Leaf Gen 1 board

[johu]

Is this the outside-world connector: https://www.digikey.de/product-detail/d ... ND/2273491

?
2.2mm vertical and 3mm horizontal pin spacing.

[langoo]

Is this the outside-world connector: https://www.digikey.de/product-detail/d ... ND/2273491

?
2.2mm vertical and 3mm horizontal pin spacing.

I would say that's the correct connector. Looks really like the one I have.

Just like the drawing suggest from the connector on Digikey is the two screws holding it to the board on the underside, see attachment.

The numbering of the connectors seems also correct.

[johu]

Thats cool, so no salvaging is needed for the Gen1 board then.

Currently fighting with KiCad symbol footprint stuff

[Jack Bauer]

Have you used this service? https://componentsearchengine.com/

They make components for all the major pcb cad packages including kicad.

[langoo]

Just an heads up now when you folks are designing adapterboards. There is a little caviat that Nissan has done with the way cables go from the outside green connector to the inside white connector (the one Johannes found on Digikey). There is not much of the cables going from one number in the green connector to the same number in the white connector. I think this makes it a litle more tricky to design the board regarding how to use the pins on the white connector.

My suggestion is that you use the original needed functions like motortemp, sin, cos, excite, 12V+, GND, IGN and CAN just like Nissan has done on the white connector. In that way are we still able to look back in Nissan maintance manuals and see the correlation of functions on the pins when you look up wiring diagrams and pictures of connectors and so on. An extra little problem is that Nissan don't show the white contact in their manual.

I tried today to filter out the must needed cables between the white and green connector but falled a little short on how I cut the green connector for 6 months ago, the cables are left very short on my green connector. Will try again tomorrow but every one else who are in need of this adapterboard should have a look at their green connector and try to write down the colours and pins between the connectors.

Also have a look at the pinout of the white connector, see attachment, which I can confirm is the correct order.

What do you all think of this thought?

[langoo]

Okay, I did my best to sort out the connection pins between the two connectors, see attachment.

I've also attached the pinout of the green connector from the maintance manual.

[johu]

Getting started on the adapter board. KiCAD was too much trouble so using FreePCB again.
Has anyone found the bus voltage pin?

[johu]

And I could use some help on "CN3"

Pins:

1. nc
2. connected to 3
3. connected to 2
4. bus voltage?? PWM or linear?
5. n/a
6. Fault 1
7. n/a
8. Fault 2
9. 5V
10. nc
11. nc
12. Fault 3
13. Fault 4
14. 12V
15. 5V
16. Fault 5

Can someone with an original controller verifify this? Why 5 faults? Are they open collector, i.e. can I pull them up with a common resistor and trigger the desat pin when one goes low? Is pin 4 the bus voltage or any other pin?

[Jack Bauer]

I'll have a poke around on my inverter next week and see what I can find.

[johu]

Yeah sounds good
So I've wired up all more or less known signals, assuming all 5 fault signals are good when not low. So they have a common pull-up resistor of 10k on the mainboard and 1nF filter cap.
Missing things are the bus voltage and the characteristic of the heatsink temp sensor.
I did a pin map based on Robins table. I'm reusing Nissan pin map and in addition mapped some IO on spare pins. Everything is brought out to the white connector but not to the green one due to a lack of pins.

[Jack Bauer]

If possible keep power,ground and CAN lines the same as oem on the white connector that way I can just drop this straight into my inverter.

[langoo]

If possible keep power,ground and CAN lines the same as oem on the white connector that way I can just drop this straight into my inverter.

We should dubble check the pinout of Johannes board against our inverters which we drive over CAN at the moment.

[johu]

Yes thats what I tried to do. Please check if I succeeded. Any luck poking around?

[johu]

Mounting holes done. Now only bus voltage and general pin verification by someone with an original controller is missing

[Berdi]

[johu]

*Bump* please someone find the DC voltage

[langoo]

*Bump* please someone find the DC voltage

I'll see if I can get some time to search for it this weekend. Do you have any clue how to measure it?

[johu]

You would need to be able to vary your DC bus voltage and then check if one of the pins on CN3 changes proportionally. I have painted the unknown ones in red. Also measure in frequency mode to check if its a PWM signal (like on Gen2).
Measure with a clip and turn on power when the clip is secure to avoid shorting out anything

[Jack Bauer]

I had a look today and could not find an analog signal that seemed to represent dc link voltage. I only had a multimeter so could be some strange pwm thing. I really need a pocket scope:)

[johu]

Damn it.. I mean thanks for checking
Even if it were PWM your multimeter would convert it to a voltage. So now I can either skip DC voltage which would disable meaningful precharge control or wire the remaining pins to a jumper link.

[arber333]

Damn it.. I mean thanks for checking
Even if it were PWM your multimeter would convert it to a voltage. So now I can either skip DC voltage which would disable meaningful precharge control or wire the remaining pins to a jumper link.

FOC doesnt need DC link voltage does it?
You could just make precharge function of time . But there would have to be clear instruction to use such and such resistor!

[johu]

Ok, I added a 3-way jumper that lets you try out 3 possible inputs on CN3 for bus voltage. Also added possibility for pull-up or down resistor.

No, FOC doesn't really need the voltage, at least not per the current implementation.

So Gerber files attached, does anyone with a Gen1 Leaf want to get some boards made?

Mini BOM:
CN1: GT8E-4P-DS
CN2: TE AMP 1318384-4
CN3: GT8E-16DP-DS
CN4: GT8E-12DP-DS
CN5: GT8E-8P-DS
CN6: GT8E-5P-DS
R1: 120 (optional)
R2: 1k2

[langoo]

Damn it.. I mean thanks for checking
Even if it were PWM your multimeter would convert it to a voltage. So now I can either skip DC voltage which would disable meaningful precharge control or wire the remaining pins to a jumper link.

Over CAN-bus do we get the DC-voltage reading so some how is the logic board measuring it.

See my attachments.

This is the PCB that residents the IGBT:s, it looks like an array of resistors in the middle that goes somewhere on the board. I have measured it and there is contact with the incoming positive DC-voltage on that resistor array.

[johu]

That looks very similar to the gen2 driver board. Looks like the other end of those resistors bugger off to the logic section on an inner layer.
I'm sure it must show up somewhere.
Why does the connector have a different pin count to the one on the controller?

[langoo]

That looks very similar to the gen2 driver board. Looks like the other end of those resistors bugger off to the logic section on an inner layer.
I'm sure it must show up somewhere.
Why does the connector have a different pin count to the one on the controller?

I attached an overview of the connectors/colours of the bottom PCB.