User Friendliness

The TBM meter is driving me nuts - it complains about lack of power, it stops talking to the controller
often, I need to logout/login and exit the window manager to start, etc. I am thinking going more simple,
running an entire linux box on my speedometer might be a bit much, and the hardware is a little flakey.

THEN tonight running errands my 1.5 amp fuse to the DC/DC converter blew, killing the bike completely. I quickly learned the aesthetic placement of the fuse holder completely sucked when trying to change a fuse with the fairings on. It was getting dark and could have turned into a mile of pushing, but at least putting the new fuse in worked and I rode home in the dark. My hands are scratched up and sore for the effort, I need my own fuse block mounted right nearby the stock fuse block, duh.

I guess this is why we test and field test, it looks like I have more to add to the laundry list.

TBM Developments

Today's test run to Target included bringing along what I am calling "TBM" - Tronbike Meter.

Visibility was good, and watching the amp usage was really telling - has a peek over 300 for a second during acceleration. The biggest hardware bug was the cable connector falling out over bumps, and the meter software needed to be exited and restarted, resetting the data log. Recall the cable connector vaporization blogged earlier? Thats why its falling out.

The "projected time" was buggy too, not taking the consumed Watt Hrs into the calculation.

Also, I acquired a Bluetooth GPS thats the size of a pack of gum. I am already waging bidding wars for Bluetooth enabled iPAQs, stay tuned.

New DC-DC Converter Installed

The Astrodyne SD100C finally showed up, and with the family out of the house I was able to spend the time necessary to figure out how to mount the larger converter, and then re-do the DC-DC wiring.

To mount the converter, I ended up cutting up the sides of the battery box to mount the converter lengthwise, with the terminals now external to the box.

I then created "+" and "-" studs out of 5mm bolts mounted in the plastic battery box, allowing me to fuse the 12 Volt output at a single place (versus previous spaghetti) and clearly organize the 12 Volt positive and negative leads.

New Features:

• The 12 volt system is now isolated from the drive system, upgrading the safety to the 12 volt appliances.
• The light switch is now only active when the motor controller is activated. Leaving the light in the on position now behaves like a "real" motorcycle (light on when engine active).
• Cleaned up wiring, use of 2 distinct "studs" for wiring 12 volt parts.
  
• Removal of the "IC Ignitor" box of the motorcycle. Evidently I don't need it, everything worked when I unplugged it, worst case it might have been sucking power. I need to start a "for sale" section for spare parts.
  

Tronbike V1 Drivetrain Wiring Schematic

The main layer is complete.

Smoked My Quda

I gave up on the svelte null modem and velcro'ed in my trusty DB-25 pin chain-o-cables for the E-meter, and proceeded to put on the covers, rear fairings and tank in record time.

To top off this "release", I decided to put the recommended 41 psi of air in the tires. All the good bicycle pumps I own use Presta valving exclusively, so I decided to use the old 12 volt air compressor with its cigarette lighter ends, plugging it into Tronbikes never before used accessory port.

It worked great, I was headed to bed before 11pm. After all the pumping, maybe 10 minutes of runtime, turned it off and then tried turning on the bike. I got a flash of green on the dash then nothing. Dead. Removing the seat, I checked my line into the DC-DC converter and found a blown 7 amp fuse. Odd since it ran the pump no problem.

I put another fuse in, no green flash just another blown fuse. I noticed a wire tight under the tank, removed the fairings and tank. Another fuse, boom.

I disconnected the harness from the dc-dc and swear it registered a sane 13 volts. I poked around for a short circuit, deciding it might be the bulb itself in the dash. Tore off the covers, removed dash, checked lights, all looked sane. Boom, another fuse.

I was out of fuses, so I canabilized the 1 10 amp fuse from the accessory loop, put it in my main chain to the converter where I'd been blowing fuses. No more blown fuse, but still I had no 12 volt accessories. I then checked to find the DC-DC dead, despite the 63.7 input drop.

My theory is I blew the DC-DC converter ($25 Quda) with the 10 amp fuse, and/or it was going before then as its only rated for 20-60volts input. Something in the ignition could be bad too, dunno, but I need a new converter, a wire labeler, a ton of fuses and a wiring diagram and then go on a short circuit hunt.

The Tronbike E-Meter

Travis came through with the serial analyzer and I felt compelled to tear off the fairings and tank to get access to the nasty little serial cable for what is to be the Tronbike E-Meter.

Leveraging my collection of ancient RS-232 adapters and cables, the laptop and the analyzer, I found my software was actually fine, my problems were:

1. Laptop under Linux does not control the Keyspan USB adapter properly. It works fine under Win XP running on VMWARE on the same Linux laptop.
2. I need a null modem on the IPAQ cable. This might be actually reversing the null function IN the cable in order to manage the Alltrax. Either case, it works.

The analyzer was a bit tricky to get right, but I found myself confirming the hex dump content and null modem/non-null-modem orientation. Plugging the wires between IPAQ and Alltrax and voila!, I was suddenly reading data bytes on the IPAQ console.

This was great news, but it led to a series of late night programming binges that continue to tonight. The UI has remained the same (see screenshot sample, ignore the numbers), but the architecture has changed now - twice. I went from separate executables for reading and display to a single forking python executable. This presented all sorts of exciting lessons in signal handling and interprocess communication in Python. The goal was to start and stop a single app to do reading and display of the data.

Attempt 2 occurred last night where all forking and multiple processes were removed, with the polling of the Alltrax now being driven by the GUI directly. No more forks, one executable, 1 process. Less IO to the disk, so it runs faster.

I also added a data logger function to record every actual use of the meter, and did so in an object-oriented fashion. During the refactoring I added more object-orientation and found it useful to manage scope and state of the system, the first O-O success story I can remember having (old Fortran hack here!).

All this fresh software was just plugged into Tronbike tonight, on its stand, and below is the first
data set from the logger:

Columns are:

1. unix epoch time since 1970
2. throttle position %
3. controller temperature in C
   
4. voltage (notice what happens when I flip the solenoid, goes to 63
5. shutdown (not sure what this is)
6. amps (bike is on stand, no load, might want this as floating point value)
7. battery amps (calculated from amps as per Alltrax)
8. watt-hrs in pack (calculated)
9. projected time at current usage (calculated)
10. percentage left in pack (calculated)
11. time since start of run
    
12. watt-hrs pack capacity (5 * 12volts * 55a-hr)

Log Snippit:

1209855312.417228  21 19 62 0 0 0 0 3299 9999 99 171.479993 3300
1209855312.917160  21 19 62 0 0 0 0 3299 9999 99 171.980005 3300
1209855313.417234  21 19 62 0 0 0 0 3299 9999 99 172.480015 3300
1209855313.937162  21 19 62 0 0 0 0 3299 9999 99 172.999987 3300
1209855314.427109  21 19 62 0 0 0 0 3299 9999 99 173.489878 3300
1209855314.927228  19 19 62 0 0 0 0 3299 9999 99 173.990005 3300
1209855315.437221  17 19 62 0 0 0 0 3299 9999 99 174.500002 3300
1209855315.977232  16 19 62 0 0 0 0 3299 9999 99 175.040012 3300
1209855316.457197  15 19 62 0 0 0 0 3299 9999 99 175.520065 3300
1209855316.977281  13 19 62 0 0 0 0 3299 9999 99 176.040042 3300
1209855317.487231  12 19 62 0 0 0 0 3299 9999 99 176.550008 3300
1209855317.987198  10 20 62 0 0 0 0 3299 9999 99 177.049960 3300
1209855318.487206  8 20 62 0 0 0 0 3299 9999 99 177.550002 3300
1209855318.987278  6 19 62 0 0 0 0 3299 9999 99 178.050053 3300
1209855319.487112  0 20 62 0 0 0 0 3299 9999 99 178.549970 3300