After all those years of us slipping around on the icy parking lot known as Sevcon... it had to happen.
The controllers are good.
The controllers are designed around safety.
The controllers are affordable - especially used.
The controllers are perfect for a medium weight EV, light weight car, and all those other applications which are about to appear on our roads.
I really hope we can help to punch through all the fear and assumptions associated with the Sevcon.
The tools are not that expensive (crimpers and such)
The wiring is actually quite simple (
Reference ThunderStruck-EV for the manual)
note: We adjusted our wiring to match that of the schematic listed in the above link so that customers who have things like a ClearView can go at it plug and play
The only real problem with the controller is how fussy it is with motor specifics.
The controller would be the epic win if it had a "dumb mode" where it would just "work" with a controller at say... 80% toward perfection. Tuners could then get it there.
I understand that companies like Curtis have auto-tune setups that extract the needed information and allow mating of controllers to motors.
One can only assume that Sevcon has something similar.
We will eventually converge on enough known good working applications that it will no longer be an issue... but at this exact point in time I can not say that "I can get any motor running on this" short of spending hours, days, or even weeks tweaking and tuning, borrowing tools, experimenting, etc.
One of the biggest issues is simply the STALE DATA issues with the user interface. My early days tuning Honda with Hondata on the road and on a dyno tells me that the biggest impediment to proper tuning is ACTUALLY having your changes stick so that you dont chase your ass.
My guess... many people fail to mate motors to this controller due to the changes they make and test not taking
The controller LITERALLY needs to be power cycled after every little change. It seems OCD... and it is deceiving because some changes "just take"... but others DONT.
Best practice (unless you read the DCF carefully)
* Set the controller in Pre-Op... as some changes will be ignored or throw an error in Op
* Make the change
* Confirm the change by reading
* Cycle power
* Take it out of PreOp
* Test
* Repeat
Doing this will greatly improve probabilities around successful mating of motor to controller.
I would gladly sit in a room all day getting motors running if there was a magic bag of money someplace to pay my bills
Sadly there is not... so we do as much as we can for as little as possible and try to attract as many early adopters as we can and collaborate as much as we can.
Doc has been a great collaborator.
Biff has been instrumental.
Calfee has been very supportive.
Of course... some of our early customers have also been awesome in that they brought parts to us to explore... like the ClearView option.
FYI - We solved the ClearView. I posted up on how to use it to take a controller in and out of PreOp
IF you have a DCF to tell you what address a given setting is at... you can use the ClearView to change any of those settings on the fly without an IXXAT and Laptop
For that matter... if you are OG enough... you could sit down with minimon and set individual values.
Good luck! Lol... But it could be done.
ok - off to go sell a car to pay the bills.
-methods