Magic Pie 4 no wheel movement on a custom-built E-Trike

[Weimgi]

Hi to all,

I have built an E-Trike with my son. Everything is ready, but the Magic Pie 4 wheel does not turn
and I am quite desperate.

What I already tried:
At the beginning I had a used 24V battery and it did not fonction and no light on the throttle bar (what I found to be normal afterwards).
There was a click at the controller (which should be normal).
I purchased the USB cable and checked if 24V was selected in the program, it was.

I thought the battery was the problem (because it was showing quite high voltages of up to 32V), so I purchased a new 48V battery with up to 1500 W.
I set the voltage to 48V using the USB cable.
I downloaded the new value to the controller.
I removed the USB cable and shut off the battery afterwards.
The battery is charged.
The lights on the throttle bar are on when the battery is on, BUT
again the wheel does not react at all when pushing the throttle....

 Can anyone please help me, I really want this E-Trike ready for my son...

Regards,
Gilles

[Bikemad]

Hi Gilles andto the forum.

When you say the "wheel does not turn" I am assuming that it turns easily by hand but not under its own power.

The most common cause when testing a new setup tends to be one of the brake levers has not been connected to the mechanical brake cable and is stuck partially applied, causing the brake switch to remain activated, which will prevent the motor from turning.

If the brake levers are fully installed and the levers are definitely fully released, it may be a faulty brake switch/wiring that is causing the problem.
Unplug both of the brake levers from the main harness and see if the problem still exists. If the throttle then starts working as expected, plug in the brake levers one at a time to see which one is causing the problem.

Another possibility could be a bent pin on one of the connectors. Carefully inspect all of the connectors to make sure that none of the pins have been bent or damaged during the installation.

If you can't see anything obviously wrong with the connector pins the next thing to check would be the +5V supply coming from the controller. Check out this post for further information on how to do this.

Alan
 

[Weimgi]

Dear Alan,

first of all, already thank you for taking the time to help me.

Yes, the wheel does turn easily by hand.

The thing is I don't have any brake lever connected "electronicaly" to the Magic Pie.
I only have a mechanical brake that is installed independently to the Magic Pie wheel and I have not
connected/installed the part of the harness that is meant for the brakes.
Could this be a reason why it does not function?

I will recheck all the Pins, but they were looking ok to me.

After this I will do the +5V supply check.

 I was already thinking on buying a Magic Pie 5 controller,
to check if the controller itself is the problem... that's how desperate I am. ;-)

BR Gilles

[Bikemad]

I only have a mechanical brake that is installed independently to the Magic Pie wheel and I have not
connected/installed the part of the harness that is meant for the brakes.
Could this be a reason why it does not function?

That won't be causing your problem, as the motor should still work fine without the brake sensors connected.

Make sure that the four "unterminated thin wires" coming from the motor harness for Reverse and Pedelec do not have any of their copper cores exposed and touching each other:



It could possibly be a faulty throttle unit that is not sending the correct throttle signal to the controller (Throttle signal voltage should be ~0.8V with throttle released and above 3.25V at full throttle).

If you are considering changing the controller, you might want to remove the controller from the hub and see if the LED on the inside is flashing an error code while the controller is still connected and powered up.
The number of regular flashes relate to different faults:
 A single blink from the LED on the controller circuit board is typically seen when the controller is initially powered up (Simple LED test)
 1 regular flash indicates Over Voltage Protection
 2 regular flashes indicates Under Voltage Protection
 4 regular flashes indicates Stall Protection
 5 regular flashes indicates Hall sensor input is abnormal
 7 regular flashes indicates Phase Wire disconnected
 9 regular flashes Communication problem
14 regular flashes indicates Throttle is not in the idle state when system powered on

Alan
 

[Weimgi]

Hi to all,

after another couple of hours testing I finaly found the problem.
I have to admit it is quite stupid.

I bought the MP4 as a used kit and the wiring/connectors were wrongly connected.
The connector of the throttle was connected to the connector for the programminng cable,
which has the same pin configuration. I think when the seller did remove the kit, he assembled it wrongly.

I found out because you were talking about the brakes and I found it strange that this part of the
harness was not installed at all. And the voltages were showing nothing than they should...

Quite stupid, but more then happy that the trike is working perfectly now.

Thanks to all!

Regards,
Gilles

[Bikemad]

Hi Gilles,

Thanks for the update, it's good to know that you've managed to locate and rectify the problem.

I'm pleased for you that you now have it working correctly.

Alan