Serial connection to Zilla

Hello

School is over and i have few days to work on Veon.This was a pretty loaded semester and most of my free time was invest on the hybrid project.

But still ; today was communication day with the zilla. Communication is ensure with RS-232. Since I did not have any usb to serial adaptor that worked on win 7 , I could not communicate.

fortunately, my roommate gave me his old laptop that was not working properly ( mostly because of the keyboard!) and guess what: it has a good old serial port !

Therefore today I set the Zilla via the hairball interface considering all the limit on the motor such as limit voltage. the Zilla was set as “full power”, which set the 1000 A limit of the drive by default . The Warp 9 can take no more than 400A continuous.

i jointed some picture of the setup and the result on the hyperterminal. Yes; I did not use print screen. i rather the hard way!

now i,m looking for a pump for the cooling system of the power box of the zilla. I will try to order one on 12 v. I only find some on 120 v ac . Low power inverter are only 9.99$ this week  but I rather avoid another possible sources of noise. I will see what i can find tomorrow.

with this I am ready for higher voltage test!

Adaptator plate

Hello.

It’s been a while ( once again) … since I did some work on the VEon.

I’ve been working a lot on another projet , which is the SAE hybrid. here is the web site . :  www.hybridesherbrooke.com

The last work that was made on the car was to take some measurement to do an adaptor plate for the motor to the manual transmission.

Here is a little sketch on CAD.  I will finish the drawing later , I basically needed the rought draft . Quote are in dm … YES ! I did a terrible code 13 mistake. I stated the drawing on an imperial template…  I will obviously change that ASAP.

Next step include serial programing of the Zilla controller. 

Gentleman; start your engine!

Today I finally stated to Warp 9. It is my second attempt.  Last time ( january 2010) , my battery was not charged enough. This time; the motor started right away. The motor can take up to 30 ~ 50 A to start  on 12V.   I finally ear the beautiful sound the warp Very

satisfy.

with this event, I decided to put a little bit more time on the project.

If you have been following the Veon activity; you may have seen low ( NO) activity since late november. The reason is because I jointed another Electric project.

Few friends of university and I stated a project with mechanical engineering student on a conception of a hybrid race formula . here is the link to the site :

www.hybridesherbrooke.com

This project take lot of my time  but I learn many thing that I apply on the Veon.

Other news: I meet other people that convert car to EV in Quebec. It may be more complicated than I expected to make the Veon “street Legal” since collision simulation are expected and many other

important verification.

1992 Civic with 400HP  b18 turbocharged with NOS are allowed  but EV seem to be too dangerous… i’m joking.  Obviously there are many important safety issue to concern including HV inside the vehicle  and the weight that will change

Here is the setup for the motor test.   Enjoy.

T

tasks on fallbreak

I had few days to work on the Veon this week. In fact, two friend of mine came to help me  on these few task that needed to be done. The transmission was remove once again ans is ready to receive the adaptor, the separating plate and the electric motor.  I also have a little problem: since i remove the transmission oil, i need to replace it! there are two types of oil for manual transmission on  99 Plymouth Neon and both are only available at Chrysler dealer.  I’ll have to check that this week , it look like it will be more expensive than expected!

The VEon was set also to be moved on another garage: the break were set back in place and the direction rod was set in place as well thank to Justin.

The trunk was skinned from its fabric and the ECU unit was removed as well for a little session of reverse  engineering -tanks to Olivier.

I need to figure out what will happens with the air bag system. Since I plan to have a legal VEon on the road, I need this  system to be functional. My fist idea is to use the ECU only for the airbag. I’ll have to tweak all the motor sensors but the others might not need any changes. I also need these modification to be certified. In other words, it might be easier to change the Neon for another car with no ABS ans no airbags.

However, I would really appreciate having functional airbag, since it would probably be one of the first legal in Qc.

Next work session planned on the VEon ?

        probably around christmas time and/or after. In between, I’ll need to understand the ECU,  how to programs the Zilla  and do some tests on the motors.

Hold on…

I got to realize, after 1 month without a post, that I don’t have a lot of time to think about this project. I don’t have time has planned on the week-ends Anyway, I’ll have few days in two weeks since it will be spring break! well, “autonm break” in fact.

I may move the project from the warehouse to my parent’s garage for the winter. Since they offer me theirs garage heated, I accepted right away!. However, everything depends on where I’ll do my internship on next semester.

I

Motor and controler bought!

There are not just bought, i got them too!

The whole ordering process was a little bit modified. I send a email to Netgain motor contact in Canada -Mr Richard Lane- to have some infos on the warp 9.

He gives me all the infos I needed and a contact of someone who had to quit his conversion project. He had a Warp 9 for about a year an a zilla 1k-Lv controller.

It take normaly 10 days for the motor delivery  and for a zilla controler; it’s just terrible. You can’t buy one from café electric now since there is a huge waiting list to get there part. It took 11 months before he could received it.

I bought he warp 9 and his controller-skipping all the waiting list. Moreover, the motor has its full 1 year warranty and the controller too.

Last Wednesday, a friend and I did a 2h trip  to meet Mr Jensen. The motor and the controller could easily stay on my backseat. However, the 150 pounds motor was not easy to manipulate.

here are some picture of the motor and the controler. There are Mr Jensen’s picture too. I put a pencil next to the controller to let you you its dimensions. The smaller controller part is the Hairball2, the interface unit that allow all the control and all the settings.

 

School out for summer

Good old song.

Unfortunately, it’s not summer anymore… if we can call that “summer”. School is back and with it almost no time to work on the VEon. I’m living about 150 km from the project while I’m at school. The only work I can do here  is thinking about the project. I hope I’ll have some time in about three weeks to go back. However, I cannot continue the project without the major pieces as the motor.

One other thins I can do here is modelising. I found 2 3d model of the 99 Neon. One on  Solid work and one on google steckup. The one on solid work is more complete and is a 2 doors model ( as the VEon). However, I have to pay to download it. The neon model on google steckup is a 4 doors model but is enterely free. Since I just want to modelise what’s under the hood hand whats does on the trunk this model work perfectly fine. I need to do lot of modification to this model but here are some picture of how it is right now. Normally, the 3D model is much smoother  and much nicer. I needed to separated much part so al the line appear now.  The last picture is an inside view. I have to work on that.