help wth lyen controller regen brake connection

[electricridefl]

Hi, i used to post here a long while ago. I recently resurrected my ebike which uses a crystalyte rear 409 hubmotor. Previously i always ran it at 84v, so i didn't connect the regen braking. The bike uses a 72v 20amp lyen controller. So now i made a 72v battery (sub c nimh) and i wanted to try the regen braking. there is a yellow and brown wire for the regen function, which i connected to a microswitch at the rear brake. i just rode it and nothing happens when the switch engages. the controller also has 2 white wires that have always been connected together, and they are titled "regen brake jumper wires". do i need to disconnect the white wires to make the brake work? or do i need to connect the yellow wire to an unidentified black ground wire somewhere? The answer must be simple. it's probably so simple i'm missing it. i tried searching a little bit but couldn't find anything relating to my dilemma. do i connect the yellow wire to the brown wire to make it function? or do i need a ground wire. and what about the white wires? thank you for any and all help.

 

[E-HP]

I would first measure the voltages of the yellow and brown wires (yellow to ground, brown to ground). The signal wire for triggering regen will likely have a pullup resistor and float around 5V; and when grounded should trigger regen.

 

[amberwolf]

Quite a few controllers have a voltage limit above which regen will not engage, to prevent overcharge of the battery.

To engage an ebrake, there are two types of signal. If yours is a low-brake wire, you ground it with the ebrake lever / button / switch to brake. if yours is a high-brake wire, you'll need a 12v+ source to feed it via the ebrake lever / button / switch to brake.

I can't tell you what color wires to use, because wire colors are not standardized. You'd have to find out what pads each wire goes to inside the controller, and then find out what each pad's label means (since those labels aren't standardized either). If Lyen always used the same colors, then other posts about Lyen controllers may specify by color. Otherwise you might see if Lyen is still running his site (was still up last time someone asked about it), and if he can tell you.

 

[electricridefl]

thanks for your replies. i was hoping someone familiar with this controller would answer. i do get about 4.6v between the yellow and brown wire. I'm gonna try unplugging the white wires, as they are labeled "brake jumper wire". and the yellow is on a connector with the brown. and yellow is labeled regen brake wire, and the brown wire is labeled brakelight or something like that. This is when lyen first started selling controllers on this forum, which was around 15yrs ago. yeah i went to some lyen website but the images wouldn't load. i just thought it would be nice to know before i start experimenting. oh well, i read some other posts that maybe the controller needs a different resistor and also it may need to be programmed by connecting to a computer. so i guess i'll just be happy the way it is. i let a friend ride it and he didn't get 100ft before flipping it. he came back all bloodied up...so funny...

 

[amberwolf]

i was hoping someone familiar with this controller would answer.

I am familiar with the three I have, but each of those is different from the others; two are 12FETs from the same time frame and one is a 6FET from a few years earlier. There's no guarantee anything on any of these will be the same as the next; mine all have serial numbers so with luck Lyen is still around, and tracked which ones were which kind and which wiring, functions, etc.

i do get about 4.6v between the yellow and brown wire.

What do you get between each and ground? (usually black wires) That's what is important, so you know what each wire is (relative voltages between them only tell you relations between them, not what they are relative to the rest of the system).

If it's about 5v or so from one to ground, that is probably low brake.

If it's about 0v from one to ground, that is probably high brake.

I'm gonna try unplugging the white wires, as they are labeled "brake jumper wire". and the yellow is on a connector with the brown. and yellow is labeled regen brake wire, and the brown wire is labeled brakelight or something like that

Brakelights run on 12v (on most systems), so brake high wires go to those.

The white pair are probably intended to enable regen braking when connected, and disable it when they are not, so that when disconnected the system only stops driving the motor when braking is engaged, rather than using hte motor to do regen braking.