Thursday, September 6, 2012

Programming the MPIII electric bike controller

What I really like with the Magic Pie 3 motor is that it has an internal controller and that it is possible to program the performance of it using a dedicated MPIII to USB cable. Disconnect the cable on the ebike going to the thumb throttle and plug in the MPIII special USB cable. Then you may download the verson 1.0 of the Personalized Settings Utility, also called PD-280 from GoldenMotor in Canada The problem with this software was that it would only run once on my PC. Starting it the second time I only get this Run-time error '340' message. Fortunately someone at the GoldenMotor Forum have made a version 1.1 that is not crashing. This is the program I ended up using.

And here is my current settings:

I have not found any instruction manual for this so here is mine based on my experience:
Max Current:
This should be taken from your batterypack data. Mine is a GoldenMotor 48V 10Ah LiFePO4. I have probably pushed the limits a bit when selecting 21A and 30A peak. I tried it with only 10A continuous  and it made the bike rather dull with out much hill climbing power. If you use a higher value here your ebike will go faster but you will be loading the batteries more than what they are designed for, and the lifespan of the batteries will be hurt.
Motor type: 
This I have not changed from the factory setting.
PAS Pedal ASist:
I did not manage to connect the pedal assist on my bike, so I am running with out.
Acceleration (or RPM on version 1.0 software):
This sets how responsive the throttle is when you use it. I tried to set this to 40%. When giving max throttle it would take many seconds for the ebike to accelerat to the desired speed. I found 80% to give me the smooth acceleration I was looking for.
Motor Voltage:
Set to your voltage. I have no idea why this was set to 36V in the factory setting. I changed to 48V.
FWD Speed Scale:
This will set the top speed. When set to 100% my ebike makes about 42km/h (26mph) on a flat road. The 80% gives about 32 km/h ( 20mph).
REW: Is probably some way to run the motor in reverse. Not of interest to me.
Regen Break:
When you use the included hand breaks an electrical switch in it will activate the regenerative breaking together with the mechanical  breaks. Set at 50% it gives very impressive breaking power on this heavy ebike. On a wet road or a slippery road it might be a bit too much. I have a long downhill from work to home where I would like to apply regenerative breaking smoothly. I found 10% to fit my taste. Not so much power for fast breaking, but smoother breaking when slowing down a bit on normal downhills.

This is the previous post on how I installed the MPIII on my bike http://urge4lessenergy.blogspot.no/2012/08/diy-ebike-conversion-with-mpiii.html