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Welcome to the openinverter.org Wiki Site. Everyone registered at the forum can login here with the same username and password and can make changes.

Before you begin:

Please take the time to read. The information provided on this wiki and the support forums is intended as information only. The Open Inverter project and it's contributors take no responsibility for how you use the information contained within these pages, nor any liability for injuries, or death, that may result from your actions.

You undertake your project at your own risk.

Introduction

Open inverter is a sueit of open source hardware and software projects for building, modifying and controlling a variety of power electronics.

The projects started from Johannes Hübner building a opensource ac motor controller.

The project now has spanned over many different areas in ev and hybrid vehicles components, such as:

  • AC motor controllers
  • 1-3 phase power converters
  • dc/dc converts
  • buck/boost converters
  • battery management systems

.

With the rising popularity and avalibity of hybrid and electric vehicles, there is a growing supply of parts. The open inverter community's goal is to repurpose many of these components for ev conversions and other projects.

The open inverter community is growing and moving quite quickly, to stay up-to-date with the latest developments and findings, please check out the forums

consider contributing to www.patreon.com/openinverter and to https://www.evbmw.com/

The open inverter motor controller project consists of three main aspects:

Hardware Firmware Web Interface
The design and development of the control hardware based around an STM32F103 chip. This provides the control signals to the power stage and on to the attached components. The development of the code that goes on the STM32F103 chips and determines, amongst other things what signals are sent to the power stage and the attached components. Using an ESP8266 chip, the development of a simple web based interface to adjust the parameters on the firmware chip and to display values returned from the chip, for example motor speed (RPM).

Getting Started

Inverter variants available:

Open Inverter (Core Project)

Open Inverter Related Projects / Control Boards

core universal hardware and software components custom hardware and software designed to work with particular components.

which are based on the core open inverter hardware or software stack.

Open Inverter Hardware
Tesla Small Drive and Large Drive Units:

commonly there is a large drive unit and small drive unit available.

These combine the inverter and motor into a single package. The

control boards for these replace the existing control board within them.

Lexus GS450h Inverter / VCU:

the GS450h provides a gearbox (where the motors are located)

combined with the original inverter, this board looks to control

the inverter and the gearbox itself to provide a powerful set up

suitable for rear wheel drive set ups, replacing the existing

longitudinally mounted gearbox.

Prius Generation 3 Inverter:

a cheap available inverter from the popular Prius hybrid, this

board goes inside that inverter and allows you to control the features of it.

Open Inverter Software
Auris/Yaris Inverter:

similar to the Prius board, there's subtle differences between them and

therefore the need for a separate board.

Nissan Leaf VCM:

this vehicle control board plugs into the Nissan Leaf inverter externally

and controls it via CAN

Nissan Leaf Gen2 Board

replaces the nissan OEM logic board with a rev 3 openiverter board for full control

All Control Boards / OEM Inverters
CAN communication

Common across boards is the ability to communicate with a CAN Bus, which is a 'control area network' or a technical way of saying how various components, sensors, controls, etc communicate with one another within the car. Read more about CAN Communication

There is also a project to standardise the messages across the various control boards, read more

Use inverter as a battery Charger

Both the open inverter and some OEM inverters can be used as a battery charger, further saving on component costs. You can read more about how the open inverter and the theory of charging here

Further Components

Once you have the inverter, you will need additional components for your EV conversion:

Existing information on these items can be found on the EV Conversion Parts page.


FAQs

Open Inverter CAN std.

Glossary of Terms

Legalities

Different countries have different legislation, if you want you car to certified for the road in your country please take the time to review this section.

Conversion Projects

OEM Parts