openinverter forum

I recently bought an inverter (along with an accompanying M57 motor) with a circular connector. Any idea if this is the so called gen3 or something else? Model year is 2018 and it bolts right on the motor with the phase busbars connecting directly to the motor.
Is there a pinout for this floating around somewhere?
Also, any idea if the CAN db is the same as for the more common inverter version with the rectangle connector?
I would like to start by trying the control of the OEM control board via CAN before hacking inside.

Any help is much appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Kelju wrote: ↑Sat Aug 22, 2020 7:14 pm Any help is much appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Photo's of the inverter and any labels would help identify the parts.

As far as I've been able to find out...

Gen1 inverter; separate from motor & connected with cables. DC/DC, junction box and charger separate. Cast Aluminium upper case.

Gen2 inverter; bolted to top of motor, busbar connection. Junction box, DC/DC and charger on top. Silver upper case.

Gen3 inverter; bolted to top of motor, busbar connection. Junction box, DC/DC and charger on top. Black upper case.

Here you can see the label on the Part and how the connector looks.

That sure looks like a Leaf inverter with a weird connector. I guess it must be gen 3.

Looks like they dropped the connector Toyota uses and switched to one from the round connector series they've been using in the PDM for all this time.

Interesting. Will you open it? Would be cool to have a drop-in board for that as well

Kelju wrote: ↑Sun Aug 23, 2020 6:07 am Here you can see the label on the Part and how the connector looks.

291A0-5SA1A is from the 2018-19 Leaf (see here)

johu wrote: ↑Sun Aug 23, 2020 12:22 pm Interesting. Will you open it? Would be cool to have a drop-in board for that as well

Here you go! I popped it open and took a few pictures.
Looks like a DIY-friendly assembly to me.
Just let me know what you need.

Very neat. 650V/800A IGBTs. Otherwise I see 2 current sensors, I assume 5V models as earlier. For designing an adapter board I'd need an inverter on the table. Unless you want to do it using the Gen2 adapter board as a template

EDIT: relevant signals on the inverter side are
- 6 PWM channels
- 2 currents (easy)
- Bus voltage
- Heatsink temperature
- Fault signals

To the outside world you mainly need to find the 6 resolver wires, motor temperature, CAN and power supply.
Would the adapter board with V3 mainboard on top physically fit inside the enclosure?

Wow they really redesigned the entire thing. Looks simpler, cheaper to manufacture and more repairable.

Cool, it looks simpler. Allmost like ready to take a openinverter board. Nice IGBTs

First session of reverse engineering done tonight.
I am quite confident about the current sensor pins.
There is a HC240 octal buffer with 6 channels occupied and two left NC. I assume these are the IGBT control signals. I will try to track the wires down to the driver board next and figure out the specific channel allocation along with what is Hi and Lo.
Quite difficult to find the IGNSW at the VCU connector.

I have not been able to put so much hours on this so the progress has been slow. Anyway, there is progress!
I was able to reverse engineer everything needed, except the IGBT temperature.

There are three isolation amplifiers on the IGBT drive board and one of them is measuring the DC-link voltage. When measuring from the control board interface connector, the ratio is 122V/V.
I have not figured out what the second one is meant for.
The third connects to the middle IGBT NTC. The problem is that I have not found where the temperature is routed on the interface connector.

There are three unknown pins left on the interface connector.
One seems to be high impedance and floats at 0V.
The two others seem to have a weak pullup to 5V.

I have not yet heated the board to see If the voltage starts to drop.
I just thought that at room temperature the voltage would not sit so high...
How is the temp measurement configured on the Gen1 or Gen2?

Kelju wrote: ↑Thu Sep 10, 2020 6:53 pm I have not figured out what the second one is meant for.
The third connects to the middle IGBT NTC. The problem is that I have not found where the temperature is routed on the interface connector.

There are three unknown pins left on the interface connector.
One seems to be high impedance and floats at 0V.
The two others seem to have a weak pullup to 5V.

Good work!
Your NTC might go into some comparator chip and run to drivers as a digital Fault pin?
Also high impedance pin is usually used for Fault pin as a failsafe input. In case of normal operation fault transistor would pull this down and grab it. When fault would happen transistor would release and signal would float even in the case of main uC brownout.

Kelju wrote: ↑Thu Sep 10, 2020 6:53 pm How is the temp measurement configured on the Gen1 or Gen2?

Gen2 has IGBT temperature as PWM signal

Once again I need to ask some info on the Gen2 for reference.
The phase current sensors look very similar between the Gen3 and Gen2. I have not measured the output signals of the Gen3 sensors yet, but I assume that for redundance there are two signals swaying opposite direction per sensor. Another possibility is that there is one output with a narrow but more accurete current range and the other is for high current with less accuracy.
Can anyone confirm how this is on the seamingly similar Gen2 current sensor?
If the two signals are the same with opposite directions, which one do I choose to connect to the V3 mainboard phase current input?

Either is fine, as you would just have to change the sign of ilXgain to compensate

How should I connect the resolver connections sin- and cos- to the External header on the V3 mainboard?
Do I need the resistor divider made with R11 (510R) and R1 (220R) with the Leaf motor?

Kelju wrote: ↑Fri Oct 09, 2020 3:25 pm How should I connect the resolver connections sin- and cos- to the External header on the V3 mainboard?
Do I need the resistor divider made with R11 (510R) and R1 (220R) with the Leaf motor?

Yes, connect to that resistor (Pin 2). Any resolver needs to be hooked up like that because it outputs AC. And we need that AC to swing around 1.6V

Thanks for the quick reply. At this point I should probably let you know that I am designing an adapter board (for the V3.4 mainboard).
There is only 14mm space between the top surface of the original PCB and the top cover of the housing. The 80mm x 80mm mainboard can be fitted between the input and output connector, but what is the height of the V3.4 mainboard?
I guess the highest component on the board is C7.
My plan is to use pass-through receptacle connectors on the bottom side of the adapter to accept the 2.54 pitch male pins. This is the only possibility with such a height restriction. What is the length of the male pins on the mainboard?
Other possibility would be to just solder the male pins directly on the adapter, but I would like to maintain the possibility to replace a faulty mainboard.

How about both boards on the same level, two sets of male headers next to each other and a very short length of ribbon cable. Common construction in scientific equipment.

According to the webshop photo of the community edition V3.4 mainboard, there is a two-row pin strip included (although the boar on the picture already has the pin strips soldered) Am I right to assume that the pin strips are to be soldered by the user? If this is right, then I can flip the mainboard around. Does not really save any space in height, but finding suitable pin receptacle connectors will be much easier.
Any info on the maximum height of the V3.4 mainboard?

The pin strip with counterpart already lifts the board by 11mm. The board at its highest (the cap indeed) is another 12mm. So only soldering the board directly to the adapter board would work.
I felt the urge to design a simplified, lower profile board for a while now... Like only CAN comms, resolver exciter, comparator.

EDIT: The cap is 10.4mm in height so you can indeed mount the board upside down for a total height of 12.6mm

Just to make this clear. The capacitor alone is 10.4mm, right? Then there is the standard 1.6mm FR4 PCB with a single sided assembly, so no components on the bottom side, right? Then there are the pin strip pins which have the shorter pin end (the one going through the PCB) length 3mm. From this 3mm, 1.4mm will stick out of the board on the bottom side. Hence, the minimum total height of the stack is 10.4mm+1.6mm+1.4mm=13.4mm.
I measered 14mm clearance from the original PCB top surface to the housing top cover fixing flange surface. On the top cover inner surface there is a lot of casting texture/features to make the part rigid. I measured the distance between the lowest extensions of the cover and the flange surface with a clearance gauge and found that there is an additional 1.15mm of clearance.
This all means that I have a total of 15.15mm to play with.
When placing the V3 board upside down, 1.75mm of clearance is left between the pins and the cover.
The distance between the V3 board PCB surface and the cover will be 3.15mm. This will not be enough to fit the four fixing crews to the corners of the V3 board.
So here comes the final outcome of the analysis and probably the way forward to choose.
The V3 board will be placed upside down on the adapter with the pin header and the receptacle lifting the V3 PCB bottom surface to 11mm.
This gives a total height of 11mm+1.6mm+1.4mm=14mm and a clearance of 1.15mm to the top cover of the housing. No fixing screws are needed as some elastic gap spacer like a piece of poron can be applied on the V3 board.

Yes that sounds good, can't spot errors on your calculation.