Hydra Batterie Question
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bexamous
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I could imagine it being even a cm longer or something such that brackets only fit one pack or the other but not both... but turns out that's not the case.
I contacted Pushkar and the two packs are basically interchangable. There are two issues:
- The display's percentage remaining.
- The 'motor' (I think Pushkar says motor when referring to Innotrace controller?) has a low voltage cutoff. WW sets it to 3.0v/cell.. so for 52v pack they set cutoff to 43v and for 48v they set it to 39.2v. But that means either:
- Cutoff is set to 43v for the 52v pack, but that means if you put in a 48v pack cutoff is not at 3.0v/cell but rather 3.3v/cell, so you can't use last 15% of capacity in 48v pack.
- Cutoff is set to 39.2v for the 48v pack and now you can use all its capacity, but if you stick in a 52v pack the 39.2v cutoff is ~2.8v/cell... which isn't really good to constently be doing.
So yeah I told Pushkar:I'm kinda making a bigger deal over this than is really needed.. just got home from a ride.. 30 miles with 2800ft elevation, 3 hour ride (2.5 hour moving time-- after every climb I need a couple minutes, haha).. pack is at 51.2v aka 3.655v/cell aka ~6.82AH remaining according to BMS. I was being very conservative with assist, but still.. its going to be pretty rare I actaully use up entire 52v pack's 720wH. But this was charging to 4.2v/cell, charging to 4.1v/cell will knock off an aH or two.. and then I dunno it just ends up being range anxiety.. I don't want to ever cut a ride short because I'm not sure I have enough battery left. I think that's mostly it.
bexamous
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This is probably ideal battery for Hydra: https://www.emtbforums.com/communit...-battery-for-the-e10.19530/page-2#post-366652
900wH with smart BMS. Gotta remove mounting brackets and strap it in and use XT90 to connect to motor. But that's not really a big deal, IMO. The 840wH packs are nice... exept the lack of smart BMS is kinda bummer. No way to really monitor cells isn't ideal. 720wH w/smart BMS isn't so bad. BTW took apart 48v840wH and the 52v720wH.. clearly tube was desinged for 48v840wH. Its clean and efficiently uses the space. 52v720wH is just doing your best with whats available. SmartBMS is nice.
I'm a bit surprised smart BMS isn't more common.. it'd be like a couple dollars added to BOM?
900wH with smart BMS. Gotta remove mounting brackets and strap it in and use XT90 to connect to motor. But that's not really a big deal, IMO. The 840wH packs are nice... exept the lack of smart BMS is kinda bummer. No way to really monitor cells isn't ideal. 720wH w/smart BMS isn't so bad. BTW took apart 48v840wH and the 52v720wH.. clearly tube was desinged for 48v840wH. Its clean and efficiently uses the space. 52v720wH is just doing your best with whats available. SmartBMS is nice.
I'm a bit surprised smart BMS isn't more common.. it'd be like a couple dollars added to BOM?
bexamous
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Not needed but long term having confidence pack is good with no guessing is nice.
This pack worked it just seemed like it died a bit early.. without smart bms just confusing.. is there something wrong or not? Do you just keep cycling a pack that doesn't seem right or do you replace a working pack because you're paranoid? With smart bms it's super clear whats going on... Few bucks extra is worth it imo.
My first pack with bad cell:
This pack worked it just seemed like it died a bit early.. without smart bms just confusing.. is there something wrong or not? Do you just keep cycling a pack that doesn't seem right or do you replace a working pack because you're paranoid? With smart bms it's super clear whats going on... Few bucks extra is worth it imo.
My first pack with bad cell:
Lots of good info to be sure. So it's showing a problem with the #1 cell group correct?
Voltage reading is 3.477v similar to the other groups except for #12. So why the red color? Did you open up the battery and isolate the individual cells of that group and load test them?
If sensing wire came loose you would have no voltage reading right?
Unfortunately because of the series connections for the cell groups it's kinda like the weakest link example as far as performance because the BMS will shut down when it see's an issue. You can always unplug the sensing connector to reset the BMS.
Another thing to consider is when charging a battery the balance portion on the BMS only happens at the upper voltage level so if say for example you only charge your battery to 80% the pack will slowly become unbalanced over time and the BMS won't be activated to do it's job so charging up to 100% every so often will help keep that in check.
Voltage reading is 3.477v similar to the other groups except for #12. So why the red color? Did you open up the battery and isolate the individual cells of that group and load test them?
If sensing wire came loose you would have no voltage reading right?
Unfortunately because of the series connections for the cell groups it's kinda like the weakest link example as far as performance because the BMS will shut down when it see's an issue. You can always unplug the sensing connector to reset the BMS.
Another thing to consider is when charging a battery the balance portion on the BMS only happens at the upper voltage level so if say for example you only charge your battery to 80% the pack will slowly become unbalanced over time and the BMS won't be activated to do it's job so charging up to 100% every so often will help keep that in check.
bexamous
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Oh yeah ignore the color sorta, it just highlights the highest voltage in red and lowest in gray.. doesn't mean its good/bad just to quickly spot the two extremes. But the cell #12 being 0.2v below rest is problem.. it was basically always the outlier. The symtoms were when dispaly was down to 15% or something bike would turn off.. unclear to me what is wrong. I could turn it back on but 30s later it would turn off again. Initially I thought display was 'off' or something.. I don't know how it gets that 15% number. Then tried to charge pack.. charger set to 100% (4.2v/cell) .. but can't get pack to charge to 58.8v, charging just stops early. If you just leave it there you can hear charger turn on then off then on then off but its no where near 58.8v. Between the two something seems off... but still I dunno whats exactly the issue, maybe I'm missing something.
But then wtih Smart BMS within 5 minutes I realized cell #12 was issue. I played with it some more but yeah no matter what cell #12 always is issue. When charging.. cell#12 is hitting over voltage, the BMS turns pack off, when charging is removed cell#12 falls back down to 4.1v over a few seconds.. after 10s or something BMS then resets and charger starts going again and instantly cell#12 reads near 4.2v and BMS very soon turns pack off. All the other cells are like at 4.1v and when charger kicks in go up to 4.13 or something.. tiny 'sag'.. whatever reverse of sag is called, haha. Then discharging its hard to capture voltages under load... the BMS app on phone isn't good at logging.. it kinda has logging functionality but it didn't work well enough for me, I didn't try too hard. Not sure if sample rate is just really low, or maybe there is a way to configure sample rate I did see. But I could tell hitting throttle on bike coudl see all cell voltages go down but cell #12 drops like 0.5v more than the rest. And then in screenshot above.. when pack starts getting drained further and further cell #12 just starts reading lower and lower than the rest. And this is what causes pack to turn off early.. all the other cells are >3.4v but cell#12 is hitting low voltage cutoff.
I didn't take pack apart I just got it swapped and new pack has worked great... all cells are always within few thousandths over entire range... I dunno probably would separate a tiny bit more near very end of pack.
Is it /needed/ I mean not really cause it seemed like something wasn't right.. but using smart bms it removes guesswork, you can see whats going on. Why did your pack turn off? Open up smartbms app and look at history and have log of events that occured. In one of the Luna Z1 threads someone was saying how their pack was cutting out.. if I recall they were worried they were hitting 30 amp limit sometimes.. like yeah.. or maybe what if its actually triggering because under big load a bad cell with large IR is sagging very low and hitting LVC? Kinda hard to know which it is without being able to see any real data.
Again I mean not /needed/ but if the space was there I'd totally pay the extra $5, heh. Its not like super high tech, bluetooth connections are dirt cheap.
But then wtih Smart BMS within 5 minutes I realized cell #12 was issue. I played with it some more but yeah no matter what cell #12 always is issue. When charging.. cell#12 is hitting over voltage, the BMS turns pack off, when charging is removed cell#12 falls back down to 4.1v over a few seconds.. after 10s or something BMS then resets and charger starts going again and instantly cell#12 reads near 4.2v and BMS very soon turns pack off. All the other cells are like at 4.1v and when charger kicks in go up to 4.13 or something.. tiny 'sag'.. whatever reverse of sag is called, haha. Then discharging its hard to capture voltages under load... the BMS app on phone isn't good at logging.. it kinda has logging functionality but it didn't work well enough for me, I didn't try too hard. Not sure if sample rate is just really low, or maybe there is a way to configure sample rate I did see. But I could tell hitting throttle on bike coudl see all cell voltages go down but cell #12 drops like 0.5v more than the rest. And then in screenshot above.. when pack starts getting drained further and further cell #12 just starts reading lower and lower than the rest. And this is what causes pack to turn off early.. all the other cells are >3.4v but cell#12 is hitting low voltage cutoff.
I didn't take pack apart I just got it swapped and new pack has worked great... all cells are always within few thousandths over entire range... I dunno probably would separate a tiny bit more near very end of pack.
Is it /needed/ I mean not really cause it seemed like something wasn't right.. but using smart bms it removes guesswork, you can see whats going on. Why did your pack turn off? Open up smartbms app and look at history and have log of events that occured. In one of the Luna Z1 threads someone was saying how their pack was cutting out.. if I recall they were worried they were hitting 30 amp limit sometimes.. like yeah.. or maybe what if its actually triggering because under big load a bad cell with large IR is sagging very low and hitting LVC? Kinda hard to know which it is without being able to see any real data.
Again I mean not /needed/ but if the space was there I'd totally pay the extra $5, heh. Its not like super high tech, bluetooth connections are dirt cheap.
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bexamous
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Few pics of 52v and 48v packs. (edit) Now that I've posted them and seen what these look like, I wish I woulda put a little more effort into it, haha. Sorry they're not great.
Can see with 52v amount of empty space, those like 2 cells on end seems wierd.. like all that space. And then smart bms is large.. its like 8 cells of space kinda. On 48v pack no empty space, it fully fills that container with cells.. and the bms takes space of maybe 4 cells? I didn't really want to pick it apart to get better view. You can see with amount of wire on 52v pack even haha, its like 6 inches of wire going to end cap.. there isn't room for 6 inches of wire in 48v pack, the end cap has little play in it.
Can see with 52v amount of empty space, those like 2 cells on end seems wierd.. like all that space. And then smart bms is large.. its like 8 cells of space kinda. On 48v pack no empty space, it fully fills that container with cells.. and the bms takes space of maybe 4 cells? I didn't really want to pick it apart to get better view. You can see with amount of wire on 52v pack even haha, its like 6 inches of wire going to end cap.. there isn't room for 6 inches of wire in 48v pack, the end cap has little play in it.
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First thing I would do since you got it apart already is check the #12 cell group to see if maybe one of the four batteries in that group maybe became disconnected.
On an old Luna Shark pack I had I opened up and had 3 sensing wires broken off and 1 battery connection broken because the battery was mounted all by itself to fit in the enclosure.
It stands to reason that if only three batteries are connected it would charge/discharge faster than the normal groups of four. Find where the black B- wire coming from the BMS goes and that is group #1. Count your groups going up to #12.
If that all looks good and you want to see if the BMS is faulty cut the B- wire ( somewhere where you can connect it again if you need to ) and connect it directly to the charge plug + wire coming off the P- terminal of the BMS. Basically bypassing the unit. If you have a smart charger ( example: Luna Advanced charger ) you should be able to charge it to 58.8v since the BMS is disconnected from the charging circuit. All the packs I make now I do not connect up the charging + lead to the BMS I go directly to the Group#14 Pos.
Just be careful when cutting anything and use your meter to verify voltage or no-voltage.
Sorry for the HUGE pics I should of resized them before posting.
On an old Luna Shark pack I had I opened up and had 3 sensing wires broken off and 1 battery connection broken because the battery was mounted all by itself to fit in the enclosure.
It stands to reason that if only three batteries are connected it would charge/discharge faster than the normal groups of four. Find where the black B- wire coming from the BMS goes and that is group #1. Count your groups going up to #12.
If that all looks good and you want to see if the BMS is faulty cut the B- wire ( somewhere where you can connect it again if you need to ) and connect it directly to the charge plug + wire coming off the P- terminal of the BMS. Basically bypassing the unit. If you have a smart charger ( example: Luna Advanced charger ) you should be able to charge it to 58.8v since the BMS is disconnected from the charging circuit. All the packs I make now I do not connect up the charging + lead to the BMS I go directly to the Group#14 Pos.
Just be careful when cutting anything and use your meter to verify voltage or no-voltage.
Sorry for the HUGE pics I should of resized them before posting.
bexamous
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Yeah my first thought was one of the welds broke or something, or some how one cell was not making contact. But pack is under warranty so I got it replaced. Otherwise yeah I'd be pulling it apart.
On topic of batteries.. got kinda sick of the noise from charger, like fan noise. Also setup a home office and tried using powerline networking. In general it works, but.. bandwidth sucks, get better bandwidth over wifi but on powerline least latency is consistently low. EXCEPT when I'm charging ebike, then powerline networking stops functioning. Charger must be so noisy to take out the powerline networking. So because of both types of noise trying alternative charger setup...
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FRBO4ZY -- Got the 54v (~49-58v adjustable) 3.45amp (~1.7-3.45a adjustable) Meanwell.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N7KAQIL -- Power cord.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07YF393ZH -- Inline watt meter.
There is a line of these Meanwell LED drivers, this is physically smallest... just going to adjust it for 54.2v or so and 3.45amp is fine. Bigger ones can put out more amps but its always a range so you lose the low end. Fanless, efficient, and an insane MTBF rating.
The inline wattmeter kinda sucks.. it does read voltage at least. Pretty close on voltage, 50.77 vs 50.81v.. I'll use multimeter to adjust meanwell and just using wattmeter to monitor charge. The 'wattmeter' aspect though is more off.. its reading 3.02amps when clamp meter reads the rated 3.43amps. The inline meter is only rated up to 60v.. so kinda near its limit. After 30 min on charger now room temp 65.4F, meanwell 94.1F, inline meter 105F.
Update:
The inline power meter is just garbage, its voltage isn't so bad, its amps is usually 15% low or so.. but then its wH is way off. Eg discharged 48v17.5aH pack to ~3.654v/cell and charge it up it says was 253.1wH. Thats way more than 15% off or so.
For fun I got this:
www.adafruit.com
It seems much more reasonabe. Multimeter says 53.96 and little power meter says 54.0. Clamp meter says constant 3.43a and little power meter will bounce between 3.43 and 3.44. And the aH (and wH) seem more plausible.
The aH and wH appear more reasonable, but I forgot to write down starting voltage of pack so this run is a bust.. it was <3.654v/cell.. 3.5-3.6 but I forget. However can still see in picture, junky meter is reporting 4.171aH and little power meter is showing 7.81aH... 15% difference in amps shouldn't become a 87% difference in aH. The little power meter is the more reasonable of the two, it too could be off but minimally its better than the junk meter.
Oh and little meter makes no heat. And its kinda annoyingly tiny to read. If it was on a bench it wouldn't be so bad, but to charge bike it has to sit on floor.
Otherwise yeah I'd be pulling it apart.On topic of batteries.. got kinda sick of the noise from charger, like fan noise. Also setup a home office and tried using powerline networking. In general it works, but.. bandwidth sucks, get better bandwidth over wifi but on powerline least latency is consistently low. EXCEPT when I'm charging ebike, then powerline networking stops functioning. Charger must be so noisy to take out the powerline networking. So because of both types of noise trying alternative charger setup...
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FRBO4ZY -- Got the 54v (~49-58v adjustable) 3.45amp (~1.7-3.45a adjustable) Meanwell.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N7KAQIL -- Power cord.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07YF393ZH -- Inline watt meter.
There is a line of these Meanwell LED drivers, this is physically smallest... just going to adjust it for 54.2v or so and 3.45amp is fine. Bigger ones can put out more amps but its always a range so you lose the low end. Fanless, efficient, and an insane MTBF rating.
The inline wattmeter kinda sucks.. it does read voltage at least. Pretty close on voltage, 50.77 vs 50.81v.. I'll use multimeter to adjust meanwell and just using wattmeter to monitor charge. The 'wattmeter' aspect though is more off.. its reading 3.02amps when clamp meter reads the rated 3.43amps. The inline meter is only rated up to 60v.. so kinda near its limit. After 30 min on charger now room temp 65.4F, meanwell 94.1F, inline meter 105F.
Update:
The inline power meter is just garbage, its voltage isn't so bad, its amps is usually 15% low or so.. but then its wH is way off. Eg discharged 48v17.5aH pack to ~3.654v/cell and charge it up it says was 253.1wH. Thats way more than 15% off or so.
For fun I got this:
Mini Power Meter with Voltage, Current, Watts, mAh & mWh Display
This Mini Power Meter with Voltage, Current, Watts, mAh & mWh Display (whew that is a mouth-full) is a lot like the USB In-Line Voltage and Current Meter we carry but can be used with a ...
www.adafruit.com
It seems much more reasonabe. Multimeter says 53.96 and little power meter says 54.0. Clamp meter says constant 3.43a and little power meter will bounce between 3.43 and 3.44. And the aH (and wH) seem more plausible.
The aH and wH appear more reasonable, but I forgot to write down starting voltage of pack so this run is a bust.. it was <3.654v/cell.. 3.5-3.6 but I forget. However can still see in picture, junky meter is reporting 4.171aH and little power meter is showing 7.81aH... 15% difference in amps shouldn't become a 87% difference in aH. The little power meter is the more reasonable of the two, it too could be off but minimally its better than the junk meter.
Oh and little meter makes no heat. And its kinda annoyingly tiny to read. If it was on a bench it wouldn't be so bad, but to charge bike it has to sit on floor.
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bexamous
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Okay cool charged up nicely to ~4.18v/cell. The meanwell got up to like 110F.
One nice thing with 48v pack, the button on frame to turn pack on/off now has a purpose. With 52v pack it was always 'on' and button on frame did nothing. And annoyingly if you just inserted 52v pack you'd always get a spark. This is mostly fine unless you're constantly swapping batteries.. many inserts damage from those sparks will accumulate. If you're constantly swapping 52v packs you should use smartbms to disable discharge when inserting pack.
Anyways so 48v pack is nice in swapping packs no longer requires getting out cell phone.
One nice thing with 48v pack, the button on frame to turn pack on/off now has a purpose. With 52v pack it was always 'on' and button on frame did nothing. And annoyingly if you just inserted 52v pack you'd always get a spark. This is mostly fine unless you're constantly swapping batteries.. many inserts damage from those sparks will accumulate. If you're constantly swapping 52v packs you should use smartbms to disable discharge when inserting pack.
Anyways so 48v pack is nice in swapping packs no longer requires getting out cell phone.
BarnBoy
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@bexamous - were you able to find any MFG info on the 48V pack BMS? Would love to know more about that BMS as the one used on the 52V pack has been super handy for me. So with much thanks largely to the inspiration of @greeno, his batteries and stories, I helped a friend rewire his Laudation 21700 14s2p packs with the same smart BMS (info from @Acme I believe) on the WW 52V packs, identify a bad cell pair on one pack, take apart the battery, replace bad pair, and identify the single bad cell in the pair….. (huge THANK YOU to all on this forum that contribute and do not delete their posts!!!)
By the way, this pack via Laudation and rebuilding the pack was far less expensive than individual components…
-BB
Edit- forgot to mention the inline meters will drop the voltage a bit due to the current sense resistor and their own consumption. The one I have got warm so have not posted about it’s use on my Scooter and EVG battery threads….
By the way, this pack via Laudation and rebuilding the pack was far less expensive than individual components…
-BB
Edit- forgot to mention the inline meters will drop the voltage a bit due to the current sense resistor and their own consumption. The one I have got warm so have not posted about it’s use on my Scooter and EVG battery threads….
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bexamous
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Is there an easy way to check voltage of a pack (one that needs to be turned on)? To use a multimeter I need 4 hands to use multimeter while shorting the on/off switch contacts. I guess I could just rely on bike's reported voltage. :/ Wait how does charger work? Is it if you just supply high enough voltage to charge pack then turns on? What the 3 pins the charging cable uses?
BarnBoy
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Hi @bexamous -
This is why I was asking what BMS comes in the 48V pack…. (Do you have a photo???)
So the cable that has the three pin that plugs into the battery or the Hydra has a RED/BLK Anderson Power Pole (or AMP copy!) at the other end. Only 2 of the three pins are connected…. (And why I do not recommend charging above 2Amps as the pins are small!!)
So all you have to do is plug into a charging port and measure the battery. Below shows bike port as that way those two pins are shorted for you….(if required; IDK as IDK your BMS!!)
To make it easier, get a spare APP cable and add banana jacks for your DVM….
-BB
This is why I was asking what BMS comes in the 48V pack…. (Do you have a photo???)
So the cable that has the three pin that plugs into the battery or the Hydra has a RED/BLK Anderson Power Pole (or AMP copy!) at the other end. Only 2 of the three pins are connected…. (And why I do not recommend charging above 2Amps as the pins are small!!)
So all you have to do is plug into a charging port and measure the battery. Below shows bike port as that way those two pins are shorted for you….(if required; IDK as IDK your BMS!!)
To make it easier, get a spare APP cable and add banana jacks for your DVM….
-BB
bexamous
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I wonder what best way to do this. I'm not so much in need, but I did get a 2nd battery so I should probably least try to make use of it a few times, haha. There are some backpacks, but uh.. I dunno I like my hip pack. Feels like I'm carrying nothing.
I was thinking.. using watter bladder in hip pack, I don't really need water bottle. Can /almost/ strap spare battery to the downtube where water bottle cage is. But.. I've got a Mara rear shock, and the battery would hit the air valve / rebound dial. Unless... wonder if you can mount entire rear shock upside down? Would leave enough of a gap too to put battery in some neoprene sleeve or something. Then just just a couple straps holding it against downtube.
This would basically be the Frey Beast, lol. Except 2nd battery you'd have to swap.
bexamous
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No won't work with Mara. It's so close but no.
See in picture, the mount hits that. Maybe it'd work for someone with fox setup.Attachments
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