Quest Nº 14 The Haqeedo saga continues | Fixing a second hand Torqeedo electric outboard
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- Опубликовано: 8 окт 2022
- In this quest we are sharing with you our diy / budget approach to electric propulsion for a dinghy. You will see that it’s possible to fix broken torqeedo outboard motor, some hacking actions using Arduino and other components like dc/dc power supply.
We got our torqeedo 503 as a used unit (second hand). It was not working. For us it was a challenge witch we accepted!
Disassembling battery unit, checking BMS (battery management system), using multi-meter to check the voltage of lithium cells, checking status of bus bars. At the end we made a decision to we rebuild it do it your self way. Cells were too low and out of speck voltage. All reparation was done on our sailboat with no access to special equipment.
As a budget, frugal sailors we decided to go all electric. We can move our home boat using wind power or our electric motor. So not needing to go to the gas station for gasoline is an ideal solution for us. With an electric outboard our solar panels can charge batteries at no cost using the power of the sun for a free boat to shore transport. Not to mention it would mean no oil, spark plugs, cloggy carburetors, impellers and all the rest of messy ice maintenance.
Our old internal combustion engine gave up on us (no cooling).
Torqeedo uses a CAN bus communication to talk with the tiller handle, battery and motor. Like with most of the things those days it’s closed source. There is no available documentation on how to do it yourself. Good thing that there is internet and we were able to find some info about the work done by Ruffalo Lavoisier. He kindly shared his work on github. Using it as a base we had a starting point to work on the code responsible for talking to the motor. After analyzing the code and modifying it to our needs we had a working Arduino sketch to send commands to the motor to send spin direction (forward/reverse) and rpm’s. That was the software layer. Hardware layer also required from us some diy’ing. RS485 converter to plug to CAN bus, OLED display (SSD1306 I2C ) to have some feedback on battery charge status, dc to dc converter to have power supply, resistors to create a voltage divider to have a voltage meter. Everything was coming together. Using a laptop we upload the new firmware to the Arduino to have it in more compact form. It came back from the dead. It was alive!
Torqeedo motor itself is a big'ish brushless motor with permanent magnets. Main housing of it is from some mild-steal material and it was corroded. To stop it from further oxidation we used epoxy to cover it's surface and stop air and moisture.
Battery being a lithium technology doesn’t like to be discharged or charged over the specific range of volts and reverse polarity is something to be avoided. Also as a multi cell pack it needed some equalization mechanism. So it got an active balancers to equalize the cells in the battery pack. Using over-lapping technique we managed to work around the problem of not having the correct balancer for it ( 7s and 3s instead of 8s).
After soldering, wire management and lot of diy’ing it was done :)
Battery box was repacked with new connections and wires. We added an external contact-less switch working with a magnet (hall sensor) to have an option to disable/enable main power contacts. Closing and opening of a circuit was done by a n-channel mosfet salvaged from a starting module from volvo diesel engine. Lot of cable ties. It was close and semi water proof.
So for us it’s no more a torqeedo it’s a haqeedo :) It’s hacked starting from the tiller thru communication CAN bus, battery up to the motor (still in original form). Now we have full control over our motor. We also added an Easter egg in form of some epic music played by the vibration of the brush less motor. Because we can! Low voltage protection is implemented in the arduino code to limit the power fed to the motor in case of low battery.
Now we can enjoy a fossil fuel free dinghy ride :)
Let the force be with you! And bananas!
If you liked it subscribe and share! It’s helping us to stay afloat and make more of this kind of stuff. Maybe even inspire you to come sail with use one day !
Our sailboat Oiysh is a 1985 Bruce Farr design, 40 foot, Australian build retired racing boat that we hope to restore to her former glory with a bit of diy/solarpunkish/small budget twist.
We hope you enjoy watching :D
Source code
github.com/yOyOeK1/hackqueedo
github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot
Kudos and huge thanks to
lcdgfx library author/s
as5045 library author/s
responsiveanalogread library author/s
If you'd like to support these videos
our Ko-fi ... www.ko-fi.com/svoiysh
our Patreon ... / svoiysh
![Our electric outboard aka ultimately butchered Torquedoo [Q35]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/nDgma8-HOAs/mqdefault.jpg)
![Our electric outboard aka ultimately butchered Torquedoo [Q35]](/img/tr.png)
I admire your resourcefullness and skill. Great to see component level repair instead of repair by replacement of expensive modules.
Thank you very much! We try ;)
Clearly you two are the most resourceful cruising couple on RUclips. I mean, wow... no one, and I mean no one, repairs circuit boards at the component level; it's kind of amazing.
Thank you so much Karl! Though it was more of a create your own board than a component level repair this time ;) For us it's both a necessity as we have a really tiny budget and a lot of fun 💜
Loved the vid.👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 Bravo on the Haqeedo! A first for any sailing channel I've watched (and I watch far too many 😬) Fair winds you two⛵
Thank you so much Michael ❤️
Great hack, well done. Not just electric but DIY electric at a component level on a sailboat. Rare.
Thank you! We are trying to show that it is possible and not everything has to be 'new new new' maybe it will encourage people 😊 We have some other electronic projects in the pipeline ( like a diy autopilot, navigation and 'smart boat' systems ) let us know if any of them sound interesting 😉
Love the Imperial March theme played on the Haqeedo
Thank you! ☺️
Very cool!
Thank you !😊
Hi there, Hava a nice DIY 😊 - Ruffalo
Thank you! 😊
👍!!!awesome
Thanks for all your comments Bryren✌️
This is really cool
Thank you! 😊
in Canada it is "zap straps". My hat off to your skills.
Thank you!
👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
Thank you :)
Love that drill!!! 💜
So do we 😊 Thanks again bro!!!
I had my Torqeedo 1003s repaired by Torqeedo last year.
While it still works well, there seems to be an issue with the power button itself. I had trouble at first after the repair last season, but it generally worked the rest of the season when I put it away for winter in December.
I couldn't get it to turn on during a trip to Florida in April, but I only tried to use it once. I WD40's the connections, and struggled again back home when I tried again last week. On the 3rd or 4th attempt to power it on it came out. I disconnect the cables each attempt. It ran perfectly for 2 hours, but I could not get it to turn off when I was done.
I'm pretty sure the issue is with the power button on the tiller, or something in the path of the wiring to it. The other two identical buttons on the tiller worked perfectly.
Could there be a dirty contact or space between the button and the rubber membrane over it? Can the button or switch be cleaned or replaced without replacing the whole tiller, of which I'm not even sure they are available since the 1003 & similar 1103 have now been discontinued.
Thanks for any advise. I've really loved the motor for a good decade, but I can't afford to buy a new replacement model. And I spent over $500 on the repair last season repairing it and doing recommended maintenance.
Hi sorry to hear about your troubles.
We don't have much experience with fixing the original Torqeedo buttons as we got rid of that part from the very beginning but from our experience with these kind of things in salty environment it is possible either the connections or the button itself might indeed be the culprit.
We would suggest thoroughly washing the handle connector especially the socket for it on the battery side though we wouldn't necessarily use wd40 ( we know that's what the Torqueedo suggests) but isopropyl alcohol or even just rubbing alcohol to make sure there is no salt in it as it likes to mess up connections and cause the kind of non consistent problems.
If that still doesn't help you might try to resolder the button connections. If that still doesn't solve the problem the button itself might need changing. You should be able to find a micro switch / touch switch on the interwebs they are quite cheap and available in different sizes.
Hope that will help. Otherwise you might consider exchanging the whole Torqueedo handle setup for the arduino, esp, 3 phase controller from rc toys and other miscellaneous parts as we did but then it's a bit more work and hustle.
Let us know if you managed to solve it fingers crossed it's just some salt on the connector.
YO, YO, Yoyo jak lutujesz to używaj odrdzewiacza (fosol), śmierdzi 😅 ale szybko i czysto chwyta cyna. Tęsknimy 🥲
Dzięki za podpowiedź mamy topnik więc nie jest źle ale jak gdzieś zobaczymy to będziemy testować 😎 Jak coś zapraszamy w odwiedziny ;)
@@svoiysh odpowiedź Pauliny brzmi "NIE", cytuję "Nie pojadę nigdzie gdzie pająk jest większy niż paznokieć" XD.
@@DrJimBoston Te mniejsze bywają bardziej niebezpieczne poza tym na łódce ich raczej nie ma ;)
Strapse. Grüße von der Vanora!
Uuuu nice one and I can add another language to the collection 😀 Thank you!
i did the same thing with a torqeedo because the windings in the motor burned out.. I didnt reseal it good enough and water came in. the torqeedo people were not helpful and told me to buy a new one.
Spoiler alert been there than that :) In our case it's a controller board and now it will receive a RC model controller soon. About water proofing it, butyl tape rocks !