Ezee throttle voltage

wehey

Pedelecer
Feb 13, 2014
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Hiya all.
I have 2 Ezze throttles, a thumb and twist type.

I have measured the voltage output on them both at full throttle and they BOTH output 3.6v.
This can't be right eh? I thought it should be 4 to 4.2v at full throttle.

Is this just a quirk of the Ezee throttles or is something else going on here?
 

vfr400

Esteemed Pedelecer
Jun 12, 2011
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Basildon
It could be OK. The easy way to tell is to make a switched bridge between the signal wire and the 5v one. Wind it up to full speed with the throttle, then make then bridge. If it speeds up significantly, a different throttle would help. Did you check the 5V? it's always possible that something is pulling it down.
 

wehey

Pedelecer
Feb 13, 2014
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7
52
Thanks for the reply.
Yep it has 5v across the live and ground wires :)
 

vfr400

Esteemed Pedelecer
Jun 12, 2011
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Basildon
That's good.
This is how throttles work.
The hall sensor has a 5v supply, and in its natural state, it will output 2.5v, which is equivalent to half-throttle.
The moving part of the throttle has two magnets with opposite orientations (N-S), usually joined by a iron strip.
When the throttle is closed, the South facing magnet is adjacent to the hall sensor, which pulls the voltage down to about 1.2V. Lowest I've measured was about 1V
When the throttle is fully open, the North facing magnet is adjacent to the hall sensor, which pulls the voltage up to about 3.8V. Highest I've measured was about 4V.
As the throttle is opened the magnetic field continuously changes from N to S with neutral at half-throttle.

Those things are easy to measure and comprehend. The only real problems I've seen is where the high throttle end-stop gets damaged, like when you go over a big bump whilst holding full throttle. They're only plastic and are easily bent or broken. That can make max throttle go too far, Once the N magnet goes past the sensor, the magnetism goes back down and the voltage reduces. That's also why when you fall off your bike and break the throttle, you bike runs at half-throttle and you can't stop it unless you have brake sensors.

Now we come to the controller. It uses a 5v analogue to digital converter to change the voltage into a number. The software engineer makes the power algorithms according to what they decide is guaranteed to work within the range of all throttles, so they could decide that anything under 1.5v is zero throttle and 3.5v is maximum, then make speed proportional to the scale between those numbers. It's important that they leave a bit of a safety margin because another algorithm prevents any power until the controller has seen zero throttle after initialisation to prevent the bike shooting off when you switch it on.

You can test how your controller responds to the throttle signal with a simple 5K or 10K potentiometer. Wire the outer two pins to the 5v and ground, then the middle one to the throttle signal wire. You can then adjust the signal wire to anything between 0v and 5v to see at which point the wheel starts to turn and what voltage gives maximum speed. Use a voltmeter between the signal and ground to monitor the signal voltage.
 
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wehey

Pedelecer
Feb 13, 2014
117
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Great information there Fella
Here are the specs for the controller. does this suggest that it wants upto 4V for full throttle or 3.8V
 

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vfr400

Esteemed Pedelecer
Jun 12, 2011
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Basildon
1.2v to 3.8v is normal. You should do the ptontiometer test if you want to know specifically how your responds.
 
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