Thread: ElectraVan! 100% Electric Powered Van w/ Car Computer

Part II of my story - Pics to follow

So I was scratching my head, wondering what to do with the van, and how to convince my wife it was a good idea to have a 30 year old electric van in non-running condition.... But wait!

In September, the Maryland Energy Administration announced a grant program intended to promote renewable / alternative energy for transportation. As a board member of a local biodiesel coop I heard about it and helped the coop write several grant proposals. On the due date, I quickly put together a proposal to rehabilitate my EV as a way to promote EV's and educate folks on conversions. To my surprise - the state accepted my proposal and I now had funds to buy a completely new propulsion system!

Here is the essence of what I've proposed and am currently in the middle of building:

• 240V Lead-acid battery pack (Other battery technologies are a bit too pricey for me at the moment),

• 3 Phase AC motor & Controller: DMOC445 Controller

• Azure Dynamics AC24LS motor

• DMOC445 Controller

• Regenerative Braking

• Programmable performance

• 30 HP, 15,000W Generator, mounted on a trailer to provide optional Hybrid operation

• Carputer for Performance monitoring and hybrid controller.

These are the high points.

Current status:

All of the major components have been purchased, and I'm beginning to put it back together. I had body work done and had it painted 'Circuit Board Green'. I have the motor & controller. The transmission has been shipped to CA to have a plate made to adapt the motor to the tranny. The battery rack was complete this week. I have a lot of body work to finish - reattaching door handles, weatherstripping, etc. And a lot of wiring to install. As soon as I get the transmission back I can reinstall it along with the motor & controller. Hoping to have it running by sometime in August. I'll post more technical details and some info about the hybrid later too.

On Friday, I visited Rob and the gang at mp3car here in B'more and picked up my computer and lilliput monitor. Those guys were great and gave me a tour, advice, and suggested many components for when I begin integrating the carputer.

Here it is as I got it:


The Van originally was sold in Asia as Subaru 600 [Sambar] van. It originally had a 2-cylinder, 2-stroke, 25-HP engine with a 4-speed manual transmission. A company called Jet Industries bought them new and and converted them to electric. It had a 102 VDC battery pack and a General Electric DC Controller and 20 HP GE DC Motor. Here it is before I removed the old motor:




The Dashboard:


Starting to look a bit better!


Here's the paint job:

no hazmats: there is a meet in DC next weekend (the 27th) at turkey run park you should show up. the mp3car crew sometimes comes by, but there are always at least a few of us there and it's a good place to swap stories, get ideas, etc.


Very nifty looking van, are you planning on a flip-out screen or embedded in the dash for the carpc?

Originally Posted by malcom2073

Very nifty looking van, are you planning on a flip-out screen or embedded in the dash for the carpc?

I haven't gotten that far yet. Since it's 30 years old, the radio opening has the two holes for volume & tuning knobs. I bought a non-flip out Lilliput transflective touch screen. I think I'll initially mount it on a swivel.

But there is a panel below the dash that held the original (mono) speaker and was adapted for the original EV charge gauges. It might be a good place to embed the screen.

Here's a pic of the dash with all the plastic coverings removed:

I've been working on the front-end for the ElectraVan. In addition to the typical front end functions, the carputer will provide status of the electrical drive system, the hybrid, and the state of the batteries.

Right now, I'm using the free trial of Centrafuze. For the hybrid control & EV status, I am planning to use a tool called "Daqfactory" from Azeotech and an I/O unit from Labjack. The Labjack is similar to the fusionBrain that mp3car sells, but it supports industry standard data formats over either USB or tcp/ip.

Here are some mock-up screens I've begun putting together for the EV / Hybrid system.

Here is a gauge panel that would provide instant view of Amps, Voltage, and remaining capacity for the primary drive battery pack and the 12 V aux. battery:


Here is the start of a Hybrid Status page. Each picture would be a button that will link to a details status page. THe battery icon includes a bar graph showing total capacity remaining:

I have a question for any centrafuze experts out there.

I have been able to configure a centrafuze button that will 'OPEN' my Daqfactory program. If I go back and forth between the centrafuze FE and the Dacfactory program using that button, it opens multiple instances of Daqfaqctory.

If there is another windows program open (like Daqfactory), what is the best way to bring that window to the front and / or minimize centrafuze?

I also have the same problem within Daqfactory. It is a script-based tool, and there are many pre-defined functions. They don't provide a button script to minimze Dacfactory, only one to close the program. I also think there is a function that can call (open) another program but not to switch to another already-open program like centrafuze. Anyone familiar with Daqfactory or have any ideas?

Thanks,

Shep

I wonder if you could assign a gesture to the hot key "alt-TAB". I will try to look into this today.

Any updates on the hardware install?

I appreciate you checking into the gestures - I would imagine if 'Alt-Tab' could be assigned to a gesture, it should be able to get assigned to a button, but what do I know? I am using the trial version at the moment, and I don't know if this is a limit of the trial version, but it won't let me define any new gesture assignments at all.

I have been tinkering with the vehicle, re-attaching the doors & light fixtures, etc. I finally got the shipping notice that the transmission & adapter for the electric motor were shipped from CA yesterday, and should arrive within a week. As soon as I mount the motor, I can then install the controller, the battery charger (Which just arrived a couple of days ago), and the batteries. I won't have any power on the vehicle until all that stuff is done.

I've been using my carputer in the house with a 12V bench supply, but I think I'm gonna lay it under the back seat of my truck and velcro the Lilliput to the dash to start playing with the radio connections, GPS, OBDC, etc.

I've had to put the hybrid controller on hold for a few weeks to work on other projects, but I won't have the electrical converters for a matter of months, so there's not a real hurry on that. In the meantime, my competing project also uses the same DaqFactory software, so I'm learning more about it in general.

Finally, I repainted the plastic dash facade last week, and it looks great. I realized that the radio opening is just above the ashtray - so by combining them and a wee bit of bondo / polystyrene work I may be able to embed the Lilliput nicely there! Is there a 'generic' bezel for the 7" Lilliput for mounting on a flat surface? Look at the dash picture above (The one with the brown plastic dash in place). You'll see the radio opening and below it on the left is the ashtray and to the right of the ashtray is a blank cutout for a knob. The Lilliput should fit in this area. There is also a larger blank cutout farther to the right of the radio opening that will be perfect for the round USB insert I got from you (or maybe the force-feedback knob). Bonus! I'll start post a pic of the repainted dashboard and I'll looking at this later in the week - If I can embed the Lilliput, it will make for a very very nice installation.

So, I got tired of playing with my carputer inside the house so I decided to temporarily install it in my current daily driver - a '99 GMC Suburban Diesel. It would give me a chance to test out the touchscreen, GPS, Bluetooth and all that. as well as listen to my entire music collection (I'm apparently the only person on the planet without an iPod.)

Here it is all laid out. The computer will go under the passenger seat, and the screen will go on the center console temporarily. It will play through the aux input on my POC Panasonic stereo. There is a tiny bluetooth dongle, an ELM usb OBDC adapter, and a DeLorme GPS Puck:


So I hooked up an outlet adapter and plugged it all in to the stereo and and the touchscreen. WooHoooooooo!

On other fronts, while I was at it, I took a look at the screen vs. the ElectraVan dashboard.

Here's a shot of the old dash:


Here's the Dash with a new paint job, propped up on the hood of my Suburban:


Here it is with the 7" Lilliput in the area of the radio / ashtray opening. I'm not sure if I'm up for cutting up this dashboard. I'll need to think about it for a while....

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