Speedict Ebike - Anybody seen/tried this?

[speedict]

We have just fixed one of our customers' issues, his 3 mercury failed on firmware upgrade at 30% or stop working when mercury first stage restart in the middle of firmware upgrade process, with few days investigation with test apps and reports, we have discovered his HUAWEI phone's bluetooth act abnormal, now we did some data massage to make it compatible, we sill thinking why the phone act like this ? look like some backend job is working behind bluetooth data ? ....

I suffered this and was solved by turning on the bt again and updating the firmware instantly.

Started at 30%.

My problem was in a THL with Mediatek Chip.

on firmware upgrade we have bit longer data to and from phone and speedict device that's caused HUAWEI slow bluetooth process timed-out, of course you can reset your bluetooth and let it right continue at 30%, but in the long run for some reasons when we change data length for features, your phone may not work ...

short team solution, next release of mars, venus and mercury app will adjust bluetooth speed slower in order to work with these kind of phone

 

[ecologymagnet]

I use a smartphone THL with chip Mediatek, but I solved this problem send again the firmware.

 

[speedict]

I use a smartphone THL with chip Mediatek, but I solved this problem send again the firmware.

i mean next time when we adjust data length or something, your phone may not be supported, for firmware upgrade you can simply reset to continue from 30% but live data stream can not resolved by reset.

 

[speedict]

I use a smartphone THL with chip Mediatek, but I solved this problem send again the firmware.

we have tried some different china phones, some of them weren't able to support our upcoming project / apps ...

 

[elpq35]

Hello all, just wanted to report my first commute experience with the speedict. There are some distance reporting issues in live view that Danny is working out for me but my overall first experience with the speedict so far has been positive.

1. Speedict is located inside steel bike rack enclosure of modified Ezip Trails bike. Bluetooth works just fine on ZTE Avail 2.
2. Speedict is set for speed and current governor. 18.2MPH limit and 20A limit. It is set up for throttle mode but the input is a voltage type PAS sensor. I peddle, it sends full voltage throttle output. I still have manual throttle override but prefer not to use it due to hand fatigue over hour long ride.
3. Trip report: Speedict maintained exactly 18MPH over the hilly 17 mile commute. The motor turned on/off automatically based on my travel speed. I will need to adjust the gain and time for the speed limit as the motor turned on and off too much between 18.2MPH and 18.6MPH. I have the settings adjusted to kick off immediately when I reach cruising speed so I need to play with the numbers so it turns off around 19.2MPH.
4. Power usage set a record today. I have 48V 30A controller. Typical power usage at 18MPH average speed for me is 21-24WattsPerMile. Today was an ideal day to ride. 3MPH Tailwind so that helped a little. Today I recorded 18WattsPerMile. I have a 12AH LifePO4 battery so that is a plus that is can reduce power usage and maintain the same average. Thanks to the speedict, hills get more power to keep my speed up since it tries to maintain 18MPH.

So far, so good. Now we just need to see how long this thing will last.

 

[elpq35]

Update to my last post: My AH readings are off by a factor of 1.18. Danny, is there a way to calibrate the current so it records at a higher amount? Can this be done using the device calibrate feature?

The reason I know my current readings are off by a factor of 1.18 is b/c my batteries shut off on the way home at 8.47AH. The shutoff AH of the BMS is 10.1AH. This AM when I rode, I recorded 7.36AH on the speedict but my battery recharge time was 1.75hrs @ 5A which is 8.75. If you do the math, you get 1.18 as the factor which explains why my BMS kicked on. Plus, that puts me in my typical watts per mile range of 21-24W. If this is not a simple fix, I will just use 8AH as my battery limit which will keep me about my shut off limit.

Thanks.

 

[Ken Taylor]

Hello all, just wanted to report my first commute experience with the speedict. There are some distance reporting issues in live view that Danny is working out for me but my overall first experience with the speedict so far has been positive.

Great to read a user report. I don't recall any on successful use of the speedict for throttle mediation. I've noticed spikes in speed that are unrealistically high on the screen sometimes.

2. ...I still have manual throttle override ...

How do you do that?

The shutoff AH of the BMS is 10.1AH.

My BMS shuts down on low voltage and I've not heard of a BMS that shuts down based on AH consumed. Are you sure yours does?

This AM when I rode, I recorded 7.36AH on the speedict but my battery recharge time was 1.75hrs @ 5A which is 8.75. If you do the math, you get 1.18 as the factor ...

Even if you assume the state of battery charge was the same before your ride and after charging you can not use energy in as an accurate measure of energy out during riding. Battery charging is not 100% efficient (notice the batteries get warm during charging), nor is discharging. More energy goes into charging a battery than you get back out.

 

[elpq35]

Hello all, just wanted to report my first commute experience with the speedict. There are some distance reporting issues in live view that Danny is working out for me but my overall first experience with the speedict so far has been positive.

Great to read a user report. I don't recall any on successful use of the speedict for throttle mediation. I've noticed spikes in speed that are unrealistically high on the screen sometimes.

2. ...I still have manual throttle override ...

How do you do that?

The shutoff AH of the BMS is 10.1AH.

My BMS shuts down on low voltage and I've not heard of a BMS that shuts down based on AH consumed. Are you sure yours does?

This AM when I rode, I recorded 7.36AH on the speedict but my battery recharge time was 1.75hrs @ 5A which is 8.75. If you do the math, you get 1.18 as the factor ...

Even if you assume the state of battery charge was the same before your ride and after charging you can not use energy in as an accurate measure of energy out during riding. Battery charging is not 100% efficient (notice the batteries get warm during charging), nor is discharging. More energy goes into charging a battery than you get back out.

Throttle mediation appears to work well for my setup but I'd say mine is not typical. Like I said, I'm using a voltage type PAS sensor which is basically a on/off switch based on peddle or no peddle.

I have a Speedict throttle cut off switch. It's just a single pole switch inline with the Speedict throttle output. My handle bar throttle is in parallel to the speedict throttle so I switch off the speedict throttle and use my regular throttle when needed. Earlier in this thread, another user posted using a diode setup to parallel a throttle with his wiring diagram. My setup is different but I may follow his lead if I ever get a diode with really low volt drop at 0.1A.

When I said it shuts off at 10.1 AH, i was just stating it shuts down when the batteries get low. LifePO4 is different in terms of how the voltage drop during discharge but it still reaches low voltage (very sharp drop in voltage) when the battery is almost fully discharge. That's how the BMS knows to shut off before over discharging the batteries.

I disagree. For one, I was not measuring power in, I was measuring the time it took to charge and multiplying by the rated output of the charger. You are correct that more power goes into charging but NOT into the battery. Before I had a speedict, I used a doc watson meter to measure my AH usage during rides. From that, I could tell within +/- 5min of how long it would take to charge my batteries using a (2)24V, 5A chargers on each 24V battery pack. I did this for over a year and it was very accurate. That's not really the point anyway. My point is I know my 12AH battery pack is at 80% DOD when it reaches 9.6AH of usage. The BMS will shut down at 10.1AH. The speedict only read 8.6AH so it was not right and the only way to trigger the shut off is to go past this level of discharge. To verify the battery was dead, I timed the recharge process and that verified my conclusion. I did this twice, once when battery died and once when it did not die during the 17mile ride.

 

[Wurly]

3. Trip report: Speedict maintained exactly 18MPH over the hilly 17 mile commute. The motor turned on/off automatically based on my travel speed. I will need to adjust the gain and time for the speed limit as the motor turned on and off too much between 18.2MPH and 18.6MPH. I have the settings adjusted to kick off immediately when I reach cruising speed so I need to play with the numbers so it turns off around 19.2MPH.

Hi elpq35
Do you mind telling me what settings you have made for speed 'time' and 'gain' to make on/off between 18.1mph and 18.6?
I am using speedict on my ebike on a permenant basis now. I switch between 'throttle mode' and 'instant legal'. One problem i have is, i set speed at 19mph but sometimes the speed drops to 15mph before motor turns on again. I know i can alter settings to stop overshoot and undershoot. It is a time consuming business i and i don't always have time to experiment. I need good 'base' settings to start from.

 

[elpq35]

I was using 200 gain and 50 time as my initial speed deaccelerate speed but I decided to switch to current governor only which I find a lot more useful for my setup. I am using 8A limit b/c for some reason, the speedict automatically increases the limit by 1.5. Not sure if this is intentional or a software bug but input 8A allows me to maintain a 12A limit. I still have spikes of 20A but it only reduces speeds on long or steep hillls. Plus it saves my 12AH batteries from discharging past the 2C current limit. My suggestion for your speed limit is to set the gain around 100 and time around 100 and play with it from there.

 

[Ken Taylor]

I have a Speedict throttle cut off switch.,,

Thanks for the explanation.

I disagree. For one, I was not measuring power in, I was measuring the time it took to charge and multiplying by the rated output of the charger.

In my view, this is not accurate enough.

 

[elpq35]

Ken, I think you have lost site of my original point....it does not matter how I verify how much power I actually used. The point is my batteries are NOT dead at 8AH of usage. They are dead at 10AH of usage which is accurate based on a year of previous experience with a watt meter on my bike. Let's not waste posts on non-relevant issues. I'm trying to provide feedback so the Speedict can be more accurate for others.

Thanks.

 

[Ken Taylor]

...it does not matter how I verify how much power I actually used...

I like your reports and am of the view the Speedict needs improvements in functionality but I can't agree "it does not matter" as calibration is all about being a pedant and to continue the pedant theme you are measuring energy and not power. I've been curious how accurate the Speedict is so am interested in test data. I haven't tried to quantify the accuracy of the Speedict but I did use it to calibrate another current measuring device, then fearing it wasn't good enough, calibrated it again against a shunt resistor/voltmeter. The difference between the gain values calculated for the current measuring device between the two calibration methods was 2.3% which makes me doubt that energy measurement with the Speedict is out by the 18% you reported. It could be out by 18% for lots of reasons e.g the Speedict may not be integrating correctly but when I see obvious flaws in the measurement procedure I'm sceptical. Another procedural problem is:-

I was measuring the time it took to charge and multiplying by the rated output of the charger.

This makes an assumption that the charger provides constant current but charge current reduces as the battery approaches full charge.

To calibrate a current measuring device I took 34 measurements at varying currents, reading numbers off the Speedict and numbers off a screen for the other device as close together in time as I could then fitted a linear relationship. Later on I did the same with a shunt/voltmeter, taking 25 measurements using the manufacturers supplied calibration value to convert millivolts to current. My plotted results were:-

This wasn't an attempt to measure the accuracy of the Speedict but the difference between calibrating a current meter against a Speedict and a shunt was smaller than I expected. It is this data that makes me doubt your figure of 18% error.

Perhaps you could measure energy consumption with your doc watson meter for a series of runs while simultaneously measuring with the Speedict and publish this data. Bear in mind that the doc watson meter claims an accuracy in current measurement of +/- 2% + a fixed offset.

 

[elpq35]

Ken,I don't disagree with anything you're saying but I can't go against my last year of riding. Unless the temps were below 0 (which I didnt ride in), I consistently got the same results with my doc watson. I could tell you exactly how many AH I would likely used based on the wind speed and direction. I rode 4000 miles in a little over a year. Based on that, I know the Speedict is not accurate in reporting the AH used. Danny told me I could calibrate it using a 10A-15A constant current source so I may do that this weekend.

I'm an electrical engineer and I know that electrical theory holds true but experience is hard to argue with. I rode today and multiplied the reported AH by 1.18 and calculated a 1hr:59min charge time. I timed the actual charge time at 1hr:57min. My methods may not be 100% accurate but they are quick and consistent for me and they always prevented me from hitting my BMS shutoff.

 

[Ken Taylor]

Ken,I don't disagree with anything you're saying but I can't go against my last year of riding.

And I didn't say you were wrong, just that the evidence provided was unconvincing. Also Speedicts may be inconsistent and perhaps mine is different to yours.

Danny told me I could calibrate it using a 10A-15A constant current source so I may do that this weekend.

That, of course, is a gold standard for current calibration so it will be interesting to see your results. Hopefully you can provide before and after calibration values. It may also be that current measurement is reasonably accurate but energy consumed is still wrong. The occasional, obviously incorrect speeds that I've seen is indicative of calculation errors somewhere rather than calibration errors.

I'm an electrical engineer...

I'm surprised an electrical engineer would use "power" and "energy" interchangeably but that is being pedantic again.

 

[elpq35]

I'm not a super technical electrical engineer, I'm a consultant but I'm more of the "personable type" that helps other engineers talk to non-engineers....power, energy, I know there is a difference.

Here's one thing we can definitely agree on, there may be some calculation issues within the speedict. I reviewed my port logs and trip logs and it seems as though the live view numbers don't always match up with the log numbers. Maybe I will add the power usage to my screen view and check that against the AH usage to see if that calculation works out to my typical usage. I know that the port status have the current values list and if you average the values in excel, it calculates the AH usage.

Hey, thanks for the question/answer session. Hopefully with all this discussion, it will prompt Danny to make this thing as accurate as possible.

BTW, my speeds (AVG, Live, and Max) have been spot on with my bike cycle meter. Logs indicate same trip distance but live view is inaccurate. Working with Danny to fix. Seems like it should be fairly easy to output the correct live distance. (Circumference * Rev = Distance in miles) Not sure why this does not work right out of the box.

Thanks.

 

[elpq35]

Danny, I have a feature request: For those of us switching out our bike cycle meters for the Speedict, it would be nice if we could enter our current odometer reading. I currently have +4300 miles on my bike and I'd like to have the Speedict track my miles from where I left off. Can you include this in one of your software upgrades?

Thanks.

 

[Ken Taylor]

Here's one thing we can definitely agree on, there may be some calculation issues within the speedict. I reviewed my port logs and trip logs and it seems as though the live view numbers don't always match up with the log numbers.

I haven't investigated this but I perceived the same thing. I've noticed spikes in speed on the screen while riding but without going looking I haven't noticed them in trip logs. I haven't investigated this and don't display speed currently, so I'm uncertain of the details. It is low down on the list of things to look at. Hopefully I'll learn more from here and won't have to investigate. Maybe the GPS speed is being displayed on the live view screen. I doubt it though, as GPS speed in the trip log is erratic. More so than what I see on the screen. GPS speed will never be too accurate and requires smoothing but the numbers in the trip log seem too erratic to be useful. Again I haven't looked closely. I once worked on algorithms for calculating distance travelled from GPS fixes and it isn't easy or else an app can use the speed numbers from the Android API. When I tested this I found speed numbers from the Android API are smoothed differently for different handsets. Some of this is documented at http://www.flickr.com/photos/81664624@N00/sets/72157629282858195/

GPS fixes are sent from the phone to the Speedict, recorded on the Speedict and transferred back to the phone when the trip log is copied from the Speedict to the phone. This isn't reliable for me and large slabs of my trip logs don't have GPS data. GPS data comes and goes from trip logs during a ride and I've no idea what causes it. The net effect is flakiness. Sometimes I have GPS data and sometimes I don't.

Hey, thanks for the question/answer session...

Interesting to read your reports.

Logs indicate same trip distance but live view is inaccurate. Working with Danny to fix.

I'll be curious to see how it goes.

 

[ecologymagnet]

Danny, I have a feature request: For those of us switching out our bike cycle meters for the Speedict, it would be nice if we could enter our current odometer reading. I currently have +4300 miles on my bike and I'd like to have the Speedict track my miles from where I left off. Can you include this in one of your software upgrades?

Thanks.

I´m very intesrested in that.

 

[rborger73]

Few thoughts for Danny. The trip records. Add a select all download option so we only have to enter email and digits once. I haven't got the newest version to work yet. Any idea on when the Google play store will show when updates are available that way?

 

[speedict]

recently we've got many queries on how fast speedict venus can boost by setting its speed ratio, we would like to share the speed ratio excel here, with the excel file by enter speed ratio the port 3 output will be shown as below example : when actual speed is 36km speedict venus port 3 generate speed signal 25.33km to motor system prevent early speed cutoff !

good luck.

 

[hugo]

Today I heard from a friend (customer), that Speedict Venus Limits the current to 16A.
Without Venus the max. current will be about 22A.
This is a very disappointing thing.
It means for me power-tuning and Speedict will not be compatible.
Can anybody confirm this?
Hugo
Furthermore I reccognized that custom settings for tire circumfence will not be stored (permanently).
After saving the custom input circumfence will be set to the first tire size in drop-down menu.

 

[Ken Taylor]

Today I heard from a friend (customer), that Speedict Venus Limits the current to 16A.
Without Venus the max. current will be about 22A.
This is a very disappointing thing.
It means for me power-tuning and Speedict will not be compatible.
Can anybody confirm this?

Not true. The Speedict contains only sensors and does not influence the current that passes through it.

The Mercury can be configured to control the motor which is done by varying the throttle signal to the motor controller. If this was configured incorrectly it could limit maximum throttle applied to the controller. I've not used a Venus but according to the Speedict website it has no control functionality.

Furthermore I reccognized that custom settings for tire circumfence will not be stored (permanently).
After saving the custom input circumfence will be set to the first tire size in drop-down menu.

The tyre sizes are set from the phone but stored in the Speedict. On my Mercury, once set, they remain set. I'm curious if this persists, hopefully you can report further.

 

[RWP]

I have always liked this product from the time I first heard about it...but after reading this thread and the most recent posts...it does not seem to me to be a mature product.

I was about to pop for a Speedict, but...think I will reuse an old CA I have.

To give Speedict credit they seem to be relatively responsive, yet none of this info is on a Speedict.com forum or blog, they seem to be using ES for beta testing! Using one's user base for beta testing, unless clearly stated as such, is, in my opinion, not good business!

Maybe this is not fair - I am sure you will let me know.

Like I started out - I am open to the Speedict - but I want to install it and use it without any headaches.

I am willing to pay US$150 for a mature product. I still like the potential here but have enough doubts to hold off on a purchase.

 

[rborger73]

I have always liked this product from the time I first heard about it...but after reading this thread and the most recent posts...it does not seem to me to be a mature product.

I was about to pop for a Speedict, but...think I will reuse an old CA I have.

To give Speedict credit they seem to be relatively responsive, yet none of this info is on a Speedict.com forum or blog, they seem to be using ES for beta testing! Using one's user base for beta testing, unless clearly stated as such, is, in my opinion, not good business!

Maybe this is not fair - I am sure you will let me know.

Like I started out - I am open to the Speedict - but I want to install it and use it without any headaches.

I am willing to pay US$150 for a mature product. I still like the potential here but have enough doubts to hold off on a purchase.

Mine is working wonderfully. Worth any issues I might have so far. Hoping to get their bms and controller solution in the near future as well.