Sunday, August 10, 2008

Control issues

The way the motor controller is currently hooked up, I have the throttle position sensor supplying a voltage to the speed control input of the inverter. The problem with this is that in all other cars, pressing on the accelerator gives more torque, not more speed. Some inverters will allow a torque input, but with my motor/inverter combination, that isn't possible. What my inverter does have, however, is an analog output that represents the current being given to the motor at any instant. If I connect an opamp with the positive input to the throttle position sensor and the negative input to the current output from the inverter, and feed the output of the opamp in to the speed control input, the throttle position sensor should control the current supplied to the motor. Current is related to torque, so this hack should make the car a lot more drivable.

I'll wait until it gets around the block under its own power to try this, though.

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