Cycle Analyst rebooting when headlight turned on.

[YVR]

Hello
Have an issue with my CA rebooting ( Screen blanks and then powers back on ) when the headlight which is switched ON.
Light is approx 2-3 watts and plugged into CA acc plug ( CA Ver 3.13 ).

Had one instance where the stats where lost but most times it just reboots and comes back on immediately.

Had run this CA with an Ezee hub for thousands of kms and never saw this issue.

Now with the new All Axle hub with thermistor it has started doing this. It doesn't do it every time single time and less often when hub is powered and spinning. I wired the Thermistor ground directly to battery but no change. All connections are clean and tight, a friend has a similar issue but running a much higher draw light in the 10w range.

Only other thing that was done when the new All Axle installed is conversion from a CA-DPS to CA-DP. Grin procedure was followed by removing external speed sensor, insulated and Stowed black wire and then connected the Yellow wire that Grin had stowed (from CA 6 pin plug) to the Red wire I cut and left as pigtail to eliminate having to apply heat to the board and make my connection to the Sp terminal.

Wondering if any body else has experienced anything similar with their CA

Trying to wrap my head around how the new hub or Thermistor would now cause this rebooting issue or why it does it less often when the hub is spinning and drawing power?

Will be opening the CA up again as I did notice some of the wires had been stressed a little by being stuffed so tightly inside the CA during production and after doing that I will be at a loss.

Cheers
Tim

 

[amberwolf]

Best guess is the current draw is too high for the self-resetting "fuse", which is a PTC at R15, per this diagram from Justin in this thread,

Cycle Analyst Repair


and it goes too high in resistance from the heat, so it then drops the voltage into the CA too low for the CA's regulator, the CA reaches the shutdown level, and then reboots when the PTC cools and voltage comes back up.


I don't know why the thermistor in the motor would change the load, or using the hall in the motor as the speedo source.
If you disconnect the thermistor, does it correct the issue?
If not, then if you disconnect the speedo hall, does it correct the issue?
If not, then if they are both disconnected, does it correct the issue?
If not, then neither one of them is directly causing this, and you'd need to see what the actual current load into the CA is, to see if it is actually near the PTC's rating. If it's not, then that's not hte problem, or the PTC is damaged.

When you see the reboot, is there a voltage drop on the input to the PTC? Or on it's output? (they should both read essentially the same as the battery voltage) If neither, then the PTC is not the issue.

You can then test voltage downstream of the PTC, like on the other side of D3, and at the output of Q1 and "top" of C5. At D3 you should read the same as at the output of the PTC, minus the diode drop, so basically battery voltage. At Q1/C5, you should have 12v. None of these should change at any time; if they change during the problem, then whatever is between the non changing part and the changing part is the problem or associated with it.

 

[YVR]

Amberwolf
Thanks for the reply.
The light is the Roxim unit Grin sells and Peak watts is 5.5 in the specs.
My Battery pack is a 52volt 16AH.
I think I had thermistor and hub disconnected and it still rebooted but I will verify this again in a day or two.
Tim

 

[amberwolf]

The light is the Roxim unit Grin sells and Peak watts is 5.5 in the specs.

Unfortunately, since the system worked with it before, but doesn't appear to now, it doesn't matter what it's specs are..

The only thing that matters is the *actual load* on the main supply to the rest of the CA, all along it's chain. That load includes the CA itself and *everything* that is supplied from the supply that feeds the CA, and anything that feeds off the CA directly or indirectly.

The best way to find out what that load is is to measure the current into the CA. You can't use the CA to measure this, because you'd have to zero the CA without the CA being powered, which isn't possible. So you have to use an external current meter or multimeter set to DC Amps, wired to measure the current from the battery into the CA, before it enters the CA.

If you keep measuring the current until the reboot, you'll also see if it drops during the reboot (this is unlikely), though I don't know what that would tell us.

Once you know the current, you can then determine if it's the CA itself or something attached to it, by disconnecting things from the CA until the load drops. Then you know which things are tking how much current to operate.

Since in this case there are several possibilities for the overload, or failure that simulates an overload, the "only" way to find out which is the root cause is to eliminate them step by step, and measure things and note down what was being measured and under what specific conditions, step by step.

The CA itself *should* draw less than a quarter of an amp (far less, AFAICR, if it's not powering anything but itself). If you find that just the CA, no other connections to it than battery + and -, is drawing a lot of current, then something may be wrong inside it or it's wiring.

If it's powering anything on the 5v or 12v lines, and current is only high when those are connected, they might be the cause.

If current is only high when the light is connected, it may be the cause; something gone wrong with it's wiring or it's internals.

Etc.

 

[YVR]

Becoming a little like a murder mystery.
This morning was a little cold so bike and equipment was below 10 degrees C and I was unable to reproduce
the fault. ( Makes me think temp related )

I waited till the sun heated up the bike, headlight, CA and Battery etc with hub temp about 13 C as indicated on the CA
before I could reproduce the rebooting fault again.

This is where things get interesting as I then swapped out that Roxim headlight with my other
headlight from Grin which is the SPL-01 1900 Lumen and with the same temps above 13 C I could
not reproduce the fault with the CA rebooting with that new headlight switching on. ( Makes me think Headlight issue )

Note: This light is a much higher draw than the Roxim on 2 of its 3 settings.
1watt Led mode, 5watt on low and 9watts on high as indicated on the CA and I
was not able to reproduce that reboot fault.

When I brought the Roxim headlight temp down again under an ice bath everything functioned normal.
Heated the Roxim back to above 15C to 20C expecting the CA to reboot when I turned the light on but
everything functioned fine. ( Makes me think a weird intermittent fault )

Did the headlight heal itself??????? Crazy
My plan is to continue to operate the Roxim and reproduce the fault again and then switch to the SPL light at that moment to try
and isolate the intermittent issue to one component.

Will update further on this mystery.


Open to all comments and info others may have had with their CA rebooting like this.
Cheers

 

[YVR]

CA Rebooting
It appears the Roxim headlight is the cause of my rebooting issue on the CA .

After duplicating the fault fairly consistently by cooling the headlamp
and not being able to get the CA to reboot when light turned on to
then heating the headlight again and then at a certain point it would
cause the CA to reboot very consistently when the light was turned on.

I swapped out the Roxim with my SPL-01 light and no issues after that.

Being very much a novice in the electronics field I wont even guess
what the issue is internally with the Roxim light.

Hope this helps someone else running a Roxim with the Cycle Analyst.
Cheers

 

[amberwolf]

Its' good that there is a solution.

If cooling it corrects the problem, it might mean that the heatsinks on the LED drivers or current supply inside the light are not mated well to the parts they have to cool, or that the heatsink paste is too thick, and dried out so it now has airgaps, etc. (especially if the heatsinks feel cool but the light itself is hot inside).

Could be failing electrolytic capacitors--these sometimes have visible swelling, such as rounded/domed tops, "retreating" heatshrink, etc. When they stop filtering voltage / current spikes in a switching system (like most of the LED current regulators), the associated power electronics can overheat.

 

[YVR]

Amberwolf
Thanks again for your input on my issue.

After a couple days operating with the SPL-01 headlamp my CA is working fine.

It was just coincidental that it failed when I made all the other changes. Ezee to All Axle hub,
adding thermistor, opening and converting my CA from DPS to DP and being intermittent that made it tricky to troubleshoot.

The reason for all the changes was I had a pretty good crash on my previous bike and now I still think that could have had an affect on the Roxim.

I will open it up and see if I can determine what the issue is.
Be patient as I have 4 or 5 shocks and forks to service in the meantime.
Cheers