Resolved 600 watt heave motor issues

ok, i just ordered a couple new ibt's so I will test swapping those out when they come in.
I will check when I get home from work the min and max values, but I feel like it was in the normal range, maybe 1-2. I will double check though.

The min max auto values for heave were around 1 or a little less.
I tried a few things tonight including running both the heave motor and the traction loss off the same psu. My idea was if BOTH motors stopped working I know it’s the psu tripping it’s max range. But that didn’t happen, the traction loss continued to work. So it can’t be the psu.

One thing I’m wondering is if it could be the fact that I’m running these 2 very different sized motors though the same arduino. Maybe the heave motor should be on its own arduino? Would that make a difference?

I thinik you might be onto something here @noorbeast because one thing I noticed when testing yesterday with SMC3 was that sometimes when I have the heave motor selected in the utility, the other motor (tractionloss) is moving and going out of range even though it shouldn't be activated at all.

This evening I am going to run the heave by itself and disconnect the traction loss completly from the arduino and see how it goes

I am so confused now. This evening I wired the heave motor by itself to the Arduino with two IBT controllers. I could tell both controllers were in play because they were both warm. But then I started getting this as you can see from the screenshot. it’s like there’s all kinds of noise now. I don’t know if maybe there’s an issue with the potentiometer. But you can also see points where the motor stops moving. This wasn’t happening before in Smc3. So I’m not sure what’s going on anymore.

Yeah I ordered 2 new ibts, a new potentiometer, a new psu (1000 w) and a new arduino board hahaha so with all those supplies I should be able to narrow it down.
I think I’m also going to try and make the motor arm shorter. Mines about an inch longer than the one in @noorbeast video above, so maybe that’s causing too much work on the motor and making all the components work too hard.

I also wondering if I am burning out my IBT2 controllers while testing this new motor. I am pretty confident a couple that I hooked up were ones I was using already on a different motor and were working fine, and now I think they might be fried.

Is there anything I can do to avoid damaging them. during testing?
And is there anything people do to test to see if they are still functional beyond hooking them up to a motor like I am doing?

So I did a bunch of testing last night. That last screen shot with all the noise on the green line must have been from a wiring issue because I elliminated that when I simplified the wiring and am testing just a single motor at a time. I was able to confirm the pot is fine, and I was also able to confirm that all my IBT2 controllers I was using are working fine by testing each one with one of my other motors/pots.

So I hooked my new powerful motor up to what i now know is good a good pot, a good ibt2 and a good arduino and I was still getting the cutting in and out.

So my conclusion is that eaither my PSU or IBT2 must be cutting out when it gets spikes.
So I have ordered a 1000w PSU which will arrive tomorrow. I will daisy chain 2 or 3 IBT2s and connect them and just this single motor (which is a 600 watt motor) to the 1000 w PSU and test again.

I have seen a wiring diagram on here for daisy chaining 2 IBT2 motor controllers, but (and this might be a dumb question) can I add addional IBT2's to this daisy chaining?
I ask because if my motor is rated for 600 watts, 3 IBT2 controllers would give me headroom, whereas just 2 would only match the amp output of the motor.

Tonight I daisy chained 3 IBT2 motor controllers and tested htings out again. I am still waiting on the new 1000w PSU.
I am still confused. If I limit my axis to 50% or less, and set the min max to a really high number I can get a lap in on Assetto Corsa without the motion stopping all of a sudden but as you can see in the video there is very little motion happening.
In my second video its me using SMC3 utility with the Motion option on and its having no problem pushing me up and down and I can let this run for a long time. And in SMC3 the green and blue line match up perfectly and everything looks great.

So the issue seems to be something in Simtools. I have no idea what though. I have 2 interfaces, one interface is JUST the arduino for this heave motor. And I have it set with the same config as the other arduino except its own port number.

Any ideas after seeing these videos?
Thanks!!


Assetto Corsa with very limited motion:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/AmdNQon58dc


SMC3 with full range motion:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/28RzsfYO5XU

Oh! The other thing that might be a clue is the fact that when I am in SimTools and running a game and the motors all of a sudden stop, I can quit SimTools and open SMC3 and I get full motion. So that tells me that the motor controllers didn’t overheat and the psu didn’t trip because the motors still active when I open the utility without waiting at all or restarting the Arduino

@noorbeast I think I misspoke about using the same settings regarding your comment "With respect to the SMC3 settings for the heave motor, those should be optimised for that hardware combination, not the same as some other hardware combination." I just meant I used the same Interface configure, like baudrate, and that stuff. I did adjust the actual motion settings seperatly.

@yobuddy I just gave your suggestion a try setting the clip and max limit to zero, and I even reduced my axis limit down to 50% but it still stopped working after a few seconds of driving.
BUT maybe it actually IS the PSU. I was thinking before that if the spike was above the PSU limit it would cut out, which is does, but I think they come right back on again which is maybe why I seen the motor still working when I shut down Simtools after a failure and opened SMC3 and everything worked.

I get my 1000 watt PSU today, so I can test that theroy and I will report back

oh man, im at a complete loss now.
Its still not working on the new PSU.

- I have 3 tested and working IBT2 controllers daisy chained
- I have a 1000 watt PSU with nothying else on it
- I have set the clip and max limits to zero
- have my axis limited to 50%
- I have the min max value set to 2

I am excounting the same issue, i can get a few minutes into a track on Assetto Corsa with everything working and then it just stops working.
I quit Simtools, and open SMC3 utitly and everything is working as expected and I can simulate motion in there with no problem. My green and blue lines overlay each other perfectly and I get no drops.

I really have no idea what could be the issue at this point. Do you have any other suggestions I could try @yobuddy ?

I did another test and increased the min and max even more up to 4 and i had more success. I took it really easy and it didn't cut out for the few minutes I was driving. So it must not like something about the rapid movements from a more responsive min and max