Far Driver QS96530 Teardown Overview

Small correction:
I say in this video that this is a dual voltage controller, but it is not. The 3.3v linear regulator is quite tiny and I missed it. This felt wrong to me since the majority of STM8, STM32 and their clones all run on 3.3v.

[@bobbyjunelive1993]

Thank you so much for that and clarifying those two rings around the two phase posts I’m putting my post down to those rings and I want to find out what they were before I cut near them. I need to make a real squad because it needs to fit in a slot so no case low posts.

[@de-bodgery]

You are so welcome!

[@BigEBikes]

Thank you for your work, Subscribed, I'm surprised you don't have more subscribers

[@de-bodgery]

Thanks for the sub! My channel is growing all the time.

[@mapome01]

I am wondering if he likes the aluminum parts and the position of the minus connector?

[@Vmaxfodder]

FINALLY !!!! thankyou !!

[@HighVoltageKits]

Excellent, the screws on mine are Philips headed

[@de-bodgery]

Mine didn't come with screws so from my many parts drawers, I pulled out 5 identical hex head screws that have a lock and flat washer on them. I'm sure the stand-offs with the 2 M4 screws into them will hold up OK.

[@de-bodgery]

Thanks for the video help

[@maythinker3936]

How do you think ? If use the Far Driver ND72200 with a battery current of 45A, will the aluminum contacts cause any trouble?

[@de-bodgery]

It's probably OK

[@maythinker3936]

@@de-bodgery In your opinion, for a 1000W motor, which is better to take, far-driver ND72200 45A or ND72260 55-70A?

[@de-bodgery]

@@maythinker3936 1000w is hardly anything. Do you plan to upgrade to more power later? If so, I'd go with the stronger controller just so you have more potential for later. Either one of these controllers is already more than your motor can handle

[@maythinker3936]

@@de-bodgery Electric bike with a gear motor Bafang 1000W. I don't plan to upgrade to a more powerful one.

[@frankz1125]

Hi . Just getting into my first build/upgrade. Is the 3 phase output voltage the same from a 72vdc input as a 96vdc input controller? Thanks

[@de-bodgery]

no it's not. Pack voltage is applied to the motor. So more pack voltage = more voltage at the motor. If you have a 20S and a 24S controller both running at 20S ,they will both present the same voltage to the motor.

[@frankz1125]

@@de-bodgery I have a 72v setup that I am putting a higher voltage battery on. 24s lithium from 72 v lead acid. Will the motor handle that switch?

[@de-bodgery]

@@frankz1125 Very probably

[@angusmcgil]

i saw fardriver have an NS series controller out now

[@surronzak8154]

Is there a votol who matches an ND72530 far driver power ?

[@de-bodgery]

AFAIK everything from Votol is all 100v max. I believe that is the case for the 72530 as well. You can look up the specs for the 72530. Find the Votol controller that matches or exeeds that just a little.

[@kccats]

@@de-bodgery i have a votol that runs 96v em100 96350

[@de-bodgery]

@@kccats votol is smart! They detune the amps when people go above 82v. You will see amps are much lower at 96v than at 82v.

[@Zomby_Woof]

Been waiting on a Fardriver teardown. I almost pulled the trigger on one when they first hit the market and were dirt cheap. Note to readers: If you do buy one, make sure it's Fardriver you're buying from. There are a lot of counterfeits floating around.

[@de-bodgery]

oh great! So who knows how bad or good the clones are!

[@Zomby_Woof]

@@de-bodgery From what I understand, its been poor packing in non standard boxes and firmware issues. That was back when they were brand new. Could have been clones, or prerelease HW, or a phantom 3rd shift. Know your seller

[@de-bodgery]

@@Zomby_Woof China is rarely known for great presentation or great quality. If this was early teething pains, that's fine.

[@BigEBikes]

The clones are horrible and dirt cheap don't buy one, my friend bought one and nothing on it was correct. Even the stickers were placed on it wrong

[@Zomby_Woof]

@MxEric1 Makes you wonder if its just simple ip theft, or if an existing player doesn't want competition. Flood the market with shoddy clones and you trash your competitor's reputation before they even get started. Its a self supporting sabotage too.

[@PeterPan-gy6kq]

Nice, from the outside it looks like lingbo. But it's definitely not. This weekend I repaired a lingbo 72202. This stuff is to expensive to throw it into the bin. It took me ages, but now I have a programmable controller for my nova motors clone project. As always: thanks for your video.

[@de-bodgery]

LOL...NEVER heard of Lingbo! I try to repair hardware too. In the process, I also usually upgrade and mitigate issues.

[@PeterPan-gy6kq]

@@de-bodgery Here in Europe many scooter brands using Lingbo controller. There must be millions out there. All the NIUs have Lingbos with a special firmware installed.

[@de-bodgery]

@@PeterPan-gy6kq There is tons of things I've never hard of! LOL.

[@de-bodgery]

@@PeterPan-gy6kq What's the difference between the HC5XP and the GC5XP? Halls and sin/cos maybe?

[@PeterPan-gy6kq]

@@de-bodgery I really dont`t know. The datasheets are identical. Most bigger lingbos have options for HALL/GMR/485/CAN on the circuit board. The lingbos are build like tanks. In this case you have a 24-fet-controller for 240A input current and 500 phaseamps. It looks to me like someone had build them like Lego: the same STM32 and only a bigger power circuit. I think their strengh is the software and the implementation into modern smart scooter with GPS and remote fleet management.

[@surronzak8154]

11:40 would it be a good idea to make them out of copper ? Or is brass better ? If I understand right it would allow to run more than the 375A continuous like you suggest ?

[@de-bodgery]

Aluminum has less resistance than brass. However, it may be that the stand-offs being butted to the circuit board adds resistance making that a mute point. I'd personally prefer to have the stand-offs soldered to the power stage and with them being aluminum, that's not possible. Amperage is about proper cooling, parts used, gate drive and overall efficiency of the power stage. KO Moto uses a pretty darn good mosfet, but their power stage is very bad and lossy so it gets hot easily. It also has a poor mosfet layout so getting heat away from them is also poor. Their gate drive is also terrible and again that makes a lot of heat. So good parts by itself isn't the answer. It's many things working together and done optimally that will make for the best power stage. You can help them along for sure by improving certain things.

[@surronzak8154]

Could you rank controler quality In your opinion please ?

[@de-bodgery]

I've talked about that in videos before, but never made a video that ranked them.

[@Ray88G]

It's doesn't have FOC . Siaecosys controllers are pretty much the same as ND controllers . They just rebranded them . All hall based Fardriver controllers available from siaecosys can be custom ordered with encoder function enabled . I'm not sure if it's just a custom firmware update of something different on a board .

[@de-bodgery]

The little daughter board is what is different between hall and encoder controllers from FD. Swap that board and it's got an encoder to hall converter chip on it. *** I think FD has a basic FOC function set. I did originally agree with you. I spent quite a lot of time with some VESC engineers that convinced me that FD uses basic FOC capability. By extension since KO is also FD development, KO has a basic FOC function set. One of the compelling arguments for basic FOC is that the FOC libraries exist for the STM32F103 CPU. It's jsut a matter of implementing them. Sinusoidal libraries are far less developed for this CPU. It just makes sense for people using the STM32F103 to use the fully developed FOC libraries for this CPU. In recent videos where I present KO or FD, I say they have basic FOC for all the hardware reasons you see in these videos and because of those fully developed FOC libraries.

[@electricbike2062]

There is still a continuation of what you did with the cons of the controller

[@de-bodgery]

Yes there is. Look for the Macro video.

[@sn0wchyld]

pretty sure aluminium has better conductivity than brass, .6 vs .25 ish relative (to copper) respectively...

[@de-bodgery]

Thank you for the correction! I looked it up and I remembered it wrong. I love that people pay attention to what I say and post stuff like this! I make mistakes, get stuff wrong, misidentify things, etc....it happens! You can't solder aluminum. That butt joint will have some decent resistance. I don't know this as fact as I haven't measured it, but I believe the bare butt joint to aluminum will have more resistance thanks to the oxide layer than will brass that is soldered down.

[@wagnerbrochini3892]

But you can with a TIG welder can't you? Also, based on another video, the app states that this is 300A line and 530A phase, not 96A as mentioned in the beginning of the video. The first digits are the voltage, aren't they? Not bashing at all, just trying to figure out what's what, keep up the excellent work!

[@de-bodgery]

@@wagnerbrochini3892 LOL...didn't even notice I said "96 battery amps"! hahaha! Good catch! I meant to say 96v and for whatever reason flubbed that! It won't be the last time I say something wrong and have noooo idea I did it!

[@wagnerbrochini3892]

@@de-bodgery no problem, who am I to point out anything, just an uneducated troll trying to understand a little better these motor controllers 😂. Since we are talking about amps, do you think that 530A is reasonable for the busses present in this power stage?

[@de-bodgery]

@@wagnerbrochini3892 Not really no. The phases only have 5 mosfets in parallel. That's about 375 amps. I'll be generous and say 400 amps. The BATT- buss is pretty solid. The Batt+ buss with no reinforcing is weaker so it won't conduct current as well.. That 530 amps is peak and not something you can use more than a couple of seconds. 375 amps is probably more of continuous number this controller can deliver.

[@zephyrus3389]

Could we shunt this

[@de-bodgery]

Shunt for battery amps? Yes. Not sure why you'd want to use shunts instead of current concentrators for the phases.

[@vincentpernicano3277]

Well this is a little disappointing. At least it’s not as bad as ko, looking forward to the nd review to see if I’ll buy from this company again.

[@de-bodgery]

I was hoping for better too. I have pics of the 72450, 72660 and 96680 power stages and they are all the same as the 96530. Perhaps the people at Far Driver will see my videos and redesign? Clearly Chinese manufacturers can do a good job. Just look at Votol!

[@vincentpernicano3277]

Yeah I have had good luck with the Votol em 150 so I thought it was decent but I didn’t think it would get such high marks. Hopefully the nd96850 has a redesigned power stage cause that’s what I’ll be working with at the moment . Also now debating between picking up a shul C1000, tronic 750, or the ebmx 9000 for my dirt build. I’m whipping up a 21s17p molicel pack and I want a quality controller that can really let that battery shine.

[@de-bodgery]

@@vincentpernicano3277 I have pics of the 850 power stage...it isn't better than the 630. It's almost entirely the same. I give Votol much higher marks than FD in most ways. FD does have a couple of advantages over Votol. It uses 2 phase current sensors and Votol only measures battery current. FD uses gate drivers and Votol uses discrete components for gate drive. IS this in my opinion enough to overcome the far better build quality of Votol...no not really. I think despite the couple of advantages in FD, Votol is still much better hardware. IF Votol in their more advanced models keep all the internal build quality of the EM150 and add phase current sensors and IC gate drivers, it's a hands down, no questions asked winner in every way over Far Driver!

[@helios_ja]

"its huge!" - she

[@renegarcia1807]

Hi brother you need to understand they are from China and those guys are not really good are taking good care of little details LOL thanks for you video very interesting and instructive

[@de-bodgery]

Agreed! Much of China does things "good enough" and so they work, but only good enough.