Recent content by NickW

Look at the manual for the CA. you can use the Vi pin on the CA pcb to do on the fly current limiting. it talks about using a pot, but it shouldn't be too tough to rig something up to work with some resistors and your thermistor. That won't screw with your speedometer or watt meters. -Nick

What's more important is the safety aspects of it. when a circuit is isolated, you need to touch two points in the circuit in order to get a shock. without isolation, any other piece of equipment, or the chassis of the charger itself can act as a return. As an example, when I anodize...

I wouldn't be so much worried about it being high up, more that it's unsprung weight. It'll make the suspension less effective. That said, It might not be a big enough deal to bother you. Regarding "overpowered", as long as nothing's breaking and you can ride it properly, you're not...

Lightbulbs can work surprisingly well as current limiters, because their resistance curve is non linear. they'll offer little resistance to a light load, but will increase drastically when they reach their rated wattage. I have an electrical box wired with 2 outlets in series for testing...

Yeah, That's one of the problems with a lot of the knock-offs in particular (though it's probably not unheard of from legit ones either). Most likely they've just copied the firmware verbatim including all of the calibration values, skipping the factory calibration completely. Depending on...

I think the question is whether a CV supply is sufficient. Does the charge controller do pwm current limiting?

You can, of course use leds and get however much light you need, but it's going to be pricey. even a pair cree MC-E, or SSC P7 is probably only going to get you slightly better than a single 55W car beam best case. Realistically, to get similar brightness to a pair of 55w bulbs, you're going...

Back on the subject of the full BMS PCBs... Any guess when they'll be ready so I can buy one? I want to get my bike back on the road soonish, but I've been holding out, hoping that I can put one of these together and do it up right all at once, rather than opening up my controller and...

So, in case it wasn't already obvious, I'm very interested in this, especially since my bike is down until I choose a replacement BMS. I was wondering about the charge controller. Is this set up to just work with any appropriate voltage power supply, or does it need a feedback pin (meanwell?)...

Paralleled resistors will act as 1/2 the resistance, so no, you can't really use them for redundancy without other supporting electronics. Hypothetically, several higher value lower wattage resistors could be used, then if 1 failed the value would change, but less drastically. In practice...

Trappermike: Yes, that's what I'm planning to do now. The two 12s ones will work, but you need to add some large diodes to protect the BMSs. Otherwise, when one of them shuts down at lvc, it ends up with both pack's voltage across it, and will likely fry. In this instance, I don't think...

One of my 2 series packs just fried its 12s BMS last night. I left it until morning to diagnose. It had melted a hole in the heatshrink. I went to pull it apart, and it started smoking and caught fire a couple times. It's a bit nerve-wracking trying to take something apart that keeps...

Meanwell is a power supply manufacturer. Gary has a little widget for sale that plugs into the supply, and messes with its feedback signal to turn it from a plain CV supply into a full CC/CV charger. AFAIK the cellogs are just a cell voltage monitor that has outputs for HVC/LVC and can be used...

I'm in the same boat... Currently I unplug my 2 12s packs and put them in parallel to charge, and in series to run on the bike. I'm planning to build a proper battery box though, so it's no longer going to be convenient to unhook and parallel the batteries. I anxiously await a nice simple...

The easiest way is to break the ground pins off of the power cables. Just make sure they don't get used for anything else, as it's a pretty major safety hazard with some equipment.