I have a Golden Islands brushless hub motor purchased from Wilderness energy. I am going to hook a Crystalyte controller to it and have been told that the winding and halls sensor wires won't match up. Has anyone hooked a Crystalyte controller to a Golden Islands motor?
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Most of the brushless motors seem to work ok with crystalyte controllers but I've heard that if the hall sensor spacing is different they might won't. The people to check with are www.ebikes.ca
Thanks,
Ebikes told me I had a golden islands motor and that the wiring will not match. However, they did not go so far as to tell me which wires should go where. I guess I will have to experiment and hope I don't ruin my new controller. I will post my results.
My 35 amp, 36-72 volt controller has arrived and nobody out there seems to have any advice for matching the wiring on my Golden Islands motor to my Crystalyte controller. So, here I go. The motor windings have three wires. One of them is green and I suspect my be ground. So the green wires will probably match. That leaves me with two wires. I am going to simply switch them and cross my fingers.
The halls sensor lead has five wires. The red and black are probably power and ground. I will put a voltmeter on them to see. That leaves three wires and one of them is green. So I will match the green wires and reverse the other two, and again cross my fingers. I surely do not want to smoke this new controller. If anyone has any advice for me, now is the time.
The Crystalyte controller has 3 phase wires that go to the motor. Green, Yellow, Blue. These phases correspond to the green, yellow and blue wires on the hall connector. Green is not ground. Yellow is phase A, green is phase B, and blue is phase C.
You are correct that the black and red hall wires are power.
I don't know what the corresponding wires would be on a Golden Islands motor. Sometimes the innards will have the hall wires labeled.
You can try every possible combination until it works. When attempting this, there's a good chance you will hit some 'wrong' combinations. With the wrong combination, either the motor won't start from some positions or the no-load current will be abnormally high. There will be one valid forward combination and one valid reverse configuration.
If you find a good reverse combination, you can use the reverse switch on the controller to make it go the right way.
It's best to use some kind of current limited power supply when doing this testing, and use an ammeter in the battery circuit to monitor current. For lack of a bench power supply, you could use a 5 amp fuse or maybe a car headlight as a current limiter. Do all testing with the wheel off the ground.
When you have a 'valid' configuration, the motor will start from any position and the no-load current will be lower than in a 'wrong' configuration. I would guess around 2 amps no load would be normal.
You can test the hall wires before giving any throttle. Measuring against the battery negative, measure the voltage on the hall wires. The red wire should be 7 to 12v (not critical). The yellow, green and blue hall wires should alternate between near zero to near the red wire voltage when you slowly turn the motor.
Great advice Fetcher,
I'm off to get a fuse holder and some 5 amp fuses. I will put an ammeter in the line also.
Russ
Well, I failed. I tried every combination twice and no go. Next move, contact Wilderness energy I guess.
what do you mean, no-go? you should get some kind of movement even if its not forward. what happened exactly?
The motor jerked around but never moved in a coherent fashion. I double checked all connections for connectivity, and ran through all possible combinations twice. The red and black halls wires tested at 15 volts, and everything looked fine. I am guessing that a hall wire going into the motor may be damaged. I can't think of what else could be wrong unless they shipped a faulty controller, god forbid. I have hooked the motor back up to the old controller for now. I may just spring for a 500 series crystalyte rear mount motor. I feel kinda weird talking to a baboon, but hey we are all primates here.
It sounds like the controller is trying to work.
To check the hall sensors, power up the controller, no throttle, and measure the voltage on each hall signal wire while slowly rotating the motor. You should see the voltage alternate between a high and low state (measure against bat -).
I am currently running a X-CT3620 Crystalyte controller on a WE hub motor. It works fine. The throttle and hall sensors needed to be changed over to work. The thumb throttle harness had Blue, Brown/Blue, Yellow, and Green wires. In the same order they went to to the 3620 controller's throttle harness which was Purple, Red, Black, and White. (Purple to Blue, Red to Brn/Blu, etc) The hall harness from the motor was Red, Black, Green, Yellow, and Blue. They are connect respectively as Red, Black, Yellow, Green, and Blue to the controller harness. (Note only the green and yellow are crossed.) It required some fiddling, and I wired the hall circuit through a PS2 extension cable by cutting it in half and splicing the ends into the two harnesses. It came out to be a nice neat job with a low profile. The throttle is just wired direct with no plug as there was so much cable available that won't be needed unless I upgrade to a recumbent! Works great though! One note that simplified things a bit....this controller has a reverse key switch, so it was no problem when the wheel ran backwards!! Since the switch isn't marked which direction is intended to be Forward and which is Reverse, I just figured it was right. Also note that the direct color to color combination DID NOT work. Should yours run in reverse you have 2 options, turn the wheel around in the forks, or find the correct combination of hall wires. There are only two combinations that are correct, one will run the wheel forward, one will run it backward, neither will make excessive noise.
Good Luck!
-fab
Hi fab,
I have a CT3620 Crystalyte controller and a RoadRunner hub motor. I actually want to run the motor backwards so could you explain the reverse key switch? My set up was supplied with a simple on-off switch. Is there a switch on the circuit board or do I need a different on-off-reverse switch? Thanks. Peter
Hi Peter,
The switch is integral to the controller. If I ever take the controller apart, I can tell you more about it, but it is just a switch that operates with a key and provides rotation in one direction or the other. It is mounted through the side of the controller case and has two wires going down the the board, so it must be an option when you purchase the controller. Apparently the direction selection is needed for quads, trikes, and wheel chairs. When I got my kit, the contoller was shipped separately from the hub motor and throttle, so there was a mix up, but I got it working just fine.
--fab
ptalmage,
To reverse ANY three-phase motor, switch two of the phase connections; the big wires that power the motor. It does not matter which two, just swap two of the three.
I finally got the pinout for the connector on my Crystalyte motor:
![Connector.jpg](/files/u2492/Connector.jpg)
1 = (+) Red 4.5-24 volts
2 = (-) Black
3 = Signal ( Yellow )
4 = Signal ( Green )
5 = Signal ( Blue )
If you look closely, the connector has pin numbers on it. Of course, the controller will have the opposite connector; the one that plugs into the one pictured. The pin numbers are still the same. This should help anyone trying to wire up a different controller.
Don't listen to me, I'm obviously not thinking. Swapping wires works with MOST three-phase motors. AC motors & sensorless BLDC motors can be reversed this way, but not motors that use hall-effect sensors. The signals from the hall-effect sensors would also need to be manipulated.