Technical Reading List?

[timpe]

I'm new to eBikes but I've been designing electronic hardware for 20+ years. My stuff is digital, usually 3.3V. It's a world away from eBike technology but I (mostly) understand the basics.

With that background are there suggestions for what to read on motors, controllers, displays to get to grips with eBike technology? Friends and family have eBike problems and I would like to be able to suggest routes to diagnosis that go a little beyond "take it to a dealer."

For instance, what does the controller do? It seems to take DC and generate 3-phase sinusoidal power for the motor but is that at approximately battery voltage or is there a step-down before the modulator? Are they all fundamentally compatible except for wiring colours and connectors? Are the integrated controllers compatible? And so on.

"How to diagnose ..." is always welcome.

Thanks

 

[soundwave]

it depends what motors they have as bosch and others use a can bus hand shake so you cant use 3rd party displays and batts and most main stream motors has this.

the other system is uart like what bafang and hub drive systems use.

this is the controller inside my bosch motor so does a lot more than just convert power to 3 phase.

 

[AGS]

Here is an article that you may find interesting to get you started.

One moment, please...

There are experts on the Endless Sphere forum who delve deeply into the technical side of motors, controllers and batteries.

E-bike technology is a combination of Mechanical, Electronic and Electrical Engineering.

I studied Electrical and Electronic Engineering at college and I struggled with Electrical Engineering. My tutor told me that I knew nothing about Electrical Engineering and he was absolutely right.

 

[Sturmey]

I found the document below useful as it gives a good description of a basic controller in terms of its inverter/commutation/pulse width modulation function. Grin technologies also have a 'learn' page.

Learn

Grin Technologies

ebikes.ca

 

[AndyBike]

I just put it all down to some sort of black magic.

 

[Nealh]

Fault finding on generic controllers/ motors hubs or mid drive and peripherals is pretty basic . Mostly involves testing Hall voltage operation and mosfet shorts.
Anything much more then tat then one needs to be micro electronis geek who like playing around with the stuff.

 

[timpe]

Thanks to everyone for the useful advice/help/links.

It seems that the best way to diagnose is to start by checking the wiring harness for wear and tear.

Then test the hall sensors. Conveniently there's a $15 LED box on ebay/amazon to help with this.

Then inspect the BMS for blown MOSFETs and similar.

Then look at the battery output/BMS input. Is there a RC Watt Meter dummy load to help here? Something like 2A at 36V would presumably be enough to verify that the battery has some life.

Then inspect the BMS for blown MOSFETs and similar.

Have I missed anything?

I've been asked to look at a Pendix that provides almost zero assistance! Now the fun begins