So I have some explaining to do.
It's been about 6 months since my last Hummer video, and as you can see it is still here,
still a work in progress.
We are still not done with it.
Life just caught up with me for a little bit.
My other project of making wheelchairs less expensive for people who need them kind of
took over.
We got a new building, we got some new machines, and we even have a Kid Rig coming out in the
next few weeks.
-[Woman] These things are awesome!
-[Cambry] Thanks!
-[Zack] Keep that one a secret though.
There are only so many hours in a day and I still want to hang out with my family.
However, the Whisper Project is still here and there is quite a lot of work we have to
get done.
For example, the charger is not connected, the coolant lines are kind of just dangling
there, and for anyone who knows anything about electric vehicles, you know the charger is
rather important to moving forward.
I'm also having some issues with the CAN network, the two wires that get all the components
to talk with each other, like that charger, the screen, the inverter, the VCU.
I've been dabbling with it for the last 6 months trying to get it working, but I'll
let you see for yourself how it's going.
Let's get started.
[Intro]
I think we should start with the charger since obviously we can't go very far if there's
no juice inside of the battery modules.
We already have the wall unit that's ready to bring electricity from the grid into the
Hummer.
We also have the plug on the Hummer that's ready to accept that power.
But the charger itself is not mounted, nor is the coolant flowing through it.
As you can see the charger is not where it's supposed to be.
So all of these coolant lines right here were actually just a placeholder for when we finally
do get the charger mounted.
Unfortunately though now we have to drain it.
[Laughing]
Is that under pressure?!
-Seems like a little bit!
-While the charger isn't technically mounted just yet, we do have all of the wires run
and mounting set so it should be pretty simple.
And, of course, it'll work on the first try.
The charger is going to sit just like this up inside of the truck, but when it's in there
you won't be able to see these.
This is where the power leaves out to the battery.
You can see the two poles here, and you can see this is where we get the three wires coming
in from the charger.
These are the coolant lines, and these are the communication wires like the CAN stuff.
Things get really cozy up inside of there so I'm not sure you'll be able to see things
being plugged in.
And just like that we have the charger mounted and in place.
I did make a whole video about how we made the mount for this.
If you're curious I'll leave that linked.
But it's kind of a cool shot down here with the tires, differential, charger, middle battery
box, transfer case, electric motor...we have all kinds of cool things.
Now we just have to connect the wires inside of the middle battery box and we should be
able to plug it into the wall and hopefully nothing explodes.
I also have to run the wires from the charger plug to the battery terminals on the contactors
inside the middle battery box.
We have 450 volts worth of power inside of here.
It's basically the most dangerous place to be in the entire Humvee.
It's also surprising how small these wires can be that are coming from the charger.
The charger maxes out at 6.6 kilowatts, and if we divide that 6600 watts by our peak 450
volts, we will never be using more than 14 amps, which is why this wire is much thinner
than you might expect.
Our electric motor however, can pull 500 amps at a time.
So the wire for the juice leaving the batteries is much thicker than the wire for the juice
coming in.
We're also adding a little inline fuse as well for the wire protection.
Alright, moment of truth, we're only going to do this for a second just to see if it
works or not.
We have the BMS plugged in.
Nothing going on with the cells right now.
When we do plug it in they should start balancing.
So I'm going to come around here.
First time plugging it in.
Just for the record, if something does go wrong, the BMS can turn it off, the wall charger
should be able to turn off, and we have a breaker.
So something would pop before we actually start a fire.
Correct?
-Hopefully.
-[Zack] Nothing.
I think we have the same CAN network problem that we have with the screen.
Which brings me to the other issue we've been having – the screen.
So the charger isn't working, which I think is coupled with our other problem of the display
not telling us how fast the Hummer is going.
And I think the problem resides with the CAN network.
If you remember, we have different components like the inverter, the display, the vehicle
control unit, the BMS, and the charger, and they're all supposed to be connected with
a trunk with little branches off to the side to distribute the information.
However, I currently have a branch off of the trunk which turns into two branches.
And apparently when you have one branch off of another branch in the CAN network, the
data gets jumbled or lost, which could explain why my stuff is not communicating.
So what we need to do is instead of having a branch off of a branch, we need to take
the trunk of the CAN network and have tiny little, less than 12 inches, branches off
the side that go through all the main components.
Rewiring the mistake area underneath the dashboard should solve our communication issues, since
communication is a healthy part of any relationship.
I found some dedicated CAN wire that we are using for the new trunk cable.
It has the two high and low wires along with some metal foil shielding that helps keep
any electrical interference from disturbing the signal as all the components are communicating
with each other.
So now we have our CAN network trunk with small 10 inch branches, each spaced about
2 feet apart.
And this should work better than the previous one.
Luckily the only portion of the CAN network that needs to be replaced is everything under
the dashboard.
We have a CAN connection to the display.
A CAN connection to the VCU, and a CAN connection that I can use to plug in my laptop and see
what's going on with the system.
Previously my branches were all far too long and connecting off of each other.
But now that we have small branches all coming from the trunk, it should function much better.
The trunk of the CAN network can apparently be about 100 meters long - around 300 feet.
So we have plenty of trunk to work with.
Fingers crossed that my issue was only the branches.
Moment of truth, we can see that the display is working with the new CAN wiring setup.
Fingers crossed but I don't have my hopes up.
So it looks like the display does pull up some information, like our battery voltage,
state of charge, and battery temp.
But this is nowhere even close to right.
Twenty-five degrees celsius is about 77 fahrenheit and it's the middle of winter and about 30
degrees in the garage, so not even close.
However, if we flip it into drive and press the accelerator, the motor spins but we do
not have any discharge or miles per hour even while we are moving.
So even with the wiring fixed for the CAN networks, something is still not communicating.
Let's try plugging it in.
The LEDs should light up, we should hear something happening here, and that should be blinking
on the wall.
And all of this is rather unfortunate.
My Hummer has never been charged up.
The only juice that is in the batteries was from the last time the Tesla was charged up
before it got in a wreck, and was then sold for parts on eBay.
And that was a long time ago so it's time we get this fixed.
And I'm going to be completely honest, I am not smart enough for the intricate problem
solving that this situation requires.
But luckily I know someone who is.
You've actually met him before and he lives close by.
It's time to take my electric Hummer to the EV doctor for some professional diagnostics.
Here we go.
Woo baby!
Oh we're so tall right now, dude!
We finally arrived at the new workshop.
This is Jeremey.
You remember him from earlier.
He works on much more, what's the word, pristine vehicles than this.
But he's been a part of this project for a while and he knows the wiring and so I'm hoping
he can help us figure out the problem.
Right?
-That's right.
-Perfect.
So the next episode is probably going to be on his channel.
I'll link a link right up here so you can subscribe to that.
Once we get all this programming stuff figured out we'll be back on my channel just like
usual.
We have a lot more testing to do and at some point I want to add a solar panel to the roof.
And it should be coming much sooner than it took us to get this episode out.
Sorry for the delay but it is coming soon.
Thanks a ton for watching.
And I'll see you around.