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Possible Alternator Control Improvements


castillaricardo

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Hi all. The alternator control seems to be working well on my car, but I've noticed that it has momentary errors up to 0.8v when accessories are turned on/off. Could it be possible to add load offsets similar to the idle control offsets? This way we can increase/decrease the duty cycle on expected demand?

Another consideration could be adding dedicated targets for charging, overrun, idle and full throttle. Having one target and base table doesn't allow for having multiple of these at once easily.

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You might just need to make adjustments on the 'Alternator Control' PID to make it more responsive to changes in charging voltage.  'Alt Control Target Table' you can also change to 3D so you can have another parameter as qualifier for your target voltage.

As the idle speed is a big factor for alt charging, have you already maximized the following?
Engine Fan Idle Up
Power Steer Idle Up
Gear/Drive Idle Up
GP Idle Up
AC Idle Up
*Most of the above can be assigned to a 'Virtual Aux' that could be triggered by multiple parameters/sources (depending on conditions you set on 'GP Input').

'Idle Base Position Table' and 'Idle Target RPM Table' can also be changed to 3D with your choice of another parameter on the Y-axis.

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On 1/12/2023 at 2:43 PM, essb00 said:

You might just need to make adjustments on the 'Alternator Control' PID to make it more responsive to changes in charging voltage.  'Alt Control Target Table' you can also change to 3D so you can have another parameter as qualifier for your target voltage.

As the idle speed is a big factor for alt charging, have you already maximized the following?
Engine Fan Idle Up
Power Steer Idle Up
Gear/Drive Idle Up
GP Idle Up
AC Idle Up
*Most of the above can be assigned to a 'Virtual Aux' that could be triggered by multiple parameters/sources (depending on conditions you set on 'GP Input').

'Idle Base Position Table' and 'Idle Target RPM Table' can also be changed to 3D with your choice of another parameter on the Y-axis.

Thanks for the suggestions. Currently the control responds within 0.1 seconds, and gets to target around 0.25 seconds after the fan turns on. Is this a good response time?

In my case I only use Engine Fan Idle Up as my car doesn't have AC, PS and is manual. I looked at a log after you mentioned it and the dip does happen between Fan 1 turning on and idle increasing. Attached is a log with two Fan on events. 3:10 in the idling section, or 10:54 of the whole file.

 

Edited by castillaricardo
Deleted attachment to save space
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The dips/peaks seem acceptable. Do you have closed loop idle control on? I'm just trying to guess what you got as you didn't attach your tune file. :D
If you have the Engine Fan controlled by ECU (triggered by one of the outputs), you can have the 'Engine Fan Idle Up' setup.

Sample attached 'Alt Control Target Table' should cover your intended targets for overrun, idle, cruise, & full throttle -- adjust the values as you want them to be.

Alt Ctrl Target Table.png

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Sorry, tune file attached. Thanks for the information, sometimes I don't know what 'normal' or 'acceptable' is. I do have closed-loop idle control and I do use Engine Fan Idle Up, but because of the routing of the IACV to the vacuum block it does take sometime for the idle to increase. It is an ITB motor, so some things are unusual. I'm working on this at the moment. As for the targets, I'm personally not interested in lower voltages during idle or WOT, just thought other people might be. Thank you for the responses by the way.

 

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