always PB5. So i went to PB5 in port settings and selected high brake.

I did similar with Low and high signal from 3 speed switch and the Single Line (YXT) speed signal instead of hall signal. Which made my display start showing gear 1-2-3 accoring to my switch position and also display EABS brake icon when i activate brakes. So if your display supports YXT then Single line is great.

 

[Sattva Ram]

Hi brake low brake works for me, but it doesnt trigger regen it only shuts the throttle. I only have throttle release regen now. This is how you set it up.

https://youtu.be/66XnN7IrjdE

You sure dont have slide regen now as I've seen it in your port setup.

I wouldn't put 70 volts on highbrake. Anyway you can just pull a wire from the first 3S of the battery if you dont want dc-dc converter. High brake trigger amp is so so minimal that it'll never make the battery go to imbalance at least if you have balance bms.

Anyway I'd use dc-dc converter for 60 volts because of the lamps. 72 volts is way too much for a switch. Even a 13S system can make the light switches go faulty pretty soon. I just bought the cheapest one on ali like for 2 dollars dc-dc is always worth it imo.

Can you send the screenshots of the other setups as well?

Did you order it as default or you specifically ordered it for your voltage setup?

I

 

[BareKuda]

There's another issue I tried to test the controller with a mid qs but no matter what it only reached 650 revs. It will be used with a hub motor tho so 650 no load is just perfect. It'd be nice to know tho whether it can reach higher revs...Also I tried with 48 volts and it also reached 650 but the flux weakening kicking in at 450 was very audible. It seems to me that 650 is the max no matter what...

Are you saying the motor can only go 650 rpm or the wheel after a 4.7:1 reduction only goes 650 rpm, and matches your hub motor? Or are you using this mid drive as 1:1?

Im assuming you have a 2000 watt and has a 2900 no load rpm. So for starters id set pole pairs to 5, V-type magnets, check DHC and put 2900 in the box.

You can put all flux weakening to 0, but make sure the sync timing is 300 to start with and adjust that to reduce jitter. This is the box on the right side of Sport Mode.

If you use 17 pole pairs the controller will think the motor is running 3.5x slower because all it knows is when a hall signal changes. From that and your pole pairs, it knows rpm. From rpm it knows when to bring in rpm related features like HDC and speed limit.

Better to use correct pole pairs and get the other things to match.

Once you get it running quiet and smooth up to 2500 by adjusting sync timing in increments of 50 (100-1200 range), then a road test will let you finish those. I found that under load at about 100-200 rpm it sounded like i was running over highway rumble stips. I had ro set my sync for about 700 to get that to go away, and now I just have some resonant passing through 100 rpm and then above that its so quiet you cant even hear it over ambient noise.

Im still trying to get that resonance gone but so far nothing i tried does it. If i take sync timing higher it starts making other sounds i dint like.

Today i’ll put my old controller back on and see if its just something that motor does at that rpm or if something only this Votol is doing. Actually the old controller was smooth as silk once it got going but torque from 0 was almost nonexistent.

But i also see my 5x 12v22AH gel pack has some bad batteries and very quickly drops in voltage. I have a new set on order but after checking the website these don’t really like even 1C discharge rate except for getting up to speed.

Ill try to set my bus bar for 20a and sport for 25a adjust my gears to give 0.3, 0.5, and 1.0 C-rating.

I dont know which nuclear power cell you will be using for your dual motor setup but probably not gel cell. Lol

 

[Sattva Ram]

Thanks. Yeah if you have lead acid battery then you cant do what I said.

650 motor rpm was the max I could get. The only way I could get it spinning faster with the mid drive was if I set a higher pole pair number but even then the controller's rpm meter clocked out at 650 rpm but you could hear that it was spinning much faster actually. I could never read more than 650 rpm in the software.

Well with the hub motor 650 is fine it'll do like 60 kmph with a 26 inch wheel so it's just what I want so I dont really mind if 650 is the max. Yet I find it very strange that I doesnt seem to read more than 650 rpm.

Also if I set the correct 60 degree hall angle with the mid motor it didnt work. It only worked well if I set 120 hall angle while the motor is surely 60 degrees.

Bottomline; with the mid motor this controller behaves extremely strangely. However it doesnt really matter because with the hub motor that I'll use this controller with seems to function very well rpm is fine, hall angle is fine, regen is fine... (I only tested it no load so far so I dont know how it behaves on the road but soon we'll see.)

Maybe a few more weeks before my battery is ready so maybe I update after the test drive if you'd like.

Do you use hub or mid motor btw? (Well based on the 100 rpm noise I presume you use hub...)

 

[BareKuda]

Hi brake low brake works for me, but it doesnt trigger regen it only shuts the throttle. I only have throttle release regen now. This is how you set it up.

https://youtu.be/66XnN7IrjdE

You sure dont have slide regen now as I've seen it in your port setup.

I wouldn't put 70 volts on highbrake. Anyway you can just pull a wire from the first 3S of the battery if you dont want dc-dc converter. High brake trigger amp is so so minimal that it'll never make the battery go to imbalance at least if you have balance bms.

Anyway I'd use dc-dc converter for 60 volts because of the lamps. 72 volts is way too much for a switch. Even a 13S system can make the light switches go faulty pretty soon. I just bought the cheapest one on ali like for 2 dollars dc-dc is always worth it imo.

Can you send the screenshots of the other setups as well?


Did you order it as default or you specifically ordered it for your voltage setup?

I

That was a file photo. ill send my config file and you can see all settings, just dont be connected to your controller.lol

This is my current settings, color matched phase and hall, 0 flux weakening, low volt set for a dying battery.

Every $20 controller with high brake can use battery voltage up to its rated voltage. This controller is no different and in fact on the Siaecosys website the drawing doesnt say +12 volts, so i assume it is designed for 90% of the china scooters that use high brake. The high brake signal doesnt use much power but the brake light will if i pulled it off one of my 12v packs.

 

[BareKuda]

Thanks. Yeah if you have lead acid battery then you cant do what I said.

650 motor rpm was the max I could get. The only way I could get it spinning faster with the mid drive was if I set a higher pole pair number but even then the controller's rpm meter clocked out at 650 rpm but you could hear that it was spinning much faster actually. I could never read more than 650 rpm in the software.

Well with the hub motor 650 is fine it'll do like 60 kmph with a 26 inch wheel so it's just what I want so I dont really mind if 650 is the max. Yet I find it very strange that I doesnt seem to read more than 650 rpm.

Also if I set the correct 60 degree hall angle with the mid motor it didnt work. It only worked well if I set 120 hall angle while the motor is surely 60 degrees.

Bottomline; with the mid motor this controller behaves extremely strangely. However it doesnt really matter because with the hub motor that I'll use this controller with seems to function very well rpm is fine, hall angle is fine, regen is fine... (I only tested it no load so far so I dont know how it behaves on the road but soon we'll see.)

Maybe a few more weeks before my battery is ready so maybe I update after the test drive if you'd like.

Do you use hub or mid motor btw? (Well based on the 100 rpm noise I presume you use hub...)

I would try these settings to get started with your mid-drive, except your hall SHIFT angle. its not 60 degree 120 degrees commutation angle its how many degrees you want to shift your hall sensors so you can match phase and hall wire colors like a boss and do all matching inside the controller. Normally its -60,60,180 but some motors may prefer 0,120,240 . WIth my colors matching i needed to check both swap boxes and use 60 hall shift.

if 120 works for you then try 90 and 150 and if both of those are worse then 120 is what you need.

my first setup I did manual matching and had color mismatch but no boxes checked and -60 shift. Then i matched all wire colors and repeating the pairing process except i kept phase wire static until the end when it said to change rotation. last step i clicked both boxes and then did hall shift until it ran smooth again

 

[Sattva Ram]

Yeah you might be right high brake should work with full battery. That's how it's logical. It's also implied in the name as per "high" voltage. But dc-dc still makes sense because of the light switches...

I tried a similar setup as yours but didnt work. If I set the correct pole pairs and correct hall angle with qs mid drive it's altogether shite.

So you use mid motor? What's the max rpm? What kinda motor is it?

 

[deida789]

hi guys, i have a simple question let's say even maybe stupid, what is the purpose of the area of "start voltage" and "the end of voltage" i have a deadband at 1/4 when i twist the throttle before it really start, do you guys know what value should i put if i want to start immediatly ?

Start voltage is what the controller sees as 0% throttle.
End voltage is what the controller sees as 100% throttle.

What I did was used my multimeter and measured my throttle signal at minimum and maximum. In my case it was 0.80v-4.60v. The safe settings for me would be 1.0v-4.4v, but wanted to decrease dead-band slightly so I used 0.90v-4.50v.

The start voltage is the one you must give some buffer to because if you set it too low your controller will either think you are twisting the throttle when you turned kn the controller and not run the motor, or worse, let the motor start as soon as you turn on the key.

Most of the throttle dead band is in the design of the throttle. My starting dead band is ok but the last 1/3 twist does nothing. All dead band.

I believe the more expensive hall throttles and the potentiometer throttles have lower dead-band.

thank you mate now is clear for me, so i will probably change the throttle to a better one, any suggestions if you know some with less/without dead-band ?


Envoyé de mon iPhone en utilisant Tapatalk

 

[BareKuda]

Yeah you might be right high brake should work with full battery. That's how it's logical. It's also implied in the name as per "high" voltage. But dc-dc still makes sense because of the light switches...

I tried a similar setup as yours but didnt work. If I set the correct pole pairs and correct hall angle with qs mid drive it's altogether shite.

So you use mid motor? What's the max rpm? What kinda motor is it?

Mine is just a 500W hub motor.

The Votol is a 120 degree controller because i don’t think you can find a 60 degree motor anywhere. I looked an never found one.

I 100% guarantee you can match all your wires and get it running exactly as it is now, or better. But you cant go step by step with the procedure for manual matching.

The main concept is there is only 2 phase wire combos,Yellow—>Green—>Blue or Yellow—>Blue—>Green
There are only 2 hall wire combos, Green—>Blue—>Yellow (with angle shift to “right” 1rst phase wire order timing) or Green—>Yellow—>Blue (with shift to the “left” to to match the 2nd possible phase wire order and timing.)

The shift left or right is done in the “hall shift angle” box. Normally 120 shift one way or the other will sync the hall to the phase.


Step 1: match all wire colors, uncheck both boxes and set -60 hall shift angle.
Step 2: give slight throttle. Ignore rotation for now and just go for smooth rotation.
If stuck, click the box to swap hall wire.
If noisy rotation change phase shift by 120 degrees either way (from -60 thats -180 or 60. If better but still noisy try -/- 60 degress (0, 120, 240). Continue trying to find the hall shift that makes your motor run smooth either direction.
Step:3
If motor spins in right direction, you’re done. If it spins in wrong direction, change both checkboxes for phase and hall (so both are now in the forward direction), then adjust hall shift until its smooth again using same procedure as step 2.

I would say once its smooth you can advance it 5 degrees at a time until it makes noise and retard it 5 degrees at a time until it makes noise and then pick the middle of those to degrees shifts. Most likely it will be some increment of 60 dregrees.

 

[Sattva Ram]

I dont have problems with the hub motor. It runs smooth as silk. Everything is nice. The only fly in the ointment is that I only have slide regen and low brake and high brake doesnt activate regen. (Which may not be so bad after all...so who really cares...) So far I am fine. Of course I should test it in real life not just spinning it unloaded but so far so good.

I tried it with a qs 138 90H tho but it's terrible. The 138 90H is 60 degrees. So this controller doesnt seem to run well with mid motors.

 

[BareKuda]

thank you mate now is clear for me, so i will probably change the throttle to a better one, any suggestions if you know some with less/without dead-band ?

Unfortunate I don’t. We need someone with deeper pocket than me to buy a a bunch and test them all and report:
Resolution: smallest step change in signal (0.5V, 0.1V, 0.05V etc)
Bottom dead-band degrees twist
Degrees twist from minimum to maximum signal output
Top end dead-band degrees twist.
Hysterisis degrees or some measurement of how sloppy it is changing throttle.

 

[deida789]

thank you mate now is clear for me, so i will probably change the throttle to a better one, any suggestions if you know some with less/without dead-band ?

Unfortunate I don’t. We need someone with deeper pocket than me to buy a a bunch and test them all and report:
Resolution: smallest step change in signal (0.5V, 0.1V, 0.05V etc)
Bottom dead-band degrees twist
Degrees twist from minimum to maximum signal output
Top end dead-band degrees twist.
Hysterisis degrees or some measurement of how sloppy it is changing throttle.

well i do not mind to try 2-3 of them as long as someone have an idea of which one to give a try, because there as so many throttle that i dont know which one to try


Envoyé de mon iPhone en utilisant Tapatalk

 

[BareKuda]

I dont have problems with the hub motor. It runs smooth as silk. Everything is nice. The only fly in the ointment is that I only have slide regen and low brake and high brake doesnt activate regen. (Which may not be so bad after all...so who really cares...) So far I am fine. Of course I should test it in real life not just spinning it unloaded but so far so good.

I tried it with a qs 138 90H tho but it's terrible. The 138 90H is 60 degrees. So this controller doesnt seem to run well with mid motors.

Can you send your config file and i can look at it?
According to QS motors the 138 70H is 120 degrees. Can you find any official link showing any QS motor with 60 degrees hall angle? I think theres no advantage because both give 6 commutations per pole pair per rotation.

The biggest mistake people are making is thinking that degree in the controller setting is hall phase angle (60/120) instead of Hall Shift Angle which lets you virtually rotate your 3 hall sensors around the motor to sync with the phase.

Play with it with a motor you know is 120 phase angle. You can connect and combos of hall and phase wire color and make it work within the controller. Those steps in the last comment will work with any 120 degree motor but if there is a freewheeling clutch you will need to take that into consideration when the wheel doesn't spin. Lol

 

[Sattva Ram]

It's the 138 90H which is different than the 70. It is indeed 60 degrees both carrie and the sabvoton controller confirmed it. But if I set 60 degrees in the EM 30 it doesnt work properly. Anyway it doesnt matter because I dont want to run the em30 with a mid motor. It will be used with a bionx hub and it works well with the bionx with my current setup. Silent smooth low consumption good rpm...everything seems fine trouble only comes when I hook it to the 138 90H

I cant send my setup so easily now. Maybe later. I think I'll put together a little setup soon and make a room testrun with the rear brakes on to see how the controller behaves under load. I havent yet tried that one.

Anyway soon I'll receive a Yalu mid motor too. I'll hook up the em30 to it and see how it goes. It's a smaller motor, hopefully with a genuine 120 degree hall. See if it works with that motor properly....

 

[Sattva Ram]

Here you go I found it. This is what I use now.

 

[BareKuda]

I tried it with a qs 138 90H tho but it's terrible. The 138 90H is 60 degrees. So this controller doesnt seem to run well with mid motors.

Oh, I see it, 60 degrees. I would ask QS to send you the votol config file for that motor and see what it does.

The interesting thing is a cheap $20 controller can self learn any 3-phase bldc motor, and only if direction is wrong you disconnect and reconnect the learning wire while its running.

The reality is all these motors have 3 active hall sensors, and all these motors do 6 commutations per electrical 360 degrees. So i wonder if it means that by changing hall sequence and shifting it over that it can give the same signal to the decoder. Or if it just cant work with a Votol.

I havent really tried to understand the difference yet if the end result is they both send a set if signal that tell when each 60 degrees (electrical) have occured.

 

[BareKuda]

Here you go I found it. This is what I use now.

Can you send your file? That one wont work. Your “low brake” is blocking high brake. You can uncheck low break and whatever you are using fir that signal will just act like a motor cut and your high brake can regen.

Are you using jog 3 speed or swtich?
All your gear settings are 100% so it’s going to act like no gear choices.

If you send the configuration file i can see all the settings

 

[BareKuda]

Here you go I found it. This is what I use now.

Can you send your file? That one wont work. Your “low brake” is blocking high brake. You can uncheck low break and whatever you are using fir that signal will just act like a motor cut and your high brake can regen.

Are you using jog 3 speed or swtich?
All your gear settings are 100% so it’s going to act like no gear choices.

If you send the configuration file i can see all the settings

 

[Sattva Ram]

The high brakes cuts the throttle so it works but no regen. Both low brake and high brake cut the throttle but no regen. Well maybe if I untick the low brake then hi brake will trigger regen...I'll try it out!

60 degrees is a different sequence. With 60 degrees it can be that all 3 sensors are on at the same time and all 3 sensors are off. Whereas with 120 degrees it cannot be.

I dont care about gears too much always maximum for me...I dont have switch for it anyway. But maybe I'll tinker with it who knows whether I'll sell this bike and people like slow mode cause of the cops..

 

[Sattva Ram]

How do I get the file?

 

[BareKuda]

How do I get the file?

If you cant find the file on your computer but are connecting to the votol you can click “Save Prarm” and give it a name so you know which version it is, like “config17pole” and then you can send it here.

 

[BareKuda]

How do I get the file?

If you cant find the file on your computer but are connecting to the votol you can click “Save Prarm” and give it a name so you know which version it is, like “config17pole” and then you can send it here.