Battery Charger at Purchase

M

mskrone

Member
Region
USA
Hello all

I'm getting ready to purchase a Hydra and I have a question on the various chargers available in the drop down selection. It appears the bike is shipped with a 5A charger. What is the difference between the Satiator (7A) or the Wattwagons (10A), what do I get for the money and recommendations. I'm ordering the bike with the Archon X1 2300W option for reference if that makes a difference.
 
mskrone said:
Hello all

I'm getting ready to purchase a Hydra and I have a question on the various chargers available in the drop down selection. It appears the bike is shipped with a 5A charger. What is the difference between the Satiator (7A) or the Wattwagons (10A), what do I get for the money and recommendations. I'm ordering the bike with the Archon X1 2300W option for reference if that makes a difference.
Click to expand...
I ordered the Satiator because it is programable. I don't favor fast charging as it takes some longevity from the battery. Fast charging is not the best charging although in instances of rare extreme need it would be good to have. I recommend you study up on the Satiator by searching you tube, this site, or the Grin Technologies site. If it's not worth the cost to you then the 5 amp charger supplied with the bike will be fine.

Grin Products - Product Info

There are many products that Grin has designed 100% in house, and which we either manufacture fully ourselves or with the assistance of other facilities. These are our “Grin” branded products which we try to make best in class, with full documentation, support, and long term warranty.
ebikes.ca ebikes.ca
 
Cathartic Release said:
Is the watt wagon charger not programmable? I didn't think to ask when I placed my order. I guess I just assumed that it was.
Click to expand...
Don't think so. Programmable chargers are far from the norm. You have to asses how they work as to time to charge and if desirous of cutting off at some percent less than 100 it takes experimentation if charging off the bike. If charging on the bike you have to look at the display a lot in the last hour or so. As in: I learned that if my battery was at say 40% which I try not to go below .... two hours on the normal charger will get it to about 80%. All this is why the programmable Satiator is well worth the money .... to me.
 
I've got Satiators coming with the two Helios bikes I've ordered and I'm hoping, sometime in the near furture, that Grin or @Ravi comes out with a cable that will allow owners with Bosch motors to be able to charge their batteries with a Satiator.
 
That's one thing I wasn't 100% clear of - the type of connector provided with the charger. Also what type of connector each of the optional addons was.

The one I added on appears to be right and a Google search didn't show any different so I just tried that.

Have you looked at the Grin site to see if any of their add-ons fits Bosch?
 
Quoted from the link below.
"Grin makes the Cycle Satiator. It's a universal programable battery charger that can supply up to 63V at 8A. I wanted to use it with my Bosch 36V eBike battery but they didn't have a conversion cable (probably because the Bosch Battery requires a 5V signal and a proprietary connector). So I designed and 3D printed the XLR and Bosch connectors. Along with a box to mount the oversized step-down converter (It's what I had on hand :)



Printables

www.prusaprinters.org www.prusaprinters.org
 
@pushkar - there is a lot of good discussion here. I know you are busy, but any chance you can comment on the advantages/disadvantages of the thee chargers you offer?
-BB

5A
Satiator 7A
Wattwagons 10A
 
Screen Shot 2021-04-29 at 10.34.22 AM.png
 
Merle Nelson said:
That's one thing I wasn't 100% clear of - the type of connector provided with the charger. Also what type of connector each of the optional addons was.

The one I added on appears to be right and a Google search didn't show any different so I just tried that.

Have you looked at the Grin site to see if any of their add-ons fits Bosch?
Click to expand...
I emailed them a while back asking if they offered an adaptor for a Bosch battery and they replied that they were working on one, but were not sure of the ETA.
 
It was my understanding that the WW charger has the ability to plug into car chargers.. of course that presents some obvious weight to convenience issues but may be good for the all day riders, if my understanding is correct.
 
Bluzrif said:
It was my understanding that the WW charger has the ability to plug into car chargers.. of course that presents some obvious weight to convenience issues but may be good for the all day riders, if my understanding is correct.
Click to expand...
No, that's something else entirely.
 
BarnBoy said:
@pushkar - there is a lot of good discussion here. I know you are busy, but any chance you can comment on the advantages/disadvantages of the thee chargers you offer?
-BB

5A
Satiator 7A
Wattwagons 10A
Click to expand...


1. 4A / 5A is respectable. I believe the batch of new chargers we got are actually 4A, and not 5A.
2. Satiator 7A - great programmable charger - if you have batteries with different voltages.
3. WW 10A is great, however its usage is slightly different. It is designed fro 52V (14S) batteries only and is adjustable from 2A to 10A charge rate. It also has a 80 / 90/ 100 switch. The big thing with WW charger is that with the right dongle, you can charge with a car charger... upto 240V / 100A input ! It is truly built like a tank, more future proofing (5 years atleast)

Overall IMO smart chargers like Satiator are something riders shouldn't need moving forward (with Watt Wagons in particular). This is for all WW internal batteries on Hydra and Helios. Will be the same tech for external in 2022 onwards (the BMS is just too large). Hydra / Helios batteries will behave like true EV batteries when it comes to charging - moving the "charging intelligence" to the battery BMS itself rather than the charger.

Here are the key features
1. The BMS by default has a charge rate profile, it will rapid charge till 80% and then slow charge after that.
2. You can configure the %SOC charge on the battery itself! Like you can do in a Tesla. :)

I anticipate that moving forward, all vendors will de-couple the charging intelligence and push it to the BMS. It is easier to carry one brick that i can plug into any battery out there.

We are also working on a newer BMS for 2022 and beyond where we can truly decouple chargers - i.e. you can use a 72V charger to charge all batteries from 48V, 52V, 60V etc. the BMS will determine its full 100% SOC and pause charging when it reaches that. Tht takes a bunch of work (and tooling costs)... so more future looking.
 
Would be interesting to know how the "smarts are going to be moved into the battery", that basically means the constant current / constant voltage "charger" will be in the battery if its going to control SOC which is just the constant voltage held at the end of charge and the bulk charge current which is the max current at the beginning. This means the entire charger is in the bike as the charger rectifies mains from 120v AC to DC at SOC voltage using a switching power supply. If you still have a external power brick thats going from mains to say 58.8v DC for 52v batteries then it wont work with any battery out there and then you need a secondary buck power supply in the bike to cut 58.8v down to whatever final SOC your looking for say 56.6v for 85% charge.

Modern EV Fast DC charging like a Tesla supercharger is actually more like a Grin except there is a control signal standard worked out that the car informs the charger of its desired voltage and current rather than having to manually configure it on the charger, however the entire charger is outside the vehicle. In the case of Tesla supercharger there is a cabinet that has 12 parallel charge units that can send power to 4 different stations. It is not feasible to have the high power DC rectification and control in the car as its bulky, heavy, expensive, and needs active cooling:

1619789207193.png

In the case of AC charging the charger is in the car and this would be equivalent to mounting your current bike charger on your bike somewhere. This is why its limited to much lower power than DC charging for size weight and cost issues. Car makers would love to get rid of the need for an onboard AC charger but its nice to have when there are no other options.

Similarly on a bike if you move most of the smarts to the bike then you are going to be basically carrying a charger around on the bike adding cost and weight, there is no clean way to get the DC power control in the bike with out it being most of what a charger is and if you put the DC power brick outside then you must duplicate the switching gear again in the bike for voltage/current control that already done in the power brick which reduces efficiency and adds cost and weight. BMS's even in Tesla are just on/off protection they cannot adjust voltage or current going into the pack.

I have a Grin for my current e-bike and its a well built charger that is very efficient and also very compact and fanless which speaks to its efficiency and design relative to its current output. It also gives good feedback about the state of your battery through its built in display and of course its very flexible I can charge a 12v lead acid car battery, my 44v skateboard, my 52v e-bike etc.

E-Bike Adapters for EV charging stations only work for the lower power AC ones, all they do it is fool the EV charger into turning on the AC pins and your normal mains voltage is fed to your normal e-bike charger to convert to the correct DC.
 
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