Part 4 - Testing the Setup

I'm sure there have been a few set-backs and/or questions about your setup compared to what I've been explaining. But if you have gotten this far, you've learned a lot about your Beast. You have probably already turned the key on and cycled the throttle. And you may have even got everything working as expected. To those of you, I'd like to congratulate you. For all the others (which includes myself) testing and trouble shooting may be in order. This post is dedicated to describing tips and techniques that may help in correcting some issues.

The Beast Back Together and Ready to Ride.

First things first. This may be obvious, but then again maybe not. Be sure the battery pack is fully charged and do all your testing with the rear tire off the ground and the side kickstand in the up position.

Turn the key on and rotate the throttle, if you find the rear tire spins in the forward direction in a smooth manner, then you are half way home. Assuming this is working properly, test both brakes with the throttle partially on and motor energized. The connection you made to the "High Brake" pigtail on the controller should cause the motor to stop being energized. You may also notice that the motor actually slows itself with a change in the sound the motor makes. This is due to a feature called EBS - Electronic Braking System. If this occurs then you know that this functionality is working properly.

Now rotate the throttle again and watch the instrument panel. You should see the speedometer increase with the speed of the tire. This is the signal coming from the "Hall Meter" wire you connected.

Next, put the side kick-stand down then twist the throttle. The motor should NOT spin. BTW: This caused me to waste 20 minutes when I was troubleshooting the setup because I left the side kick-stand down and I couldn't figure out why the motor suddenly stopped working! So be aware.

If you have gotten this far and everything is working, then its time to move to Part 5 and set up the configuration of the Daymak Drive App. Otherwise, continue reading this post.

Things not working properly? Let's go over a few things that may have occurred.

If you hear that the motor is growling and not spinning, or spinning roughly and making lots of noise, then either the phase wires are connected out of order, or the Hall Sensor wires are connected out of order. It's also possible that both are mis-positioned.

Look back the the schematic to ensure the proper color motor phase wires are connected to the proper terminals on the controller (Blue Yellow Green on the bottom row going left to right). If these are connected in the proper order, then turn your attention to the Hall Sensor wires. In my case, the wires just needed to be connected color for color. Red to Red, Black to Black, etc.

If these are connected according to the schematic and not working, then more testing will need to be done, since your particular setup must be different than what I had. Never fear, you can go through a systematic process to verify the Motor Phase wiring and the Hall Sensor combination. This will take time and education, which is why I would encourage you to read the site I've mentioned a few times. It can be found here. Also, it might be worth a call to Daymak themselves to speak with one of the their technicians. I found them very helpful, but hard to reach at times.

If it comes to this, I would highly encourage you to protect the controller by installing a 5 or 10 amp fuse in series with the B+ cable coming from the battery pack to the B+ terminal of the controller. If you have one, I'd also suggest that you wire an ammeter into the circuit as well so you can see how much current the controller is using. A normally working system will show the amps increasing smoothly and in concert with the movement of the throttle. If there is an issue with the motor phase or Hall Sensor, then the ammeter will spike quickly and that's why you want a fuse in the circuit. In my case, I blew two 10 amp fuses before I figured everything out. Glad I had it there!

Here is a quick video of my testing setup at work. In the video, you'll see that the controller cuts off the motor prematurely and I have to cycle the key to get it to work again. This ended up being a configuration issue in the Daymak Drive App which we will discuss in Part 5.

Another technique that can be used is simply to touch the three motor phase wires to check how hot these are. In normal operation the temperature will feel elevated, but only warm. Never hot.

After the motor phase wires and Hall Sensor wires are properly matched, the motor will spin in the proper direction and do so smoothly with a minimal of noise. The video is a good gauge of how it should sound.

Finally, depending on how the Daymak Drive App has been configured, you may find that even though the motor is working, it may not perform properly. In my case, when I twisted the throttle too quickly, or loaded the motor too much the controller would turn off the motor and I would have to cycle the key before it would work again. This, as I finally found out, was caused by the way the app was configured, and not a bad controller. This is why Part 5 will be important. It will go over some of the more important configuration settings in the app. So take a look when you are ready.