LiPo charing is a PITA

[Offroader]

In all honesty, if you want simple charging buy yourself an Adaptto mini-e and easily charge with just two wires. This makes it so easy to charge and has better control than a bulk charger which may overcharge your cells.

Plus you get all the good features of the controller, including silent motor operation which is great.

This is a great suggestion, as the user is operating with 4s packs it would be a fine fit... But does the fact that he runs 2p complicate things? Is it okay to go ahead and parallel balance leads for that application? I honestly dont know anything about how things connect wih LiPo and BMS.

For the adaptto BMS 4s packs are the easiest, but you can use any configuration you want. It is simply just paralleling all the balance leads and converting them to 4s leads. The only drawback is that if your main batteries get disconnected out of series and you still have the balance leads connected into the BMS you could damage part of the BMS, this only happens when not using 4s packs.

For the Adaptto I never even bothered to hook up my BMS. My 18s7p pack has all the balance leads hooked up in parallel. So for the rare times I need to balance the pack I can just hook into my pack and easily balance the cells. Or really just easily connect to the balance leads to make sure my packs are reasonably balanced.

So I have to options to charge my pack, I can connect two wires to my bike and throw my 220 volt wall switch that turns on my high powered power supply and charge at up to 3000 watts to my specified voltage of 74 volts.

Or I can simply plug into the three 6s balance lead wires easily reachable at the top of my bike and the three main battery leads easily reached at the bottom to use a hobby charger.

I much prefer to use the adaptto to charge as it is safe, charges at almost 3000 watts, and is ridiculously easy to just plug in two wires, or even one connector if you put the positive and negative on the same connector. I found easy charging of the ebike one of the most important things you can do for the best ebike satisfaction.

Below you can see my balance leads coming out the top of the frame of my bike, I can connect a reader to them or charge to them very easily. This is why I don't need the BMS because in a way, I act as my BMS. Since my packs are all parallel 7x, even if a cell completely fails it wouldn't be a big deal also.

 

[velias]

In all honesty, if you want simple charging buy yourself an Adaptto mini-e....

I would love to buy a Adaptto product myself, but I don't really want to risk sending money to Russia and waiting 2 months for delivery to see what I get.
I get suspicious when I see they only accept payment via Bank Transfer or Western Union ($$ transfer fees) and the shipping price is unclear when you buy it.
I guess its a little safer than buying something from Nigeria though.
Weren't you Adaptto owners a little bit hesitant to send off $500+ to a strange foreign country that isn't really known for direct to consumer commerce?

Isn't there a legit U.S. Dealer for these products??
This Adaptto company would be rolling in dough if they could make it easier/safer to purchase in the US thru dealers.
I wish Grin (ebikes.ca) would stock them.

 

[markw]

Yes there definitely are domestic suppliers of the adaptto controllers, just check around the forum (I'd look for you but at work atm) I know at the launch there were some communication issues but from what I understand I wouldn't think twice about ordering directly from them at this time but I understand the concern.

 

[cal3thousand]

Yes there definitely are domestic suppliers of the adaptto controllers, just check around the forum (I'd look for you but at work atm) I know at the launch there were some communication issues but from what I understand I wouldn't think twice about ordering directly from them at this time but I understand the concern.

Yeah, I think Zombiess is a dealer of Adaptto.

 

[Offroader]

I wanted to say that you have nothing to worry about ordering direct from Adaptto. There wasn't any known problems from anybody ordering from them and they probably shipped a lot of these controllers.
When I had to deal with them for warranty they didn't charge me for shipping the controller back and also didn't hold me liable for the damages even though some were my fault. When they shipped me my controller it must have taken less than a week for it to arrive from Russia to NY.

I'd jump on the 10% deal they have right now as you only have today and tomorrow.

 

[dnmun]

i don't even understand why this guy would talk about andrei that way either. totally up front guy and has never had any complaints and i think is more than proactive in supporting his customers.

so much ignorant racist bigotry out there as though only buy from some white american male to get the most reliable product. NOT

 

[markw]

So to clarify, and thank you Offroader for the fantastic breakdown of your setup, is it okay to put balance leads in parallel indefinitely? IE for me I use 20s3p using 5s packs. I use an anderson plug to quick configure the leads. In discharge config 3 of the packs will always be p, in charge all packs will be in p. So would it be okay to leave leads in 3p thru both configs? In discharge they would be in p correctly but just not in series...

 

[dnmun]

yes, you can keep the balance leads tied together during charging and discharging. it is just so much easier to use a 20S BMS and bulk charge and never have to go through this constant tearing down of the pack and then putting it back together. amazed that people still do it. i cannot because my pack will not allow me to do that. i have 21S 4P of lipo which i could never charge using the little RC chargers and cannot fathom why people would waste so much time fighting with this every time they charged and then removed the pack from the little RC charger. plus the loss of LVC and short circuit protection on the output.

 

[markw]

yes, you can keep the balance leads tied together during charging and discharging. it is just so much easier to use a 20S BMS and bulk charge and never have to go through this constant tearing down of the pack and then putting it back together. amazed that people still do it. i cannot because my pack will not allow me to do that. i have 21S 4P of lipo which i could never charge using the little RC chargers and cannot fathom why people would waste so much time fighting with this every time they charged and then removed the pack from the little RC charger. plus the loss of LVC and short circuit protection on the output.

Okay! So herein is another way to to simpify the charging process be it via putting the balance leads in parallel. Best practice here is to probably twist/solder/heatshrink for when you are absolutely sure you config will not change. If one anticipates changing their config for future builds making p balance connectors would be a better option.

Is there a hidden benefit of having the balance leads in p (but not ALL in p, but in p with repects to how theyre in p during discharge.) IE would it help keep cells in check since the would be equilizing their voltage over time?

 

[cal3thousand]

yes, you can keep the balance leads tied together during charging and discharging. it is just so much easier to use a 20S BMS and bulk charge and never have to go through this constant tearing down of the pack and then putting it back together. amazed that people still do it. i cannot because my pack will not allow me to do that. i have 21S 4P of lipo which i could never charge using the little RC chargers and cannot fathom why people would waste so much time fighting with this every time they charged and then removed the pack from the little RC charger. plus the loss of LVC and short circuit protection on the output.

Okay! So herein is another way to to simpify the charging process be it via putting the balance leads in parallel. Best practice here is to probably twist/solder/heatshrink for when you are absolutely sure you config will not change. If one anticipates changing their config for future builds making p balance connectors would be a better option.

Is there a hidden benefit of having the balance leads in p (but not ALL in p, but in p with repects to how theyre in p during discharge.) IE would it help keep cells in check since the would be equilizing their voltage over time?

paralleled cells act as one large cell. This has the effect of reducing stress on any one cell as they share the load. Also, if one cell is slightly underperforming, the 2 paralleled with it can help prop up the performance. They see a split in current requirements and their overall resistance is reduced as they are paralleled. I truly feel that paralleling them makes them last longer. It's like a pack of pencils. By themselves, pencils can be broken with your hand. Pair a few together and the job gets exceedingly difficult.

 

[Offroader]

So to clarify, and thank you Offroader for the fantastic breakdown of your setup, is it okay to put balance leads in parallel indefinitely? IE for me I use 20s3p using 5s packs. I use an anderson plug to quick configure the leads. In discharge config 3 of the packs will always be p, in charge all packs will be in p. So would it be okay to leave leads in 3p thru both configs? In discharge they would be in p correctly but just not in series...

Yes, like others said it is so much better to leave them in parallel. just make sure you parallel each separate bank of batteries, and only connect them all together when you charge. I think you mentioned that in your post but I can't be sure.

I've burned a few 6s balance leads forgetting to disconnect them when putting my batteries back in series. It's easy to forget when you have to disconnect and reconnect each charge.

In all honesty a BMS is overrated with larger packs. It is of course better to use one but definitely not necessary if you have your packs paralleled. If you maintain your batteries and replace bad cells you should only need to balance charge rarely.

 

[velias]

i don't even understand why this guy would talk about andrei that way either. totally up front guy and has never had any complaints and i think is more than proactive in supporting his customers.

so much ignorant racist bigotry out there as though only buy from some white american male to get the most reliable product. NOT

Not sure if your refering to me?? I don't know who Andrei is I guess he runs Adappto? I never said anything about him. I've bought tons of stuff direct from china via PAYPAL with no problem, so I guess i'm just racist against Russians.
My main complaint is having to do bank transfers or western union to a company/country-> Russia that I've never dealt with before.
I'm sure I'm not the only person with this concern.
I never said anything about the Adappto not being reliable. I want to buy one, but I'm just not sure about wiring 6 or 700 dollars to Russia!
I guess there must be a lot of racists like me out there that are hesitant about wiring money!

 

[QuestionMan]

velias, I started all of this by quoting your post. All you did was just ask if others have concern about sending money over to Russia.


Before you even asked this I wrote this in another thread, basically saying it is ridiculous that they don't offer Paypal. So yes, others surely agree.

http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1038749#p1038749