I have seen the integration of the Sevcon Gen 4 motor controllers into V3.70.
The Sevcon controllers able to be used with this integration so far are the “AC” controllers.
Will there be any support for the Sevcon Gen 4 “DC” controllers ?
I am not sure who to reach out to in order to find out more about this - hopefully somebody who was involved in getting the Sevcon controllers into V3.70 can chime in here.
AC vs DC is a bit confusing, do you mean Asynchronous 3-phase AC (squirrel cage) versus Synchronous 3-phase (brushless) PMSM (permanent magnet synchronous motor) or real PMDC (brushed, PWM/voltage driven DC) or even variants with electromagnetic rotor/stator ? So many types. I would expect a Sevcon with the PMSM DC f/w (most common next to Asynchronous AC motor f/w version, to output the same data, or be able to do so at least. But generally speaking I would strongly advise to dump the Sevcon in that case in favor for one of the newest VESC controllers, much nicer and bigger bang for the buck.
Hi Jan,
I follow a lot of your posts - what you are doing is very interesting - I am trying to do some of what you are doing but just for myself.
I have 2 x Lynch “Pancake” Brushed PM motors. The version of the motors I have are rated up to 72v. I have 2 x Kelly controllers that can accept as high as 86v. Using LFP this is a small problem as a fully charged (to 3.65v/cell) LFP battery is 87.6v.
So then looked at the Sevcon Gen 4 DC controllers - they only go to 72v max but can accept up to 90v. This is nice using LFP as when fully charged i am left with a little head room for safety (ie, not release the magic smoke).
Then I saw that the Victron Boat Page has now got comms via CAN to the Sevcon Gen 4 motor controllers. So that looked like the way forward - change my controllers over to the Sevcon DC controller so that I get the voltage headroom I would like AND also be able to get that info out of the motor onto the CAN BUS.
However when I go over to the GitHub page I see the note that the code has not been tested on the Sevcon Gen 4 DC controller - which is the controller I wanted to swap too.
So as it stands today it is not known if the DC version of the Sevcon will be able to use this code in Venus to talk to the controller or not. So my question is, how can I find out if the DC controller will work or not ? I dont want to buy the controllers only to find that they wont work with Venus. There is still the benefit of the higher voltage headroom on the Sevcons, but its a lot of money just for that. I can always just have the BMS cut off charging at 3.5v per cell and be safe like that if i go ahead and use the Kelly’s.
So how to figure out how to get the DC version of the Sevcon Gen 4 working with this code in Venus ?
What I want is to be able to access that Boat Page on Venus OS. If the only controllers that work with this add on are the Curtis or the Sevcon, then it would have to be the sevcon. Will the VESC controllers be able to use CAN and the code in Venus to get this boat page info on a display at the helm ?
Then you basically just need a beefy PWM controller and possibly an rpm/pulse sensor plus a Smartshunt to measure power. Then feed rpm and power to a virtual motor in Node-RED, bypassing canbus all toghether. Yes maybe it can be done with Sevcon but if anything needs to be programmed you are in for a steep learning curve (or high engineering bill) and the H/W aint that cheap either. VESC is open source, open hardware, affordable, well documented , huge community (discord) and does about everything except Asynchronous AC .
Even with a Sevcon onboard, we use the boatpage to display Speed from a (flterred) USB GPS, Power and (controller relais) Temperature from a dedicated Smartshunt and (mis)use RPM as an (in)efficiency meter (In Ah/Km). We are not really missing the actual RPM, motor and controller temperatures that much to be honest. But yes it is nicer to have it all straight from the Sevcon if available. We will get round to hooking it up, someday. Have a look at (and play with) the virtual motor controller in Node-RED before you decide which way you’d like to go.
PS, for our DESS system we use Speed to indicate quarter of the the day (0 - 95) and RPM for current price in xx.yyy cent
OK so another learning curve. When you say a beefy PWM controller - is that in addition to the Kelly controllers I have now OR to replace the Kelly controllers I have now ?
Re the original question - how to find out if the Sevcon Gen 4 DC can communicate via CAN to the Cerbo just like the Sevcon Gen 4 AC controllers now can ?
Here: GitHub - isPointless/Sevcon: Collection of useful Sevcon & Sevcon DVT files.
That, will never stop 
Not in addition, either use the Kelly’s if they are good enough and possibly add smartshunts to measure power or replace by VESC (has internal scripting to output whatever you want however you want it to the Cerbo). Kelly probably your best bet if all they do is PWM on a brushed motor. Is that two wire DC to the motor? There are even very affordable inverting PWM DC controllers if you ever need to replace the Kelly’s but VESC, especially the latest clone seriers, are very hard to beat on price even if you only use them as two wire PWM DC
