Kelly controls throttle response much smoother
I just replaced the controller in my 3500li with a kelly controller and the first thing I noticed is a HUGE difference in throttle response. The kelly is super smooth compared to the stock unit. The speed is the same. I'm going to try hooking up the regen braking tomorrow. The owner of the company is a great guy he invited me over to his house and then even came over to my house to help when I had trouble getting it working. A real class act. Here's a funny thing though. We were both trying to figure out what the green and yellow wires were (which I later realized was the high/low speed switch) since they were puting out 81v and there was nothing to hook them to, we didn't hook them up. So later I get it mounted and take off to see how fast she'll go. I have it in low speed and I get up to at least 45mph, so I get real excited thinking how fast will it go in high speed mode. So I go back get a jacket (suns going down and it's gettin cold) Going to a better road to see what the high speed does. Still kind of giddy from the whole experience I never thought of those two wires. I get out on a good stretch of road and let her fly expecting a burst of acceleration all of a sudden...DING those were the high/low speed wires dummy. So there's no high/low speed switch now but it's so smooth who needs it? I'll post the procedure for hooking up the regen when I have it. That is all.............
Hi Iccarus,
Glad you like your Kelly controller - we've always enjoyed working with Kelly.
A couple of questions:
1) What model of controller do you have?
2) How does acceleration compare between the old controller and the new controller?
Does anybody know how Kelly achieves the smooth low-end throttle response?
If it is some sort of "conditioning" of the throttle input, then maybe we could do something like that on, in, or for the XM-nnn controllers?
The XM-5000Li's controller is called "digital" ... does antbody know why?
Does it do PWM of the power to the motor, and perhaps the lowest power setting (above zero) is (abruptly) 1/255 of full power?
I had a about a whole page of other info and it just disapeared. I'm not typing it again. It's all in the manual anyway. But I like it and you can custom program it to you're specific setup to make it the most efficient. The high and low voltage cutoff is easily programable. It has a high motor temp lead which can double as a brake/motor cuttoff switch. I hooked mine up that way but then changed it because it causes the regn to turn off if you squeeze the brake. So I'm just running it with no brake motor/cutoff. Gary you might like that for the hill starts but I think lennys' technique works best. What a day I'm Tarred I thank I'll go home now.
Forest Gump-
Congrats,
it didnt take long, but you now have the biggest controller in a bike (except for maybe killacycle with a zilla 1k).
*hands over trophy*
600A 72v is a big controller for a scooter :D
let me know when you get the brake throttle working...when i enable mine, it just defaults to max braking (which hauls me down from 40mph to 0 in 4 sec)
so...out of curiostity, how long till you go to 25 cells for a higher top speed?
Matt
Hi, Thanks Matt! I had the throttle brake working yesterday. It woked fine you can adjust it from 0-20 percent. 20% feels about like the average pull as you slow for a stoplight. The cool thing is today I figured out the problem I was having with the variable pot based regen. You get a 0~5v pot (thumb throttle) it has three wires. The red goes to the 5v feed that comes out of the controller.(it's labled 5v) The black goes to the ground. the white goes to the brake/an (an for analog)that comes out of the controller. I mounted the thumbbrake to the left rearview mirror post. It's like a trigger. You can still keep three fingers on the brake handle and your middle finger on the triggerbrake.
The reason it didn't work the first time was you have to activate the brake switch in the controller by grounding the brake/switch lead that come out of controller. Thees are all in one group of three they are. BRK/AN,BRK/SW and reverse. I riged a temp switch to ground the BRK/SW while riding to test the thumbbrake...bingo! it worked! so I went back scratching my head wonder ing a few things.
First I thought, why can't it be programmed to just start the regen when the brk/an senses voltage from the pot. Because now I have to rig up a push switch to ground the brk/sw.(from conroller) I chose the left horn button. I took it apart to see how it was wired. I tried to make sure that the turn sigs and high/low beam wouldn't be effected if I cut the 12v going to the horn button.I cut that 12v in and put a butt splice on so it can't short to anything or I want a 12v power supply later. Then I made it a ground/button by attaching one end to the ground on the horn and the other end to the brk/sw on the controller. So now I have to press the horn button with my thumb (to ground the brk/sw in the cont) and then work the trigger with my finger. It might sound weird but it but it feels pretty natural actually. It works great it's smooth and as you said very strong at 100% maybe stronger than the disc. I think I will use the stock brakes very little now. Man I'm excited this has been really fun I've really been wanting to do this. I'm going to ask if they can make the controllers so that brk/sw works by sensing 12v instead of grounding it. It could work off all existing brake switches then. I'm sure it will still have to be grounded to work but maybe that could be done internally?
PS I still have problems to work out apparently the horn wires were hooked in with something else. Now when I sqweeze my left break the lights dim and I blow fuses. When I pull the right brake the brakelight doesn't work but the lights don't dim. Oh, and the right horn button doesn't work. I think I know what it is but I'm to tired to think right now. If anyone knows how all that stuff is wired my brain could use a rest.
Almost forgot,I have about 1000km on 28cells 54mph and over 3000km on 24cells 48mph but you need relativly flat terrain to get away with this. The guy from kelly thinks I'm crazy. heh heh
VERY IMPORTANT KELLY CONTROLLER WILL NOT LET YOU OVERVOLT THE CONTROLLER. On mine if the batteries are putting out over 90v the controller will not work. You would have to leave your lights on awhile or something till the voltage comes down. On the bright side it won't allow regen to overcharge batteries on long hills.
my solution to getting the brake signal was to hook an old automotive relay to the rear brake light, and the switch side to the controller.
that way whenever im braking, the regen is happening.
unfortunately, the braking effect at 0 throttle (or the braking throttle disabled in software and disconnected) was *really* strong.
Matt
Thats weird I tried that too. Wouldn't that just send 12v to the brk/sw lead. I couldn't get it to work that way. For throttle regen you dont activate the brk/sw, thats your problem. Try disconnecting that. In the menu disable regen 1 and brk/sw regen. Then turn up throttle regen to 20%,all the way up. The way your doing it the the brk/an is seeing over 5v right away and just going to 100% regen...(I think). I'll take a picture of how I mounted the finger brake today.
I just remembered that when I swithed to an LED brake light I had to switch the wires on the fixture. The 12v was hooked to the spring and the ground to the brk light. The incandecent bulbs worked that way but not the LEDs so I swapped the wires. This gets confusing for a rookie like me. This morning I realized that not only do I have the problems I mentioned above (because I'm shorting the 12v to the grnd when I use the left horn because it is apparently hooked to the other horn button in the harness or somewhere) but I won't have a brake light when using regen braking this way. I think I need to use the brake handle switches as my ground to activate the regen brk/sw. But how? Any ideas out there?
Updated -A simple auto relay switch was all I needed (duh). Explanation on activating regen thread - Bill
After 19 x 2 drag-racing stints with 20 intermediate pitstops out in the open for reprogramming I have finally been able to grasp the effects of "Max Motor Current" and "Max Battery Current" in the Kelly KEB/KBL controllers (not only the Chinese do Reverse Engineering ;).
I used my KEB72801X-equipped E-Rider Thunder with their 5/8kW 13 inch Hub motor. Speed was unlimited and "Balanced" mode employed.
For the sake of understanding here are two graphs.
First of all the variation of "Max Motor Current" with "constant" 70% (of "Max Motor Current", therefore of course not really constant) "Max Battery Current". Depcited is the full load battery current over Motor RPM resp. vehicle speed:
It is easily visible that the effect of "Max Motor Current" is a parallel displacement of the maximal current gain until the back-EMF drop-off is reached. This maximum current gain gradient CANNOT be influenced via the GUI-programming, but must be stored in the firmware or in not accessible storage areas. "Max Motor Current" thus also defines the start-up current, which incidentally was my biggest initial headache with the too weak original KBL72201 in my Fury-Thunder...
Here is the variation of "Max Battery Current" at now truly constant "Max Motor Current":
Just as nicely it can be seen here that the effect of "Max Battery Current" is an almost vertical parallel displacement of the current progression between the maximum current gain gradient and the in all settings identical back-EMF drop-off. Thus the current peaks can be "ironed out" and possibly be made more suitable for the battery. Beware! The startup current ist only reduced once "Max Battery Current" drops below the maximal startup current.
These two principles also apply 1:1 to all combinations of the two settings, of which I also tested out a whole bunch.
The normal goal with a PM-synchroneous motor is to keep the current constant and as high as possible from startup until back-EMF drop-off - within the limitations that motor-, controller- and battery health imply - and then to follow the (disregarding field weakening tricks) inevitable current suffocating drop caused by counter induction down to maximum idle-RPM of the motor. As my motor reaches an equvialent idle RPM speed of approx. 100km/h at 72V it is called a "100km/h" motor...
This back-EMF drop-off CANNOT be influenced via the programming, only by available battery voltage. The only reason that this drop-off is slightly reduced after each test run is the slow drop in battery voltage as well considerable heating up of all components involved. The heat came from 21,3Ah fired at only 17km overall driving distance :-) With my normal commute the ratio is the other way round...
It's a KEB 72601. I would say the acceleration is about the same. It's programmable so you can probably make it more peppy. I used the software today to progeam it to do regen through the throttle like someone else here posted. It worked for me. I turned the regen up as far as it go using throttle mode, which is 20 percent. At first I thoiught it would be hard to glide but it just takes a little practice. It's great to know when you let off the (gas?) you're getting something back. I also hooked up a thumb throttle to use as variable regen bake that can go up to 100 percent but couldn't get it to work. I'm going to start another post because this is the second time I've had to type this.
2008 XM3500li Mods/Kelly KBL12251/84v 28cell 40AH pack/ Variable regen brake trigger on left brake handle/Givi/Cycle Analyst/Homemade BMS
KMX Typhoon Home build (recumbent pedelec) with two Astro Brushless 3220motors/twin castle Phoenix ICEHV 160/ Cycle Analyst mounted in 48v Lipo 30AH battery Box. 16kw in an 89lb. Trike! O-54mph/5sec