Damien's Task List

[Jack Bauer]

Back in the day I worked with a metalworker called Dave. We'll refer to him as Metal-Dave as I know quite a few different Dave's. A typical day would end with us returning to the workshop where Metal-Dave had a small office and an answerphone. He would put on a kettle to make tea and then hit the play messages button. It would go something like this :

"Hi Dave It's ..." .....beeepp..."Message deleted"...

"Dave I need ..." .....beeepp..."Message deleted"...

"Dave you might remember ..." .....beeepp..."Message deleted"...

Now I could never quite understand this as if Metal-Dave kept deleting his messages how was he always so busy? I think I understand now 20 years later so here is a list of my current projects just in case anyone can't figure out how I'm not scrambling over myself to help them with their project.

EV Builds :

E46 Touring with Nissan Leaf Gen 1 drivetrain

E65 735i with Lexus GS450h drivetrain

P38 range rover with those f$%king enova motors that won't leave me alone.

E39 that needs a whole new drivetrain thanks to hose f$%king ansaldo motors and enova junk. Got a nice Siemens 1pv5135 and 530d 6 speed to go in there...

E39 no.2 install Lexus mgr into rear subframe , use prius gen 3 inverter and find batteries somewhere...design oil cooling system

Toyota / Lexus :

Gs450h vcu development including added 2nd can channel , integrate with isa ivt shunt and add wifi web server interface and write code to read temps and shift gears and test it all out on the track on 29th feb......wait....oh s%&t that's this month....

Prius gen 3 board dev and firmware to drive boost converter as charger and improve resolver circuit (ie ripoff Johanne's design....again)

Prius Gen 2 V2 with jlc smd build (you thought I'd forgotten didn't you internet!!)

Nissan :

VCU dev and jlc build and wifi web interface

Tesla :
M3 pcs controller sw and test and integrate into e46 build.

M3 du hacking (supposed to be one on the way from canada but I've heard all that before)

Test tag connect jtag on new rev pcbs

Learn stm32 C++ to dev code for new gen 2 charger board (silly brain too slow)

Support customers on forum


Misc :
Volvo inverter (possibly sic) reverse engineer and logic board dev v2 as i f%^ked up v1 due to them using hall sensors on the pcb for current sensing. (Those clever Swedes)

siemens elfa inverters reverse engineer.

Learn esp8266 programming (silly brain too slow) for wifi development

buy a front wheel drive car

install gen3 prius transaxle in a front wheel drive car and see if it works with stock logic board like lexus.

Do paperwork to get cars road legal

Make videos

Buy new camera as gopro dying

Eat


sleep

[Kevin Sharpe]

This is clearly unsustainable

[MattsAwesomeStuff]

I hate to ask without having anything to offer, but...

Is there anything the community can do to help?

[Jack Bauer]

Oh yeah forgot :

Tesla :
Support Yuriy Logvin in developeing and testing Powerwatcher for Tesla (and indeed any opeininverter based logic).

[Bigpie]

I can help sleep and eat on your behalf.

[tom91]

just a quick question, why so many project cars? As building a car seems to take a lot of your valuable time and keeps you away from doing the hardware/software/reverse engineering.

Did you list the priority ones?
Is it not enough for you to lay the ground work, prove you can spin a motor and the let others bash their heads against the wall for a bit and then get back to it?

I unfortunately have ran into the same thing with my 'Day Job' and BMS development, so many nice things you want to get involved with yet there are only so many hours in a day. I force myself to not work on a Sunday, except answering emails.

[tmotion]

If there is one thing I learned over the years with all my project cars: if you have a lot they will all become dust collecting, 90% finished, non satisfying pieces of steel.

I got rid of the majority of my project cars (BMW e21, bmw e30 trackday, bmw e39 touring, peugeot 205 gti convertible, peugeot 306 convertible, VW t3 westfalia). And yes this still hurts. Almost everyday I’m thinking of filling the garage with nice new projects (Mazda RX8, Lancia Delta integrale, Peugeot 205gti, bmw z3 coupe, bmw 8series, bmw 2002, Alfa GT, Alfa Brera) , but I can resist.

Nowadays working on one or 2 projects (VW t3 westfalia and BMW e30 touring) at the time is much more statisfying and really gives me energy instead of annoyances. And once one project is finished I can reward myself with a new one.

I really appreciate all your hard work, but choose your battles and maybe from a commercial perspective choose ones which will payoff or give you energy!

Best of luck!

[arber333]

I can help with making a working charger from Toyota gen 3 inverter. Wifi interface is allready there and working, courtesy of Dima.

Also now that Johannes has FOC under control i can make a board for both sides of Volt inverter for the omph we all want...

Here is some info on Volvo inverter. You might need google translate from hungarian...
https://villanyautosok.hu/2018/07/04/vo ... r-javitas/

I did have an unfortunate accident burning my hands so will continue after i get myself up to health...

[Jack Bauer]

Fortunately I have Kevin around to remind me of some forgotten tasks :

Finish the E65 and drive to fullycharged live in uk in May.

Train 100 people how to do ev conversions.

The reason for so many cars is the need to prove the designs. eg the E46 touring is the test bed for the leaf inverter controller, Tesla pcs controller and Johannes new bms.

[tom91]

Train 100 people how to do ev conversions.

The reason for so many cars is the need to prove the designs. eg the E46 touring is the test bed for the leaf inverter controller, Tesla pcs controller and Johannes new bms.

Id say focus on the Training as passing on any knowledge you have to others will just help grow the community and is the best bang for the buck.

Unfortunate when rushing projects to get them done mistakes happen and that does not really help things along.

[Kevin Sharpe]

Fortunately I have Kevin around to remind me of some forgotten tasks :

Where would you be without me

[Kevin Sharpe]

On a more serious note the 'community' must step up to support the open source products that are available through open inverter. The recent posts on the Tesla SDU support thread (here) are a good example which could be answered by almost anyone who has used the Open Inverter software on any hardware variant.

If we do not improve our support of the developers then we will lose people like Damien and all the efforts we're making to recruit new members will come to nothing.

Damien gave me a shocking GitHub statistic today... despite the many thousands of forks of his designs and the hundreds of thousands of downloads he's not had a single contribution from third parties in almost 10 years

[johu]

I think people need to be aware that whoever publishes their work open source is not some second quality engineer who couldn't find a job. Publishing open source is the best way for non-business people to make an impact. Because you don't have to deal with all that nerve wrecking bullshit of bringing stuff to "the market". Those on the forum who have will know what I mean.
It doesn't mean that you're getting second class engineering here. Both Damien and me are well educated, experienced engineers. Things might not look as polished as commercial products but still outrun some commercial products out there in terms of engineering quality. And you're getting this for free. Think about it for a minute.

I'm 100% ok with the fact that most community members play the role of "user". I enjoy that many users make use of open inverter knowledge and products because otherwise open inverter would be irrelevant. But I'm not so overly thankful that I enjoy repeating the documentation to people who are too lazy to dig around a bit. Or who think it is in my interest as a "business man" to grant great support - for free.

I am explicitly NOT a business man. All I care about is to stay afloat financially to be able to devote as much time as possible to the open inverter projects. By devoting time I mean proper engineering work: hardware & software design, setting up production, testing stuff on the road. I enjoy supporting people who see the value of my support - and pay for it. If YOU pay me it means I don't have to hunt around for money elsewhere and thus have the time to help you. If you ask for help and are not willing to pay, you are stealing what is most precious to me: time. Simple, right? (This does not apply to quick yes/no questions prior to actually buying hardware)

And then theres the people who hide their support requests by offering to "promote me" and get me out of the "tinkerer scene". Listen: I WANT to be in the tinkerer scene. I don't give a damn about the next big thing or the greatest business opportunity ever in history.

That said, these things occur rarely on my end, but they do. They seem to occur more frequently on Damiens side and I can very much relate to this situation. It can kill a mans health.

Having founded "Another homebrew AC controller" 11 years ago I can certainly say that there have been contributions. If Damien doesn't mind I'd call his work a contribution. It has fed tons of knowledge back to the original project. There is Dimas web frontend. Arbers Ampera Designs. I'm getting lots of help with the BMS lately. (If anyone feels left out, I'm happy to edit this list ) But you won't see any of this in my github statistics. Only Nails bug fix commits will show up there.

To sum it up: we are the developers. We don't owe anything to anybody

[Jack Bauer]

Agreed 100% Johannes. I too have no desire to be a businessman. The Tesla stuff seems to draw the goons in my direction.
I just want to be left alone to reverse engineer ev parts, design boards and drive der Panzer to Munich.

[MattsAwesomeStuff]

I was going to try to offer some advice, and then I realized, I lack the context.

I'm curious, why do you guys (Damien / Johannes) do this? Like, if you had to make a pie chart of how important each thing is to you, what's your motivation?

- You enjoy the act of reverse engineering itself.
- You enjoy designing circuits.
- You like enabling people to build EVs cheaply at home.
- You want to help the planet and eliminate waste by reusing existing hardware.
- You want to help the planet by encouraging EVs in general, and the current barrier is cost.
- You like hands-on building EVs.
- You like being a part of/leader in a community.
- You want to leave a legacy
- You like teaching others.
- You like enabling EV businesses to have conversion paths that are affordable to their customers.
- etc, whatever aspects you actually enjoy.

...

For example, Tom suggested that it's wasteful to spend your time building EVs, that you should instead "get more done" by just doing the reverse engineering. The first thing I thought when I read that was "Maybe Damien loves building EVs. Maybe that's the true passion, and everything else up to that point is just obstacles in the way of accomplishing that task, and him being open source with his reverse engineering is just an afterthought/courtesy he gives the rest of us." In which case, fill your fleet.

Or, maybe it's the other way. Maybe building the EVs is the obstacle and the chore, and the real passion is reverse engineering. The actual building is only done to begrudgingly test out and refine the electronics. And the open source is just a casual "might as well share it since I got it done." In which case, yeah, maybe stop physically building so many EVs.

Or maybe the sharing and making a difference is the real passion, and both the reverse engineering and the building are the obstacles to having something worth sharing that would make a difference. In which case, scrap the Enovas and the Siemens efforts, pick one total FWD (Leaf, Prius, Yaris, Corolla, whatever) and one RWD option (Lexus), and maybe one high end (Tesla). Point being that provided that the supply of crashed EVs exceeds the demand for DIY, no one needs a specific conversion, they can shop around for the one that's been developed in the style they need. (I.E. I'd love to see a Prius Gen2 board, but, other than my personal benefit since I'm already invested in the hardware, no reason to split focus from the Gen3).

Or maybe it's all 3 of those, but one of them much more important than the others.

Anyway, knowing what parts of the process are desirable and undesirable might help the community target what's most important to support.

[johu]

Good questions.
In the beginning I was just thrilled by the ability to write a few lines of code and thereby control the dynamics of a multi-ton vehicle. And after some practice it would actually behave in the way I predicted. I got started 11 years ago solely for that. No saving the planet, no legacy, nothing else.

Then came the showoffy state. I liked what I had created, I liked what other open source projects have achieved. So it was clear to me: this tech is not gonna be hidden behind some paywall, it will be out there for everyone to see.

then came the feedback state. People commented on my work, some were amazed by the simplicity of my implementation. (Some got nervous because they saw their proprietary business endangered). Thats when I thought, hey, lets take this a little further. I was thrilled by the fact that people were grasping the very principle of motor control. That I helped demystify it.

Then people started spending money on my kits. The New Electric Leaf motor donation came in. People were putting money where their mouth is. And most of all I realized that we no longer needed to spend time blowing up power stages. It was all out there. For a fraction of the price you would have paid 5 or even 10 years ago. Vehicle conversion was actually becoming a viable option in favor of buying a car. Plus no resources need extracting. The cars are there, the drive trains are getting increasingly plentiful on scrapyards and so are the batteries.

Now I'm starting to see open source as a utopia. The vision of a world were creativity beats money. Money focused economy brings up strange patterns. Watch the "right to repair" videos by Louis Rossman. In the western world most of us are saturated with stuff. Ya know like a MOSFET at 25V gate tension. Yet economy must grow, so corporations sell stuff that breaks. As long as they are, supposedly, forced to grow they have to screw you over.

And thats where open source comes in. Had it not been for Linux and the Sane project I would not be using my Plustek flatbed scanner anymore, because Plustek decided not to make Windows drivers later then Windows XP.

So yes I have gotten all political and see open source communities as counter weights to an increasingly bullshitty capitalistic economy. Who promotes larger cars as we're running out of resources, or better, disposal space.

Yet all this idealism has to stand on a healthy foundation. I/we all have to remain in a state where we can do this. You know, eating, paying rent and other pesky things. Keeping your body and mind healthy by getting away from your computer every now and then.

My vehicle conversions are proving grounds. I don't exactly enjoy crawling around under the car while it freezing cold. But if I don't, I cannot create software that works. I wouldn't take on a conversion project for the fun of it.

If you want to help, get on Patreon and tell others to do so. If you know a better platform, let us know. Work on the documentation, add pictures and plots. Browse around and see what can be improved.
If you want to earn your share, get boards made and sell them. Whatever you do, nobody owes you. For me that is one of the core open source principles. Contribute, don't trade.

[arber333]

Let me answer that Damien .

It is the feeling that if you design something without testing on yourself and to offer it to someone is just not as much acomplishment than if you validate design yourself. It is just how EE and ME types are wired . Myself included...

[joromy]

But why are you selling the boards so cheap, Damien / Johannes / Tom?
Sell them at higher prize, and give reasonable support.

I'm not that person that like to sponsor projects, without getting something back.
But I was happy to pay 2x EUR 750 for the Tesla charger boards, when they had that prize.

If you want to build it your self, don't do it! Buy it from Johannes, Damien or Tom!

It will "never" be cost effective to build it yourself.

[johu]

I want boards to be as accessible as possible. Leaf boards can be bought with support included. And your comment spawned an idea. Now the service can be bought separately. I don't want to force anyone to buy service they don't need.

[Jack Bauer]

When I was selling Tesla drive unit boards at 1,500 Euros and providing 1:1 support it consumed huge amounts of my time answering the same questions day in day out. Then someone makes a mistake and blows a board or corrupts the flash or whatever. More time and effort needed from me. This would have been fine if I was selling one or two boards a month but these things go like crazy. Also, people will be lazy if I'm supporting them. Why bother to learn if I'm paying Damien. I have backed away from the support simply because in sensible terms no amount of money would pay me.

Johannes again makes some very relevant points. I'll throw in a few more. We are in a throw away world. That needs to change. I want to be a part of that change and enable it in my own way. Back in 2014 I got a siemens motor and dmoc inverter from evtv/newelectric.My first ever AC motor and inverter. I opened the inverter, said f$%k that I'm not using this thing in my car because if I do and it breaks I can't fix it. Then I found Johannes. He promised ac motor control for under 300 euros with a few through hole parts and by the way all the source material is there for free. I'm sold.

Then came the Tesla drive units. Ohhhh nooo this is soooo complex we couldn't possibly reveal how we do it. I ripped off Johannes's design and stuck it in a drive unit. Motor spins. The rest is history. Lots of mistakes and blown inverters along the way but I don't hide that or pretend I didn't screw up. I had a guy from one of the courses last year (model s owner) get in the panzer very skeptical that an open source control board could possibly make a car move. I push the throttle a little and he's trashing about screaming like a child. That's why I do it. Model 3 DU will be easy now we have FOC.

Toyota / Lexus is next. I love the Toyota engineering. It's as if they thought about some moron like me might try and tell their power stage to do something stupid. Johannes and I spoke a few times about designing a power stage for the inverter. It's a big task. Now we don't have to thanks to our automotive sponsors.

[Jack Bauer]

Case in point :
https://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/s ... 02225.html