RioRand 300W 5-50V PWM DC Brushless Electric Motor Speed Controller with Hall-Less

Note - many of the questions/answers displayed for this item are actually for the Hall Sensor version so please be careful and don't assume all those answers apply to this module. This listing is for the "Hall-less" version, meaning it's for controlling a 3-phase DC motor that only has 3 wires and does NOT use hall sensor monitoring. Some errors I noted in the Q/A section: - some Q/A indicate the module has "soft-start" - it does not, but see my easy hack to add it below* - some say to "remove the jumper" to use the external analog speed control - there is no jumper on this module, just be sure to set the on-board speed pot to zero (full ccw) - some say this module will not work with a Hall-less motor - that is WRONG, it is specifically designed to work with hall-less motors. - there are several different wiring diagrams shown in the listing, but the one that has pictures of the motor and power supply is what I used and seems to be correct. I used this controller to operate the fan motor from an EGO leaf blower that was trashed because the internal controller died. My fan motor has 3 leads - red, blue, and yellow, which connect to the controller terminals red to red, blue to blue, and yellow to green. I'll use this fan blower with some 18v cordless tool batteries as a sweeper in my shop and patio, and 18v yields plenty of air flow for that purpose. * I made a simple modification to perform a soft-start function, using a 470uf capacitor and a 1k resistor (see photo and video). Some experimenting proved that the external potentiometer speed control reaches maximum motor speed at about 4.6v, which can be achieved by placing a 1k resistor from the 5v terminal to the analog speed input. By adding the capacitor, the voltage on the speed input slowly rises when power is applied, so that the motor speed ramps up from zero to full speed in about a second, greatly reducing the strain on the power supply, controller, and the motor. If you want a slower start-up you can increase the size of the capacitor, but leave the resistor at 1k. If you increase the resistance above 1000Ω the motor will never reach full speed.

I have been saving some 3 phase motors....BLDC and PMSM type, for a long time. This board is awesome. I can easily drive 24V PMSMs (see video). It stays winter cool to the touch! I want to stress that I'm no where NEAR the 380W limit of this thing. I hope another reviewer can attest to the max capabilities. But if you're looking at driving small to medium size BLDC or PMSM, this is a great option. I was going to upload a nice video of a gorgeous BLDC from a tape drive, but it's enormous. I'll just upload pictures...It drove a nice fat motor too (see photos). For anyone wondering, you can run hard drive motors, too. Looking forward to using these for some projects to reclaim bad or old hard drives! I actually tested this on a WD raptor spindle and some other seagate disk spindles. Works great. You just need to figure out which motor contact is the center tap. Remove this from what you connect. The remaining three should connect to UVW. It will spin just fine without a common terminal. Definitely usable. I didn't try the PWM control feature yet. I've been using the onboard potentiometer to control speed. If you want to use PWM or DC voltage for this, remove the jumper. It's not clear, but I think that's what it does. Connection a pot as shown in the photos gives you DC voltage control (like the onboard pot), and pumping a square wave into it instead will give you PWM control. The way the PWM input works, it probably just low-pass-filters the input signal. If it's PWM, it gets converted to DC voltage. If it's DC voltage, it goes through the filter the same way. If you want to run a BLDC or PMSM motor by variable speed (without speed feedback) this board is going to do it for you.

Used it to test power tool brushless dc motor and it performed as expected. Package could be better with some pads or foam; it is just a plastic bag!

So far it works well. I need to address the direction control on the Hall model. The motor will run in a couple different phase wiring orders, if you have it in the wrong order the reverse direction switch does not work. Once you fix that, it reverses perfectly.

The motor is spinning just fine; however, you can't change the spinning direction. The motor is humming and doesn't spin when you activate the DIR terminal by shorting it with GND, as the manufacturer suggests. As an electronics engineer I tried everything, but no luck. I tried to talk with the manufacturer, but they kept sending the same information mentioned in the product description.

I bought two of these. One works fine. The other one, PWM does not work. Unfortunately I bought this last year, but just doing the project now. I am assuming if RioRand is reading this, I lost my support? Or replacement window?

used an excellent guide from "thrifty tool shed" on YouTube for this retrofit. I mounted mine a bit differently and used a reemer to create a few small vent holes for the heatsink. I also had to file a little off the corner of the heatsink to make it fit where I put it. There are some plastic "ribs" that need to be cut out as well as one screw mounting hole trimmed to clear a capacitor. I only retained use of the side knob and main trigger, no need for the turbo button. I also added a 20A inline fuse. the response takes a bit more trigger travel to kick the motor on, but max speed is still there. worked absolutely amazing for drying my car and blowing leaves. No issues with heat so far and after using it for 20min non stop full blast, battery light still at max bars. this is a very cost effective way of fixing a broken Ego 56V blower, as long as you can solder and make a few plastic and filing tweaks you're good to go.

It took a little bit to figure out the wiring. I was able to crack open my 36V hub motor and clearly read the labels but they didn't correspond to the motor controller. I did have to short the Jumper. As far as getting it to work with an Arduino: - I used an Arduino Nano to test. - Used the PWM.h library to set the pin frequency to 20khz - Connected one Arduino pin to "DIR" line and set pin to "HIGH" or "LOW" for Fwd and Rev. - Used the "G" (Ground), "P" (PWM) and V (5V) connections located by the Jumper to connect to the Arduino. This powered the Arduino as well. Sample code (I am not the best programmer but it worked): // Sample Code for one motor #include <PWM.h> //Used to set pwm frequency to 20khz int Direction = 10; // pin connected to the "Dir" int Motor = 9; // pin connected to "P" PWM Signal input" int32_t frequency = 20000; //frequency (in Hz) 20khz void setup() { //initialize all timers except for 0, to save time keeping functions InitTimersSafe(); //sets the frequency for the specified pin bool success = SetPinFrequencySafe(Motor, frequency); //if the pin frequency was set successfully, turn pin 13 on (Built in LED) if (success) { pinMode(13, OUTPUT); digitalWrite(13, HIGH); } pinMode(Direction, OUTPUT); } void loop() { digitalWrite(Direction, HIGH); //Set direction clockwise pwmWrite(Motor, 200); //Spin motor between 0-255, in this case 200 delay(5000); // for 5 seconds pwmWrite(Motor, 0); //Spind motor down delay(3000); //for 3 seconds digitalWrite(Direction, LOW); //Set direction counter clockwise pwmWrite(Motor, 200); //Spin motor delay(5000); // for 5 seconds pwmWrite(Motor, 0); //Spin motor down delay(3000); //for 3 seconds }