Leaf Gen 1 board

[johu]

Ok, installed version 5 now, looking good!
Damien, same for me with eagle. But since the free version is restricted to 100x80 I have to move

[doobedoobedo]

Excellent. I started on eagle too, but took the plunge to use kicad exclusively after needing a 4 layer board.

It is possible to run designspark under wine. I'll see if I can find a link to the instructions. It's how I've used it. I do understand the reluctance to change from something you've got so much time invested in.

[celeron55]

I tried designspark on wine and it wasn't too difficult to get it running and open damien's boards using it. Can't comment on long term stability. I think they even had a semi official tutorial for the install.

[Kevin Sharpe]

Ok, installed version 5 now, looking good!
Damien, same for me with eagle. But since the free version is restricted to 100x80 I have to move

Going forward it would be useful to promote a 'preferred' CAD tool for open inverter developments. Can we all agree this is KiCad and that we start a common library on github for any custom parts that we create in the future?

I appreciate this doesn't help Damien and his investment in designspark but maybe if the rest of us use KiCad it will make his transition easier in the future?

[johu]

Yeah I'd definitely vote for KiCAD. Just doing the first steps in it and it seems really intuitive and I could easily find answers to beginners questions on the web (good user base).

Now, back to the leaf board some questions arose:
1. Where is the bus voltage?
2. What is CN1?
3. Are there 3 current sensors?
4. What is the "good" level of the fault signals on CN3? Can I just have them on a common 5V pull up (wired-AND) and fault out if one goes low?
5. Do you know any of the other signals on CN3?
6. Pin pitch of CN2?
7. Where is the motor temp sensor connected? Is it the same as in Leaf2?

[doobedoobedo]

KiCAD is a good choice for any OSHW project, the problem is that there is always a learning curve with any new-to-you piece of software and also some, like Damien, have many years invested in another tool.

Some of the footprints are up on my github, including the gen-2 proprietary leaf connector.

And finally I think this is the guide I used to get DS running in Ubuntu https://designspark.zendesk.com/hc/en-u ... with-Wine-

[langoo]

Yeah I'd definitely vote for KiCAD. Just doing the first steps in it and it seems really intuitive and I could easily find answers to beginners questions on the web (good user base).

Now, back to the leaf board some questions arose:
1. Where is the bus voltage? If you mean 12V+ then they are on pin 39,40.
2. What is CN1? Temperature sensor on pin 1 and 3
3. Are there 3 current sensors? Yes, they are on CN4 and are three in total.
4. What is the "good" level of the fault signals on CN3? Can I just have them on a common 5V pull up (wired-AND) and fault out if one goes low? Check the schematics I sent you on email before, maybe they have the answear
5. Do you know any of the other signals on CN3?
6. Pin pitch of CN2? 2.2 mm is the pitch.
7. Where is the motor temp sensor connected? Is it the same as in Leaf2? It's the same connector on the motor, the tempsensor comes in on pin 15 on CN2.

[johu]

Cool, thanks
1. no I mean a signal that represents the high voltage level
4. Yes they are all pulled up to 5V, does that mean 5V=good?
7. The temp sensor must have 2 pins, what is the other one connected to?

[langoo]

Cool, thanks
1. no I mean a signal that represents the high voltage level.
That's over my paygrade to figure out
4. Yes they are all pulled up to 5V, does that mean 5V=good?
Sounds reasonable but maybe someone else on the forum have better knowledge
7. The temp sensor must have 2 pins, what is the other one connected to?
Pin 14 on CN2 is GND for tempsensor

[johu]

7. Thanks

[johu]

BTW does anyone know what the large PNP power trannies are used for on Nissan original boards?

[Teknomadix]

removed

[johu]

Right. If it were a PNP/NPN pair I would have said resolver excitation. But two PNP...

[kiwifiat]

Pure speculation, precharge and charge relay drivers for the battery pack. At least that was my thoughts when I saw a similar pair on the gen2 board.

[Jack Bauer]

No they dont use the inverter for contactor control.

[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.