The Porter range are tough, low cost, single direction controllers that are particularly suitable for karts, golf caddies, electric bikes, equipment handling, and industrial applications.
The Porters are tough, low cost, single direction speed control components that can work from 12V to 48V without adjustment. Particularly suitable for carts, golf caddies, electric bikes, equipment handling, and industrial applications, they are designed to be simple to install and use, and have very simple wiring. They can also be used to give a soft start function to reduce high initial torque spikes.
The key features are:
Adjustable acceleration and deceleration ramps allow smooth, controllable performance.
Integral box and heatsink.
Reverse polarity protection.
Pot fault detection.
Porter 5. 1 minute current 75A. Continuous current 50A [with suitable extra heatsink].
Porter 10. 1 minute current 120A. Continuous current 100A [with suitable extra heatsink].
Input 4k7 ohm to 20k ohm potentiometer, direct voltage control, or PWM control by Pi or Arduino etc.
Can accept a Hall effect throttle on 12v or 24v [10mA max, contact support for use on higher voltages].
Adjustable current limiting can be added, see this page of our knowledgebase for details.
Porters have enjoyed great success in the Greenpower race series. Our recommendation for new teams is our Porter-5, for teams that are chasing that last 1% of performance to move up the results we have the Porter 10XXX which has been used by many of the top kit and scratch build cars [kit car winner 2018].
Porters have also proved a good after market replacement for the PDQ Powertrike, a number have also been fitted to Sinclair C5s, note; due to the low resistance of the C5 motor we recommend using the Porter 10XX variant.
The manual provides full instructions on setting up and operating the controller. The manual is available in PDF format:
The manual is designed to be printed double-sided in A4 booklet format. To print the booklet from the PDF on a double-sided printer, select Booklet in the Page Size & Handling section of the print window, and set Orientation to Portrait.
Troubleshooting
For troubleshooting common to all controllers click here.
Specific issues you might hit with the Porters are:
Hall Throttles. A lot of people use hall effect throttles with the Porter, unfortunately there is no standard wiring colour scheme for these and it can be difficult to tell which wire is which. Our method is to connect a power supply to the hall device and find out what the wires are before connecting it to the Porter.
Notes on Current
The motor current can be a lot higher than the battery current, however the motor power will be equal to the battery power.
At half speed motor current can be twice the battery current, at full speed motor current is nearly equal the battery current.
Do not allow the battery current to exceed 100A otherwise circuit board damage may occur.
In practise the current limits can be significantly higher than quoted. On the Porter 5 we can measure 95 amps into a stalled, large, motor. As the MOSFETs heat up, this reduces so, after a minute, the motor current has reduced to 75 amps and the heatsink is near 100°C. This is with the controller in free air, no additional heatsinking.
The 1 minute current on the Porter 10 is really limited by the wiring and crimps.
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