Lost Control? 

Ok, ok, I know we said we'd have some new speed controllers soon, but as always real world plans get messed up by anything and everything and sometimes things get a little delayed by happenings outside of your control!
Our controllers have been ok, so far, they've been strong, reliable and durable! (Well, for most people anyway!) Some people swear by them, others swear at them, it's a mixed bag!
 

And, so... In the interest of everybody who buys controllers off us, we are pleased to have available soon a new range of controllers for your (um?) pleasure.

We've done away with low end control systems, and will from this point forward use dedicated Mosfet drivers and more robust regulators in all our controllers. What does this mean for you ?
Most low end controllers (and even some high end units!) use either 555 timers or Comparators/Op-amps or even PIC/Arduino IC's to generate a PWM signal. They take that signal and drive 1, 2, 3 or even 4 Mosfets from the outputs.

What's the problem with this?  Well.. nothing. Its fine for low current and low frequency applications. You wouldn't really notice any difference between a unit with this type of drive and a unit with a proper Mosfet driver at low frequencies and low current draw. But when you start to pick the frequency up (the refresh rate at which the PWM oscillates) the Mosfets need to turn on and off a lot faster. Most units with no driver system can't operate past a certain frequency  as they can't open and close the Mosfets fast enough. If they try, then they compromise reliability and current handling capacity. Also, as a note, when the current increases the through a Mosfet, it begins to act like a capacitor, which means the transition between on and off is a lot slower.

In layman's terms This means the Mosfet spends more time in the linear region (the space between fully on and fully off), which in turn generates more heat that the Mosfet must dissipate as wasted power.

Its not directly harmful of the Mosfet, but at higher current's you are more likely to lose your Mosfets to heat stroke. Or fire. Awesome? yes. But still, expensive.
Ultimately by the simple addition of a Mosfet driver, the speed control gains efficiency levels of up to 100% 

If a Mosfet driver is such a good thing then why doesn't everybody use them ? This is a pretty simple one to answer. The cost!, A Mosfet driver can cost anywhere between $5 to $12 depending on the current capability of the driver and the brand of driver.

So to this end, we've completely redesigned all the controllers from the ground up. We put a strong focus on reliability (learning from mistakes from the past) and an emphasis on high current applications. Trust us when we say, that all controllers are NOT built equally. Here at Motion Dynamics, we want to give the best products for the lowest prices, and we just weren't feeling it with the old controllers.

Failures of the old controller, by most common failures to the least:

1)     Overloading the controller, you bought a 25 Amp controller for your 50A motor
        because the motor ran perfectly fine with your 5A Jaycar power supply on your
        test bench. Then when you wired it to your bike, trike, buggy etc etc, it worked
        fine when you had no load on it, but as soon as you hopped on, your magic
        moment turned to smoke, so the controller *MUST* be faulty!

2)    Bad batteries or Motor, you'd be surprised how much damage a bad battery or motor can do
        and it's the last thing you'd pick when a controller fries!

3)     Being so excited to receive it, you didn't read the manual and hooked it up wrong and thought
        the smoke was a feature.

4)     Not actually reading the manual but looking at the pictures that show how to connect it,
        though not actually reading the really important part where it tells you to set the voltage
        manually! (we changed this one pretty quickly!)

5)     Wiring up a switch, which when you turned it on shorted everything out and burnt
        your fingers and half of the wiring in the system.

6)     Drilling through the center of the case so you could mount it to your car, boat etc etc.
        Then being surprised when it blows up. (Don't drill through the case when you can't see whats inside it!)

7)     Removing the heat sink, because it was too big to fit into your case.

8)     Getting the polarity mixed up. 
         Funnily enough this one isn't all that common.

9)     Didn't balance well on top of the HHO generator and fell in the solution.

10)     The trolling motor fell off the boat into water and the controller failed.
        So you dry it off and return it for warranty repair. But we cant repair it because the
        sea water ate the tracks.

11)    Mice chewed through the wires causing a short. (This only happened once)
 

There's probably more but offhand I can't think of them. Probably 80% of all failures are user related, the rest are controller failures.