Good morning, fine folks of ESN. I’ve gone to the dark side and purchased a scooter for the purposes of commuting. Don’t judge me I was under the impression that it had sinewave controllers in it. I was, sadly, incorrect. It has squarewave controllers and tbh, I fucking HATE the way this thing drives- it’s jerky af and going at pedestrian speeds is near impossible.
My plan is to drop either sinewave escs in there, or, I have a HV MakerX on hand which is way overkill in terms of the rated current but will also do the job.
So, my question is this- When researching if it was possible just to swap out the controller, I read that the motors for sinewave vs squarewave motors are constructed differently. Is this accurate or should I be able to drop in a new controller and, with some tinkering, be able to dramatically improve my driving experience?
For reference, this is the scoot that I bought:
Please help improve my limited understanding of different controllers and how to best move forward. TIA
I’m heavily leaning towards going with a VESC based controller and getting the lights etc… working with a buck convertor and a switch. Ubox makes this little guy that will run the throttle at 3.3v instead of 5 and and is essentially pnp w vescs:
@jack.luis any info on motor detection etc… would be most appreciated
The only real bugaboo is the brake lights. Not sure which solution works best there as I have very ltd enclosure space…
Just run the “Large direct drive hub” (not exactly what it’s called) motor detection. Nothing special, just the same thing as esk8. Use fw6.02, it has improved hub motor performance
Sorry Jack but before I forget, how did you deal with the hall sensors? Presumably, you need to repin them to fit the vesc’s port and I’ll also assume black → gnd and red → 5v but I have zero experience with hub motor hall shit. Many thanks good sir.
that’s all u need to know, white is probably temp, then the rest 3 wires just goes wherever, vesc will sort itself out for the hall sensor pins, hall pins doesn’t need to be in order
keep in mind VESC’s support substantially higher battery current, but often are weaker torque wise (the ones of 100A are too weak i’d say)
the current written on those is just the battery side current, not the phase amps
with 2 FSESC 75100 Alu PCB’s at 120A phase amps each and 42A battery current each, my scooter is weaker in torque at takeoff than it was with my 28A JP controllers
those 28A JP controllers had 220A mosfets lol
i suspect those JP controllers were dumping like 150+A into those motors (peak), the VESCs keeps accelerating the same for much longer though due to the increased peak power obviously, so when the JP’s would get weaker over 30km/h these keep pulling pretty good to 50-60km/h (48V battery, so i’m at rpm limit by the KV now)
This is not entirely accurate. In the case of the D100s from Makerx, they clearly advertise 200 amps of phase current which is plenty and would likely melt the phase wires on the motors. Phase current is largely responsible for torque at low speeds in any case.
Begs the question as to exactly how many phase amps they were programmed to push into the motors. In my case, this is the stock controller:
yeah i know, but i meant if you look outside of the Vesc world they’ve only got the battery side current written on it except for some reprogrammable like Sabvoton, Kelly controllers, ASI, etc.
also my older JP controllers only have an input current shunt (2 copper wire bars), that means it probably pushes as much phase current as it physically can without exceeding the battery max, Lol… without any programming added to it apart from not exceeding the input current, but they’re basic square/trianglewave controllers, not FOC or sinewave
they have No resistors or shunts or anything similar on the phase busses
they’re also quite known to break sometimes, probly because of the kind of currents it does without a true limit
From what I understand some do and some don’t. The ones with the minimotors throttle/display are squarewave which is absolute bollocks considering the pro is supposed to be their premium model but comes with an inferior controller.
I have all the parts for this gutting now and will update this thread with some build pics etc… when I’m done.
yeh i know right… considering how much they cost you’d think they would atleast come with a more advanced controller but i think the reason they still come with a square wave controller is it costs less and it has better punch from a dead dig making it feel faster.
I was under the impression that it had sinewave controllers in it. I was, sadly, incorrect. It has squarewave controllers and tbh, I fucking HATE the way this thing drives- it’s jerky af and going at pedestrian speeds is near impossible.
