Another one of my crazy projects :D

[Things]

Thought I'd give you guys a peek at the bodgyness behind it all

And a vid

But hey, it works (for now)

 

[Fiddy]

lookin good man! Love the improvised throttle that's magnificent

 

[n2stuff]

Dan don't you ever were shoes :na: I love your throttle that is epic. I can't wait til shes done. Yeah Hobby King is so slow sometimes.

 

[Things]

Well, last night I started my PCB design, got a bit carried away and next thing i knew it was 4:30am!

Managed to cram everything onto a 5x5cm PCB by moving all the high current stuff off board. This means I won't have any hard LV cutoff protection, but the upper display unit will have a piezo beeper in it that will be outright irritating, telling you to turn it off/charge it! But it'll also be able to switch of the ESC, meaning the only draw will be the microcontrollers.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/203420/Scooter/Sheet1.pdf

Has a footprint on the board for a 6A 12V auxillary power output module, from Texas Instruments

P12 at the top left in the first image is a RJ45/ethernet/cat5 jack, so I'll only have to run 1 single piece of cat5 up the handlebars, and the brake cable.

Now to start on the 2nd PCB for the display unit!

 

[lasersbee]

I've read that when you deep discharge Li-Po batteries
that you can get them back up to voltage but their power
storage capacity is reduced...

Watching the video I heard that the cooling fan sucks outside
air into the motor windings/magnets to help cool the motor.
Your motor is mounted under the scooter and ground debris
could easily get into the tight tolerances between the magnets
and windings...

The reason the motor bogs down at low speed is because
the timing increases faster than the motor can spin up. Then
it gets out of timing phase. Had the same problem with a huge'
Brushless motor trying to spin a huge propeller. The slightest
amount of extra load would slow the motor until it just buzzed.

Maybe a sensored Motor/ESC might be a better solution since
the ESC gets position pulses from the Motor from what I have
read on the Net. I've not tried one of those setups.

BTW... that make shift throttle control is hilarious... :crackup:
Can't wait to see it running under load.


Jerry

You can contact us at any time on our Website: J.BAUER Electronics

 

[Things]

Well, finally (bit over 1 month!) got my thumb throttle today! Have wired it up to a little Arduino mini running on the ESC's 5.7V SBEC, also connected the brake lever switch up, so the thing is basically fully functional apart from having to remove the batteries for charging

 

[Fiddy]

I demand victory burnouts!

 

[Things]

Well, the stupid shitty thin tab LM317 driving my fan died, so having a 6A DC-DC module here I'm going to use on my circuit board, I hooked them up bodgily to run my fan. But couldn't leave it at just a fan with that much power available, right??

Tomorrow I'll probably configure it so the LED's will change colour based on throttle/speed, would make for some mad long exposures

 

[Moistenator]

Well, the stupid shitty thin tab LM317 driving my fan died, so having a 6A DC-DC module here I'm going to use on my circuit board, I hooked them up bodgily to run my fan. But couldn't leave it at just a fan with that much power available, right??

Tomorrow I'll probably configure it so the LED's will change colour based on throttle/speed, would make for some mad long exposures

This has got to be the best scooter I've seen! love it!

 

[HitShane]

Thats awesome!!!

 

[Things]

Thanks

Last night/today I redid the LED strips, using one of my little SPI RGB LED strip drivers, so now they fade from blue-green-red depending on the throttle

Will do a video sometime tonight.

 

[n2stuff]

I demand victory burnouts!

Oh ya a little bleach and smoke show time:evil:

 

[Seoul_lasers]

I've read that when you deep discharge Li-Po batteries
that you can get them back up to voltage but their power
storage capacity is reduced...

Watching the video I heard that the cooling fan sucks outside
air into the motor windings/magnets to help cool the motor.
Your motor is mounted under the scooter and ground debris
could easily get into the tight tolerances between the magnets
and windings...

The reason the motor bogs down at low speed is because
the timing increases faster than the motor can spin up. Then
it gets out of timing phase. Had the same problem with a huge'
Brushless motor trying to spin a huge propeller. The slightest
amount of extra load would slow the motor until it just buzzed.

Maybe a sensored Motor/ESC might be a better solution since
the ESC gets position pulses from the Motor from what I have
read on the Net. I've not tried one of those setups.

BTW... that make shift throttle control is hilarious... :crackup:
Can't wait to see it running under load.


Jerry

You can contact us at any time on our Website: J.BAUER Electronics

That's correct Jerry!
Lithium ion cells and Lipoly cells are simply
not designed for deep cycling. They can reliably
Supply down to 60-70% of their capacity before
they start degrade quickly.
I had an Engineer explain that to me whom worked
on battery technology at LG chem.
LiFePO is better with deeper discharging.

 

[Things]

Weeelll, been a while since I did anything with this, but I've finally taken the time to design a proper control and monitoring system for this, and it's in the works at the moment. Got all the components in, just waiting on the PCB's and I can start figuring out how many PCB footprints I messed up

I also lasercut a little acrylic box to seal up the motor - which does 2 things, keeping crap out of it, as well as allowing me to mount a small 60mm cooling fan to suck a bit of air through the back.

My final PCB design comes out at around 5x5cm for the main control board, and 36x82mm or so for the display unit.

Main board:

This one takes care of monitoring the battery cell voltages, current, and also converts the throttle signal to PWM for the ESC.

And the display unit:

Which mounts directly to the back of a regular 16x2 LCD, acts as kind of a "junction box" for the brake and throttle cables, and will allow me to monitor my speed, battery voltages, current draw, and if I can figure out the code, hopefully a battery life remaining stat.

The main board and display board connect via a regular ethernet cable, meaning only the brake cable and 1 other cable are running down the handlebars, so it'll be super tidy.

I thought TQFP and 0805 packages were a pain, but this chip on the right is gonna be an outright pain to solder!

I also bought some kapton tape, hoping I might be able to lasercut my own stencils, so will be interesting to see how that turns out

 

[Things]

I ordered a green on black LCD a few days ago, hoping it might be visible enough in daylight. Even if not, it sure looks cool as hell. My new favourite LCD colours for sure

My PCB's have been fabricated and should arrive next week, can't wait to try it all out!

 

[djQUAN]

I solder 0.5mm pitch 144pin QFP chips at work with ease on lead free solder. Just doing the flood and drag method and a K series tip on a Hakko station. Found it easy I also bought my own Hakko station and similar tip.

check out my link: Alpine CDA-9886 Mod I removed and soldered a TSSOP chip in there using only the iron.