Am I to dumb for Open Inverter

[LeafTaco]

Received a Leaf Power pack and a uninstalled open inverter gen2 controller community edition.
Looking at the requirements to put this board in, am I not smart enough to figure this out?
A lot of the pages say refer to instructions and I haven't really found much for step by step install resistor here style instructions.
I keep on looking for instructions and all I find are youtube videos with the board kind of magically installed and it always looks like it has more resistors and stuff on it then the one I have.

Should I try and plow forward, or just buy the thunderstruck VCU?
I consider myself reasonably capable but I have a mechanical background and my couple semesters of circuits and labs are not as memorable as I was hoping.

https://openinverter.org/wiki/Schematic ... structions

This page seems helpful but I guess I'm suppose to just look through those schematics and instructions and know where to stick things?

https://openinverter.org/shop/index.php ... duct_id=57

[johu]

There is a wiki page just for the board, though it is also outdated and shows an oder version that needed you to populate much more components https://openinverter.org/wiki/Nissan_Leaf_Gen2_Board

I assume you have the latest version that just requires fitting the connectors and one optional CAN termination resistor.

[LeafTaco]

Yes, it is making a little more sense how it fits together.
Putting the labels facing together made much more sense.
My sheet didn’t have that nice note. Guess it’s just a lot of soldering and how confident I feel in that.

Glad to hear the one resistor is optional I guess.

[LeafTaco]

Okay, I dove in pulled the plug and went to soldering it all together. My acceess shows a SSID of inverter8 but when powered up. All lights come on red and one blinks. The network is showing up as Prius and none of the passwords I have tried seem to work?

[LeafTaco]

AHA it was prius123. Logged in! woohoo!

[johu]

Oh sorry, seems I included a wifi module intended for Prius. It works just as well just the password was different

[LeafTaco]

Well I got it soldered in and able to connect. ordering parts and pieces to try and spin the EM57 motor bench test next.
Is testing these with a bridge rectifier a terrible idea?
Don't have a battery pack yet.
Probably have enough ebike batteries around I could get up to 200v. don't know if they like being hooked up in series either though.

[MattsAwesomeStuff]

Is testing these with a bridge rectifier a terrible idea?

Ehn... it's certainly more challenging to the inverter circuit than it was designed for. It'll have a gigantic capacitor, but that capacitor is sized for a DC battery which has almost zero voltage change.

The capacitor is a reservoir of energy that prevents the transistors from being starved during switching, which, I dunno, might make them blow up? Black magic box, not sure if that's the right context.

Do note though, that the degree to which the capacitor is sucked dry, is dependent on the amount of power you're pulling from it. So, a non-aggressive proof-of-life bench test is probably within reason.

Everything else on the power grid might not appreciate it much, but, that's a smaller problem.

Depending on what you're doing, a 12v car battery might be just fine, you'll just spin slowly.

I'd say make sure you use a fuse on the AC side, but, meh, it's behind a breaker. Throw in an AC fuse anyways, and maybe a fused plug.

[johu]

Any power source that can't absorb energy is risky, in case you accidentally brake (regen) the motor the energy has nowhere to go. You can turn off regen e.g. with throtmin=0 but it can still happen e.g. when playing with manualiq

So agree with Matt, a battery with fuse and cooker element in parallel to each other is safer.

[LeafTaco]

hmmm, so should be able to turn the motor with just 12v?

All I acomplised today I think was that the board melts if you hook up the 12v and ground backwards so that was fun.

[johu]

Hmm it's reverse polarity protected. What do you think melted?

[LeafTaco]

I will go back to the shop today to check, I think when I put the original plug back in somethin of my soldering job failed or something. it seemed to easy and now that i think about it I don't believe I hooked it up backwards. It did make the a nice little fire ball inside the housing though that was fun.

For replacements if the base board looks all right can i just replace with a main board? https://openinverter.org/shop/index.php ... duct_id=58

[johu]

Oh!

For replacements if the base board looks all right can i just replace with a main board?

Yes, leave a note and I'll flash the Leaf params on it

[LeafTaco]

I’m a little confused where I went wrong. Had the board powered fine with jumpers. Took the old wiring harness. Had snipped pin 42 wire(light green) and the cam is twisted pair and left them dangling. Figured the two grays coming out of the double black and greens splice were just shields and left them hanging. Plugged in the resolver. Turned on and created the fire ball. Will start checking my soldering job on the resolver wires.

Thanks for all the replies!

[LeafTaco]

hmmm looks like I may have put the 7pin and 8 pin in the wrong spots

[johu]

How would that be possible? On your photo it looks correct plus I doubt you can mangle a 16-pin header into 14 holes

[LeafTaco]

ooooohhhh, I think I had two 14 pin headers and not a 16 pin header. So i threw it together and didn't even notice i missed the two 5v terminals where the 16 pin header is suppose to plug in to. The pins were just hanging in air above the plug board.
Sound like a cause for failure?

[johu]

Sound like a cause for failure?

No, 5V pins are on many other connectors.
Can you please attach pictures directly to your post (attachment in Full Editor). When I click these imgur ones I only see a blank page plus they tend to vanish.

This explosion looks a bit like you fed 12V into one of the ULN outputs

[MattsAwesomeStuff]

Can you please attach pictures directly to your post (attachment in Full Editor). When I click these imgur ones I only see a blank page plus they tend to vanish.

I don't know what's been up with IMGUR lately, or maybe it's the phpBB plugin to display them.

It's adding some # code after the url. Delete that, and click on the image, it takes you to imgur's website with that picture, and then get the actual image file by clicking on it and bringing up full size, it's far larger:

For example, this should work:



[edited to add, NOPE, it screwed it up. Yeah, it's phpBB messing it up. I fed it the straight image URL and it spat back an album thing]

Same exact thing but me forcing the link to appear the way I wrote it: https://i.imgur.com/QM0PDO1.jpeg

[LeafTaco]

oh, yeah, well I guess I'm too dump for a Forum...
Try this again here.

[johu]

Yes I see it now and no that will not cause an issue

[uhi22]

With these kind of connectors it is easy to plug them 2.54mm next to the intended position, in every direction. Maybe this could cause some unintended current pathes.