Topic: Battery usage

[mhurt]

Hi all,

Now that my C5 seems to be running well, I took it for a fantastic and leisurely ride along the canal, doing about 8 miles in total. It's all downhill to the canal, so the battery wasn't used, and I pedalled most of the time along the canal except for a few bursts of speed (pedal and power) and the tow path is pretty level. I had all battery bars lit when I came off the canal.
I used power mainly for the last stretch coming uphill back home, GPS has it down as 0.3 miles and some of that I was pushing, but when I got home I was down to 4 bars battery.

The battery is a brand new 75Ah SLA one.

Does this sound about right, would the pod correctly display the power left on a high capacity battery, or have I got an issue somewhere?


Cheers and sorry for being such a worrying newbie!

[radiomarty]

Hi - If you lost only one green LED I wouldn't worry as I have had this with brand new battery's after a very short while but then it stay on the second green for ages - take it for a run using a combination of battery and pedaling to keep the motor load in the green and see how you get on - let us know   

[mhurt]

I will do.
Not sure I counted all the bars right, but it was the left amber the amber lit and reds - no greens showing. I guess Im panicing a bit as I just don't want to end up pushing all the way uphill back home - which I wouldn't be able to do.

From experience, when would you start thinking "I'd better just pedal so there's a bit of juice to help me up that last hill"?

[mhurt]

OK, it seems to be the pod reporting the level wrong.
After a bit of heavy use, the batter level drops into the red, but if I pop the negative lead off and on again - full battery. The seller did say that it has non- standard electrics from the control box, so maybe it's that? The only problem is, I don't actually know what charge level I have :p

It also looks like I need to fit a cooling fan, as the pod started beeping at me half a mile from home today. It was quite warm, but I got caught in torrential downpour 3 miles from home with no coat, so I was trying to get back as fast as possible. Ended up taking shelter under a tree for 15 mins but that's a project for another day!

[radiomarty]

Hi - When you disconnect and reconnect your battery it is normal for the pod to reset to full condition - it does sound rather a quick drop on the battery indicator which may be a duff pod 

[mhurt]

Having read a bit more, my symptoms are just the same as http://c5alive.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,2244.msg18385.html#msg18385

[mhurt]

Having emailed radiomarty, it definitely looks like the ULA chip.

I'm looking at Phil's instructions for building the ULA replacement board and if I can get my head around it, I might be able to make a few (it's about 20 years since I did anything like that, so need to brush up on a few things first), or maybe have a look at an Arduino/Raspberry Pi based alternative.

In the meantime, I'll get a battery level monitor and something to monitor the motor temperature.