Completely Scratch-Built Electronic Speed Controller

Driving a brushless motor requires a particular sequence. For the best result, you need to close the loop so your circuit can apply the right sequence at the right time. You can figure out the timing using a somewhat complex circuit and monitoring the electrical behavior of the motor coils. Or you can use sensors to detect the motor’s position. Many motors have the sensors built in and [Electronoobs] shows how to drive one of these motors in a recent video that you can watch below. If you want to know about using the motor’s coils as sensors, he did a video on that topic, earlier.

The motor in question was pulled from an optical drive and has three hall effect sensors onboard. Having these sensors simplifies the drive electronics considerably.

Continue reading “Completely Scratch-Built Electronic Speed Controller”

Hackaday Prize Entry: Smart Electric Bike Controller

One of the more interesting yet underrated technological advances of the last decade or so is big brushless motors and high-capacity batteries. This has brought us everything from quadcopters to good electric cars, usable cordless power tools, and of course electric bicycles. For his Hackaday Prize project, [marcus] is working on a very powerful electric bicycle controller. It can deliver 1000 Watts, it’s got Bluetooth, and there’s even an Android app for some neat diagnostics.

The specs for this eBike controller are pretty much what you would expect. It’s able to deliver a whole Kilowatt, can use 48 V batteries, has regenerative braking, Hall sensors, and has a nifty Android app for settings, displaying speed, voltage and power consumption, diagnostics, and GPS integration.

How is the project progressing? [marcus] has successfully failed a doping test. He lives on the French Riviera, and the Col de la Madonne is a famous road cycling road and favorite test drive of [Lance Armstrong]. The trip from Nice to Italy was beautiful and ended up being a great test of the eBike controller.