Ecotric Error Code 010 - New Controller or Other Suggestion?

[SummittDweller]

I just bought a used Ecotric SportCool 26" Fat Tire bike and am loving it, but there's a problem. A few seconds after I power up the "Watt" display on my S900 LCD switches to reading "Error 010". I've done some research and understand this to be a "communication error", most likely between the controller and the speed/rotation sensor. Other than the 010 code a couple other things are wrong... the speed readout, trip and ODO readings are all zero and never register any change. One other thing, when I select PAS 0 the assist still kicks in. If I turn the power off entirely I can disengage the motor of course, that PAS does not seem to have that effect. This is what makes me suspect this is a controller issue and not the rotation sensor or connection between controller and sensor.

What does work? Everything else, I believe. The settings all cycle as they should, I believe. The battery and motor seem to function as they should. The throttle works. The time-out setting works. Brakes work and correctly disengage the motor. The PAS take-off is good. All the "necessary" things to provide a safe and comfortable ride seem to work just fine. So, my plan is to try and DIY this fix without spending a ton of money, and I'll try to take my time.

I've done quite a bit of troubleshooting already... I found and reseated the wire connector between the rear hub and controller, even cleaned it up with some contact cleaner. No change. I opened up the plastic controller housing, carefully removed and reseated all of the connections there, none seemed loose, and again I used contact cleaner. No change again.

Next I removed the metal cover on the controller to have a look inside, and I have a couple photos to share. What jumped out at me first is that the entire circuit board is sealed with a clear resin, presumably to help avoid water/moisture damage? Is that normal on Ebike controllers? The other thing that looks "wrong" is one of the capacitors...it appears to be blown. At least, if it was a capacitor, it's toast. Now, let me see if I can figure out how to post some pics...

The Controller.png shows the guts of the entire board with a red arrow added near the top/center to indicate the "blown" capacitor, or at least what I assume was a capacitor. The Controller-CloseUp.png shows the "blown" cap in greater detail. Also note the clear sealant around EVERYTHING, and it looks to be a little distorted around that one "capacitor", I think?

The markings on the controller are:

LCO3622C1H-TS23 Controller
DC36v TK
KZQW23B-HL3622LCD009-1-TS
Tonsheng Powertrain C23BHLJFA00062

Anyone care to confirm what I'm seeing here, a blown capacitor? If yes, should I begin by buying ($80) and installing a new "matching" controller from Ecotric? Anyone got another suggestion for additional tests to help confirm, or know of a different improved/cheaper controller replacement, or some entirely different approach to this?

I considered taking this directly to my favorite bike shop, but they don't do a lot of Ebike work there so I'd prefer to try and solve this on my own first, with a little help from experienced Ebikers here. Also, the shop charges a $100 flat fee just to open things up and do simple diagnostics, so if the controller is damaged I'm game to try a replacement for less that initial diagnostic fee. I just hate to replace the controller only to find out the problem is in another component, like the hub and sensor.

 

[harryS]

I own several different display brands (various KT displays, SW900, and S866) and they all use this same pinout. I think the S900 is the same 5 pin interface

When the display powers up, it raises the blue wire to the battery voltage, and that turns on the controller. It communicates using serial data on the green and yellow wires. The display only needs battery and ground to power up, but it will throw a comm error if it doesn't get any received data.

Meanwhile, many controllers only need the blue wire at battery level to turn on and can run w/o a display, with a single default PAS level and throttle enabled.

Based on what you said, I think your display is turning on the controller, and there is no data sent from the display or received from the controller. If the display could send data, you would have different levels of PAS available, including PAS0. since PAS 0 doesn't work, the controller is not getting data.

Possible causes include bad connector, or bad data transceivers in either the LCD or controller. If you can put a analyzer on the data leads, you would know,

I have had bad connectors, One time I had a bad RX pin. I could set all five PAS levels, but there was no speedometer info. No comm errors though. Go figure.

I have never seen a vented electrolytic so don't know what to make of your photo, Those would be power line filter caps though.

Here's a representative controller schematic. No UART's in the controller, They run right into a microcontroller,

Most Ebike shops won't know what to do with any of this. If they had the right spares, they would swap in a known good unit. That's how I debug my ebikes. I use similar brand controllers, so I have spares.

 

[SummittDweller]

Based on what you said, I think your display is turning on the controller, and there is no data sent from the display or received from the controller. If the display could send data, you would have different levels of PAS available, including PAS0. since PAS 0 doesn't work, the controller is not getting data.

Thanks @harryS! What you described above is exactly what I'm seeing... single PAS mode regardless of what's displayed, and no speed/distance data displayed, all zeros all the time.

I'm pretty handy with a multimeter (retired Civil Engineer turned web developer but I spent 4 summers in college as a plant electrician's assistant) and am preparing to do some continuity testing of the wires and connectors, but I'm reluctant to probe around the components with power applied for fear of doing more damage.

Next step sounds like I need to learn more about my S900 display and its connectors since it sounds like that is another likely culprit. Anybody got suggestions (how to disassemble and where/how to probe) to help diagnose if the S900 might be the root cause?