New "TSDZ2 Torque Sensor Central Motor"

i didn't ride my TSDZ2 powered bike for a few months, it sat in storage without its battery pack.

booted it up last weekend, and it seemed like all my custom settings had been reset. the 860c displays were all reset, the power levels, etc.

Hello! casainho, I sent a private message, you probably didn't see it. The question is: I have a reduction between the bb and the exit axis of the motor. How critical is that? There's a calibration of the pedals. Now the synchronization is going down, and the engine stops helping.
Is it possible to eliminate the rotation sensor altogether? Open firmware has been installed.

ferum said:

Hello! casainho, I sent a private message, you probably didn't see it. The question is: I have a reduction between the bb and the exit axis of the motor. How critical is that? There's a calibration of the pedals. Now the synchronization is going down, and the engine stops helping.
Is it possible to eliminate the rotation sensor altogether? Open firmware has been installed.

DSC019072.jpg

Click to expand...

can't you make that gearing 1:1 ? the whole TSDZ2 thing is about detecting the human power of the left, then right, then left crank impulses and using that to tune the e-power. unless you could somehow move those torque sensors to your actual bottom bracket, its just not going to work right with a non-1:1 gearing.

Wapous said:

Doohickey said:

The drag comes from the fact that when you turn the cranks without assistance on, you're turning almost everything: the main gear, the intermediate spur gear, and the blue gear - it's the blue gear that has the one way roller bearing for this. Not sure how the BBS02 works in this regard or if it has less drag(?).

Click to expand...

No. Without assistance your are rotating the main gear and the pinion gear. That's all. The one way bearing do not engage the blue gear when you are without assistance. The one way bearing is active when the blue gear is activated by the motor.

https://youtu.be/EsMlBj6ogVQ

Click to expand...

I've read several posts describing the drag as low to almost imperceptible.
It's very noticeable on mine, so I thought the one way bearing could be faulty and would let the blue gear and motor spin.
I measured the voltage of the hall sensors when turning the pedals with assist 0, and didn't see any variation, so I guess the bearing is working fine. However, when I don't have assist I feel like I'm pedalling in the sand with a fat bike, and I use 32mm tyres !
Is there something else than the bearing that could induce excessive drag or is it just another variation between TSDZ2 samples, due to loose tolerances ? I regreased the main gear but it made no difference.

LeftCoastNurd said:

can't you make that gearing 1:1 ? the whole TSDZ2 thing is about detecting the human power of the left, then right, then left crank impulses and using that to tune the e-power. unless you could somehow move those torque sensors to your actual bottom bracket, its just not going to work right with a non-1:1 gearing.

Click to expand...

Well, in any variant, when the moment sensor is in the axis of the pedals, the system must be distinguished when you are just standing on the pedals, or rotating them. In my case, it's not required. I thought it was possible to simplify the algorithm and make the engine work more sensitive.

ferum said:

Well, in any variant, when the moment sensor is in the axis of the pedals, the system must be distinguished when you are just standing on the pedals, or rotating them. In my case, it's not required. I thought it was possible to simplify the algorithm and make the engine work more sensitive.

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well, it is open source, you're welcome to make your own version.

Maybe the developer of the existing firmware can help me. I'll wait for his answer.

LeftCoastNurd said:

ferum said:

Well, in any variant, when the moment sensor is in the axis of the pedals, the system must be distinguished when you are just standing on the pedals, or rotating them. In my case, it's not required. I thought it was possible to simplify the algorithm and make the engine work more sensitive.

Click to expand...

well, it is open source, you're welcome to make your own version.

Click to expand...

+1

It's very unlikely any of the contributors will make a change for just you - especially as it's more complex than you realise since the software is very tied to using the data from the pas and torque sensors to calculate assist levels... But you are perfectly welcome to look at making your own changes...

Here is the info on torque sensor calibration.

https://github.com/OpenSourceEBike/TSDZ2_wiki/wiki/How-to-calibrate-the-torque-sensor

This should allow you to adjust and compensate for your custom implementation of the TSDZ2.

If your new set up is only reading left pedal input and not right side you might be able to edit the firmware to "clone" the left input and apply it to the right side.

beemac said:

+1

It's very unlikely any of the contributors will make a change for just you - especially as it's more complex than you realise since the software is very tied to using the data from the pas and torque sensors to calculate assist levels... But you are perfectly welcome to look at making your own changes...

Click to expand...

No problem. Maybe change the reduction, or I'll move the rotation sensor, or I'll make another frame. If it's that hard.

nukezero said:

Just installed the TSDZ2 36V coaster brake edition on my single speed cruiser bike. I have no throttle.

Couple of major issues: (I was operating mostly in turbo mode)

1) This happened one time but when I was pedaling, all of a sudden, the motor took over and overpowered me. My foot fell off the pedals and the motor kept running! I nearly crashed into the wall! Because i have no hand brakes, I had to try to get my foot back on the pedal and stop the motor.

Very scary! So WTF happened?!?

2) The motor at times was surging. Like it was intermittently engaging and disengaging as I was pedaling. Felt like something is broken. What's going on? (I was in turbo mode)

3) The speed limit setting in the VLCD5 is set to 25 (on). But I could not go more than 15mph. I changed the VLCD5 to empiracal from metric. All motor assists completely stops when I hit 15MPH.

4) There were many times where I got E06 error code. I realized that sometimes it only goes away if I restart it a few times. Also, I need to fully stop pedaling first when turning on the display. Is the E06 error code normal?

Click to expand...

Did u fix this problem? I got exactly the same problem, spot on!

The speed setting is always in kph even with the display in mph. Set it at 40kph and you'll be good.
Sorry to hear about the runaway motor. I don't think rear wheel braking is sufficient for an E bike to begin with. Having it pass through the motor is even worse. It's bad enough depending on a TSDZ2 for power, but braking aslo!

I got out for another ride on my tsdz2 swapped hard tail. This is my second ride on the same charge (48v, 12.5ah). This ride was 19mi, 1500'. So far, I've got 33mi, 2200' on this charge and I'm still showing 45v left. Not sure how much range that's going to equate to.

I'm starting to get more into the rhythm of how to best utilize the motor and be efficient with it. I did the majority of this ride on assist level 6-8. I upped it to 8 towards the end of the ride when the voltage was down around 46v. I'm able to keep the motor around 200-350w of output pretty comfortably at assist level 6 and average. Temps are more manageable in the 150-170 degree range, when I ride it like this, but they definitely creep up from time to time. Once the motor gets up to 160+, it's definitely hard to cool it down. Temps are in the mid to high 60's when getting these results.

So... temps are going to be a pretty serious problem now that things are starting to heat up, so I will definitely be doing the pre-requisite thermal mods to the system to give myself more headroom.
- Silent Thunder Ordinance Aluminum Motor Heat Transfer Shim
- 3.125" OD tubing. I'm trying to find some that's 1/8" wall... most everything is .065" or 1.6mm
- AAB 6w/mk thermal pads
- Artic Silver MX5 paste

I'm hoping that I can get some more stability out of the temps with all of the above mods. I just need to source the right size aluminum tube to cut to shim between the motor and the housing.

To me, the best solution would be to make a cover plate for that side without so much air space inside that pretty tightly hugs the motor housing and the controller and is entirely heat sink, Kind of like a finned differential cover for a car. Bit of a pain in the ass for someone to do a one off, but I'm sure it's one of those things wear a large batch could sell

ebbsocalMTB said:

- 3.125" OD tubing. I'm trying to find some that's 1/8" wall... most everything is .065" or 1.6mm

Click to expand...

The heatsink ring I made on the previous page was 3"OD and 1/8 wall. A pretty standard aluminum tubing size in the US.

yonipacheko said:

nukezero said:

Just installed the TSDZ2 36V coaster brake edition on my single speed cruiser bike. I have no throttle.

Couple of major issues: (I was operating mostly in turbo mode)

1) This happened one time but when I was pedaling, all of a sudden, the motor took over and overpowered me. My foot fell off the pedals and the motor kept running! I nearly crashed into the wall! Because i have no hand brakes, I had to try to get my foot back on the pedal and stop the motor.

Very scary! So WTF happened?!?

2) The motor at times was surging. Like it was intermittently engaging and disengaging as I was pedaling. Felt like something is broken. What's going on? (I was in turbo mode)

3) The speed limit setting in the VLCD5 is set to 25 (on). But I could not go more than 15mph. I changed the VLCD5 to empiracal from metric. All motor assists completely stops when I hit 15MPH.

4) There were many times where I got E06 error code. I realized that sometimes it only goes away if I restart it a few times. Also, I need to fully stop pedaling first when turning on the display. Is the E06 error code normal?

Click to expand...

Did u fix this problem? I got exactly the same problem, spot on!

Click to expand...

THE COASTER BRAKE CONTROLLER DOESN'T WORK WITH A THROTTLE, IT IS NOT DESIGNED TO WORK WITH A THROTTLE.

I'm baffled... either this motor sucks, or something is wrong with mine. Rode the bike to work this morning again... this stupid piece of shit start overheating 3.7mi into my ride, at assist level 6, while maintaining 150-200w of motor power. My ride to work is 6.1 miles total with an elevation gain of 164' total, which mostly comes in the last 3 miles. Ambient temps on my ride were

I definitely regret buying this thing. The information in this thread made it seem at least capable of 200-250w nominal over an hour, and in my experience, it's not capable of anything close to that.



3.7 miles in, and it's starting to shut down due to heat...


.4 miles later, it's toast. been running at 100w of power since then.


I shut it off for 1 mile and just pedaled on my own.


From here, even letting it pull 50-100w of output was causing it to overheat.


So yeah... Where does that leave me? This thing sucks. I'm a tinkerer and I'm for sure willing to mess around with something to make it better or get the most out of it. However, I've got around $1,200 into this conversion and I don't even see a shred of capacity in this thing for any real cycling usage. I'm without a doubt, better off as a cyclist, and even a commuter without this thing on my bike.

I guess what bums me out the most is that I over spent in this case to buy the thing pre-setup for eco-ebike. Those guys did a great job, and provided some of the best pre-purchase customer service I've experienced in a long while (bike industry or otherwise). However, this motor is purely a letdown and if I could do it all over again, I'd just forgo buying a tsdz2 entirely.

So where to now? I'm going to tear this thing down, look for anything obvious and install the temp mods... Once that doesn't work (I'm pretty certain it's not going to work, I can't even get this thing to do 4 miles without overheating)... I guess I'll take it off the bike and sell it. I wish it were at least good enough to sell the bike whole on craigslist and profit off of the Santacruz name and lack of availability... but I can't in good conscious do that with how utterly shit this thing is.

I would not assume that the temp mods won't work. The motor is basically in an insulated housing as it comes. It's not too hard to improve on that.
I would try the mod I posted on page 339 first. It's simple, inexpensive, and makes proper use of both the thermal pads and aluminum sleeve from a design standpoint. It should make a big difference. If that's not enough then external finned heatsinks would be next. They won't do much of anything by themselves. This removes the heat from the part of the motor where it's being created, and transfers it to the air outside the motor. My BBSHD has the motor itself exposed to the air with the cover just over the end. At 1500W no issues. So I don't see this as an impossible situation. You might not be too far from having this finished. But in the US a Luna Cycles BBSHD 1500W kit is the way to go. The thermal shim just sends heat to another insulated cavity. Stuffing it full of thermal pads only cools 1/2 the motor and gets expensive fast if you get the good 12W/mK material.
I got my aluminum from Alro Metals. They sell by the pound, and no minimum purchase. I got about 3 pieces cut for under $10
If you go to a machinist you will get $crewed. They have $pecial machines just for doing that.

ebbsocalMTB said:

I'm baffled... either this motor sucks, or something is wrong with mine. Rode the bike to work this morning again... this stupid piece of shit start overheating 3.7mi into my ride, at assist level 6, while maintaining 150-200w of motor power. My ride to work is 6.1 miles total with an elevation gain of 164' total, which mostly comes in the last 3 miles. Ambient temps on my ride were

I definitely regret buying this thing. The information in this thread made it seem at least capable of 200-250w nominal over an hour, and in my experience, it's not capable of anything close to that.

3.7 miles in, and it's starting to shut down due to heat...

.4 miles later, it's toast. been running at 100w of power since then.

I shut it off for 1 mile and just pedaled on my own.

From here, even letting it pull 50-100w of output was causing it to overheat.

So yeah... Where does that leave me? This thing sucks. I'm a tinkerer and I'm for sure willing to mess around with something to make it better or get the most out of it. However, I've got around $1,200 into this conversion and I don't even see a shred of capacity in this thing for any real cycling usage. I'm without a doubt, better off as a cyclist, and even a commuter without this thing on my bike.

I guess what bums me out the most is that I over spent in this case to buy the thing pre-setup for eco-ebike. Those guys did a great job, and provided some of the best pre-purchase customer service I've experienced in a long while (bike industry or otherwise). However, this motor is purely a letdown and if I could do it all over again, I'd just forgo buying a tsdz2 entirely.

So where to now? I'm going to tear this thing down, look for anything obvious and install the temp mods... Once that doesn't work (I'm pretty certain it's not going to work, I can't even get this thing to do 4 miles without overheating)... I guess I'll take it off the bike and sell it. I wish it were at least good enough to sell the bike whole on craigslist and profit off of the Santacruz name and lack of availability... but I can't in good conscious do that with how utterly shit this thing is.

Click to expand...

Which firmware are you using? I see reports of that issue of overheating with some new firmware.

casainho said:

Which firmware are you using? I see reports of that issue of overheating with some new firmware.

Click to expand...

I am on 1.1.0. I do have field weakening enabled and my cadence is ranging from 80-110. I am wondering if I should disable that... To be honest, I sorta struggle with the explanation of exactly what field weakening is doing. It's a bit over my head at this exact moment.

Retrorockit said:

I would not assume that the temp mods won't work. The motor is basically in an insulated housing as it comes. It's not too hard to improve on that.
I would try the mod I posted on page 339 first. It's simple, inexpensive, and makes proper use of both the thermal pads and aluminum sleeve from a design standpoint. It should make a big difference. If that's not enough then external finned heatsinks would be next. They won't do much of anything by themselves. This removes the heat from the part of the motor where it's being created, and transfers it to the air outside the motor. My BBSHD has the motor itself exposed to the air with the cover just over the end. At 1500W no issues. So I don't see this as an impossible situation. You might not be too far from having this finished. But in the US a Luna Cycles BBSHD 1500W kit is the way to go. The thermal shim just sends heat to another insulated cavity. Stuffing it full of thermal pads only cools 1/2 the motor and gets expensive fast if you get the good 12W/mK material.
I got my aluminum from Alro Metals. They sell by the pound, and no minimum purchase. I got about 3 pieces cut for under $10
If you go to a machinist you will get $crewed. They have $pecial machines just for doing that.

Click to expand...

Thanks for hte feedback. I am planning on doing that mod, I've got the rest of the materials en-route. I do sorta regret not getting the bbshd... but I really, really do like the way this tsdz2 feels and rides tbh. It does feel pretty damn refined and honestly feels a lot like some of the earlier pre-built oem ebikes, yamaha giant trance for example.

If I can get these thermal issues sorted, I'm going to be pretty happy with it overall. It honestly works pretty well as an emtb as I can vary the motor output easily and I have a varied cadence. In situations like commuting, where I'm pedaling at a constant cadence and pulling 200-250, the thing overheats seemingly instantly. Maybe this does start to point to field weakening being a contributor.

I would have to agree that it doesn't look right to overheat that easily. Once it's hot it might stay hot makes sense without cooling. But overheating right away at low power seems wrong.
I own one of each. For South Florida urban riding the power and reliability of the BBSHD wins out. But the TSDZ2 is for guests and it's simpler less brutal power flow has it's charm.

ebbsocalMTB said:

casainho said:

Which firmware are you using? I see reports of that issue of overheating with some new firmware.

Click to expand...

I am on 1.1.0. I do have field weakening enabled and my cadence is ranging from 80-110. I am wondering if I should disable that... To be honest, I sorta struggle with the explanation of exactly what field weakening is doing. It's a bit over my head at this exact moment.

Click to expand...

Maybe this motor is not for you, maybe you should buy another Ebike with a motor from some of the well known brands.

Here in Portugal the law got recently an update and the ebikes can now have a motor up to 1000 watts but the speed limit remains to 25 kms/h, so, anyone can safely have a bigger motor but I am pretty sure this change on the law is to target the cargo bikes <3

casainho said:

ebbsocalMTB said:

casainho said:

Which firmware are you using? I see reports of that issue of overheating with some new firmware.

Click to expand...

I am on 1.1.0. I do have field weakening enabled and my cadence is ranging from 80-110. I am wondering if I should disable that... To be honest, I sorta struggle with the explanation of exactly what field weakening is doing. It's a bit over my head at this exact moment.

Click to expand...

Maybe this motor is not for you, maybe you should buy another Ebike with a motor from some of the well known brands.

Here in Portugal the law got recently an update and the ebikes can now have a motor up to 1000 watts but the speed limit remains to 25 kms/h, so, anyone can safely have a bigger motor but I am pretty sure this change on the law is to target the cargo bikes <3

Click to expand...

Meaning you're saying that this motor isn't for me because I lack the ability/knowledge to get it working properly or that it's not for me because of things specific to my usage and cycling style?

If it's not for me because of ability/knowledge... then I'd suggest it's not for most of the people buying it. I have done pretty absurd amounts of research on this thing basically reading anything that was available. I doubt most, would go down that road and while there are plenty (damn near most) that have more knowledge of electric drive systems... This isn't my first rodeo with engineering, projects, bicycles etc.

If it's not for me due to reasons regarding cycling... that's interesting. I am just struggling because I'm not totally outside of the realm of usage and window of normal conditions here. I didn't expect to be able to have this thing hammer along at 500w all day... I picked up on that much from reading every single post in this thread before buying the motor. I did however expect to be able to motor along at assist level 5-6-7ish at 150-250w of motor power and 150-250w of human power without issue. I'm not sure if that's expecting too much out of diy ebike kits?

The honest truth is that I'm not really willing to trade huge power for rideability. I could easily sink 7k into an ebike... but I'm not looking to fill that niche in my cycling experience at this time. At this point, I'm willing to move this motor over to my commuter, but again... It's making a better emtb then it is a commuter at this point, because I can't get it to sustain the 200w of power for anything more then 4 miles without it overheating. That situation would be worse on a bike where I'd expect it to be able to help me maintain 25-27mph, since I can maintain 20mph on that bike on my own, without the motor.

Regarding Field Weakening in the OSF and general motor RPM.
-I assume that field weakening is the specific setting that allows a cadence above 90rpm. Is that correct?
-What motor RPM (I have an 860c display) is optimum for this motor in terms of heat/efficiency? I frequently look down and see the motor speed indicator colored red/orange on the 860c.
-

In the US safety studies have shown that the frequency and severity of bicycle accidents increases with the difference in speed between the bicycles and motor vehicles. But that seldom translates into laws. They're not bicycles, and they're not motorcycles either. They seem to want to treat them as both and make them totally useless in the process. In Europe where bicycle traffic is normal and expected that might not be so true. But do pedal bikes have a 25kph speed limit anywhere? Do they have their own speed limit at all?

ebbsocalMTB said:

casainho said:

ebbsocalMTB said:

casainho said:

Which firmware are you using? I see reports of that issue of overheating with some new firmware.

Click to expand...

I am on 1.1.0. I do have field weakening enabled and my cadence is ranging from 80-110. I am wondering if I should disable that... To be honest, I sorta struggle with the explanation of exactly what field weakening is doing. It's a bit over my head at this exact moment.

Click to expand...

Maybe this motor is not for you, maybe you should buy another Ebike with a motor from some of the well known brands.

Here in Portugal the law got recently an update and the ebikes can now have a motor up to 1000 watts but the speed limit remains to 25 kms/h, so, anyone can safely have a bigger motor but I am pretty sure this change on the law is to target the cargo bikes <3

Click to expand...

Meaning you're saying that this motor isn't for me because I lack the ability/knowledge to get it working properly or that it's not for me because of things specific to my usage and cycling style?

If it's not for me because of ability/knowledge... then I'd suggest it's not for most of the people buying it. I have done pretty absurd amounts of research on this thing basically reading anything that was available. I doubt most, would go down that road and while there are plenty (damn near most) that have more knowledge of electric drive systems... This isn't my first rodeo with engineering, projects, bicycles etc.

If it's not for me due to reasons regarding cycling... that's interesting. I am just struggling because I'm not totally outside of the realm of usage and window of normal conditions here. I didn't expect to be able to have this thing hammer along at 500w all day... I picked up on that much from reading every single post in this thread before buying the motor. I did however expect to be able to motor along at assist level 5-6-7ish at 150-250w of motor power and 150-250w of human power without issue. I'm not sure if that's expecting too much out of diy ebike kits?

The honest truth is that I'm not really willing to trade huge power for rideability. I could easily sink 7k into an ebike... but I'm not looking to fill that niche in my cycling experience at this time. At this point, I'm willing to move this motor over to my commuter, but again... It's making a better emtb then it is a commuter at this point, because I can't get it to sustain the 200w of power for anything more then 4 miles without it overheating. That situation would be worse on a bike where I'd expect it to be able to help me maintain 25-27mph, since I can maintain 20mph on that bike on my own, without the motor.

Regarding Field Weakening in the OSF and general motor RPM.
-I assume that field weakening is the specific setting that allows a cadence above 90rpm. Is that correct?
-What motor RPM (I have an 860c display) is optimum for this motor in terms of heat/efficiency? I frequently look down and see the motor speed indicator colored red/orange on the 860c.
-

Click to expand...

Having spent the last few days/weeks reading this and related threads, I wonder if the motor is damaged? The original conditions that lead to your overheating have been resolved, but could the magnets have been a little bit burned? The motor would now be working much harder for same output, which another user noted as increased power consumption. Thinking along the lines of power=heat...

Mx