Adaptto Mini-E/Max-E Owner's Thread

[Artur]

what exactly did you solder wrong in what order to do this Artur??

would be great to get some more insight on the bms so we can all avoid making mistakes ,learn the do's and dont's.
any hints from the adaptto gods here? :lol:

I had 3 6s turnigy.. My mistake: i should have connect 3rd battery to 1st one in series to use it balance wires.. But I connected 1st to 2nd and to 3rd.. So on balance wires from 3rd battery was 0ver 25V... But it was a good lesson

 

[striker54]

finally have my max-e installed with my cromotor on my custom frame bike, 20ah 18s li-ion

anyone know what the bleed current is for the bms ?

all packs were charged to 3.8 before I installed them

did about 2 miles testing bike out, then put it on charge yesterday, it's been on charge for about 20hours now (only 75v 5amp charger I had spare next to bike for test charging).... it's still not balanced yet...

all cells are pretty damn close, 4.17min to 4.24max (charging to 4.2)


I figured the first charge/balance with the bms would take a long time - just want to make sure I haven't missed any settings?


also, I'm topping out at 43mph... I was expecting more from the 65ish volts I ran with to test... unless that's about right ?

43mph with or without OVS???

 

[Offroader]

there are 2 ballence wires that bridge the packs with a small plug so you can detatch them when the packs are separated.
its for cells#11and #12, as you have 5 boards for 4s so it wont split in half in descete units of boards....

could it be possible that having the main series plugs between the 2 x10s packs connected or disconnected independently of the 2 ballence wires that bridge them could fry something?
if so that could make sense cause it was that board that died....

I'm going to say that I haven't done the math yet but I was told by adaptto that with 6s packs and somehow if the packs get disconnected in the series or something like this, it could fry the board. This seems to be what happened in your case.

Obviously something must have happened like this because I doubt it is a coincidence that the board you fried was also the board that had the #11 & #12. This is exactly why I asked you how you had your packs setup because I figured it was something like this.

Maybe you can do the math and figure out how the voltage changed between that #11 and #12 connection when you disconnected your packs in the series. Let me know if you can figure it out. Better to learn why it happened then make the mistake again.

One of these days I'm going to take the time to figure it all out. I'm not going to hook up my BMS until I learn exactly when this happens. I haven't had the need for a BMS anyway because I have easy access to my balance leads and my packs always stay balanced anyway. I find anytime the cells go out of balance it is always because of a bad cell which should be replaced anyway instead of using the BMS to compensate.

 

[Allex]

Guys, if you brake the series connection on main battery leads while balancing plugs are still connected in to BMS - You could fry the BMS board(s)

 

[ridethelightning]

cheers guys. looks like i fried it by disconnecting the splitpack/series connection and leaving those ballence wires still connected.

lucky the bms has plenty of spare boards....28s..i guesse i might need them all for a pack if i was using Nimh? :lol:

as to the mystery sudden voltage imbalence i observed, i think it might have been a bad solder joint on the ballence lead to the pack..i found it floating free

after i fixed it, on board#2, they were back to like 0.005-8v difference again

 

[Jackrabbit]

Hi all I am having problems doing auto detect with my maxE/cromotor V3, I keep getting Halls error 2. I've wired in the second set of halls and still the same problem. There is no !HALLS! error on the screen.

I've tried looking at the diagnosic screen (2 left from the main screen) and turned the wheel but I don't get any numbers. How do I diagnose this problem? Is there something else I need to do?

 

[Artur]

Hi all I am having problems doing auto detect with my maxE/cromotor V3, I keep getting Halls error 2. I've wired in the second set of halls and still the same problem. There is no !HALLS! error on the screen.

I've tried looking at the diagnosic screen (2 left from the main screen) and turned the wheel but I don't get any numbers. How do I diagnose this problem? Is there something else I need to do?

are there all numbers 111? if yes you need to resolder one fuse resistor inside controller.

 

[knighty]

did you get the positive/negative (red/black) matched up between the controller rand wheel ?

there's a +ve, and -ve, and then the 3 hall wires.... only the halls are automatic

 

[Jackrabbit]

Thanks, on checking I'd wired the plug in reverse order. All good now.

 

[ridethelightning]

i had trouble getting the halls wired this time too.
got HALLS ERROR 1 after autodetect and the wheel just gave a little stutter and a beep.

after swapping controllers and frigging about, it turned out to be a single hall wire had a bad solder joint on the motor side plug(that id soldered )
that i couldnt see on inspection cause it was covered up in shrink....

 

[Jackrabbit]

Hi. I've just got my bike up and running with Max-E and Cromotor V3. The only temp sensor options (controller) are KTY83 & KTY84 but reading through posts here it should be set on KTY81. Has there been a change in hardware recently?

I've also selected NTC10k for the motor temp sensor (standard on Cromotor?) but have 32f constantly on the monitor despite the motor being warm to the touch. The white wires are soldered to pins 4 and 5 on the halls plug.

Apart from that the bike flies! I've increased the power timing to 1.4 as it was only 0.51 after autodetect a which made a huge difference. I'm not really sure what angle correction or induction timing do but I'm sure they could do with tweaking as well. It would be nice to know what all these settings effect for the average user rather than for electronics engineers.

 

[striker54]

@jackrabbit

The temp. sensor of the controler is set at factory, you don't need to change it.

The motor temp that the adaptto shows is OK for the NTC sensor. After 86 °F it will start to show the right value ( it's a hardware limitation of the adaptto).

 

[Offroader]

Hello everyone,

I'm playing around with the Regen setting and was wondering if anyone could recommend how much to set the regen battery amps to?

I run a large pack with 2C rated turnigy cells, so my pack based on this spec can handle 70 regen battery amps.

I was wondering if I should set this higher for better efficiency or something? Should I assume that this can be set much higher than what my batteries are rated for because of the short duration I would be charging the batteries with regen?

How exactly does the battery amp setting affect the regen? Will I not brake as fast if this is set too low?

Could someone explain how the regen phase amps vs the regen battery amps affect regen?

Thanks

 

[ridethelightning]

regen power will definately increase, especially at higher speeds, if the battery current limit is set higher.

im not too sure how setting the phase regen amps higher in power mode profiles affects things.

sorry, ant suggest safe regn limit for the batteries. i have mine set high but i am unsure what the safe limit for my battery is so i avoid prolonged high regen current where possible.
im using 20s 10p LGmg1 cells from tumich.

 

[Ohbse]

Phase amps on regen are exactly the same as the inverse, at lower speeds it will increase braking effect.

I have my regen settings on mini-e maxed out, same as the acceleration settings. In practice this is not enough phase amps to hit my battery charge limit. From 70km/h battery current peaks at around 25 amps and reduces as I slow down. Note that this is a pretty good brake, I very rarely use physical brakes at this level. There is no way you will be hitting 70amps regen, I don't believe you would have the traction on the wheel to produce it.

You are correct that short duration pulse charge events are unlikely to damage your battery. Mines set to 40 amps as per battery manufacturer recommendations (20s10p of LG HE4 cells, 4amps charge limit per cell) but I wouldn't hesitiate to increase that if it would make any difference with my setup.

Crank the phase and amps right up, worst case with variable regen you just don't need to go full brake any more.

 

[ridethelightning]

thanks ohbse, thats good info.

i thenk the he4 cells you have might have a pretty decent charge rate compared to the mg1's iv got. i should do some more research.

i charge at max 2 amp/ cell if i have to but im even worried about that :lol:

 

[madin88]

From 70km/h battery current peaks at around 25 amps and reduces as I slow down. Note that this is a pretty good brake, I very rarely use physical brakes at this level. There is no way you will be hitting 70amps regen, I don't believe you would have the traction on the wheel to produce it.

i have set 40 regen amps and also never have reached it. it seems like for regen much higher phase amps are needed. thats a bit strange..

 

[knighty]

I don't know the numbers off the top of my head for different chemistries

but you can charge at a much higher rate than normal straight after discharge

so when you're bike is in use, intermittent regen breaking can be set much higher than normal charge amps... probably somewhere around 2x normal charge, but you're best off googling your battery chemistry to find out exact numbers


also... even if you regen at 80amps.... you'll only have 80amps of regen for a few seconds, because @80amp regen you'll be slowing down fast and as speed falls regen amps fall too

 

[Jackrabbit]

I did my first charge with the coil today. I've got a bit of drift on the cell voltages, 0.042 and it's taking an age to balance. All cells are over 4.15, can I drop the charge limit to 4.1v per cell so the BMS will discharge all the cells down to 4.1 and into balance? Will this be quicker/safe?

 

[knighty]

just leave it on charge for ages

on there first adaptto charge (first charge actually) they took about a week to balance !


once they've balanced the first time, it's much quicker after that


also, 0.042 difference between cells is naff all... it's less than most balance chargers can even measure... so you might as well consider the pack balanced at that point
(but if you leave it on charge, it'll get even better!)

 

[ridethelightning]

if it gets worse after a couple days like .061 or something when left to sit, then youv probably got a dudish cell in one of the paralelle groups. iv got this problem on one of my packs, the LGs,so ive ordered some more cells to swap it out with.
the other thing that can cause it is a badly joined ballence wire, as i found out. if the difference does not increase, that could be a possibility.

i must say the samsung cells are really well ballenced with the adaptto, i have a 25r pack, its at 0.005v difference .

 

[Cowardlyduck]

For Regen settings, one thing to note would be if you plan to use it on hilly area's, or mountains.
I frequently ride very hilly terrain and occasionally ride up/down decent sized mountains. I'm talking 500m+ of mostly continuous elevation or decent.
That is one scenario I would be a little concerned about putting my max Regen amps too high.
I once did about 2AH Regen in one go riding down the side of a mountain repeatedly peaking at 40A and mostly sitting between 15-20A. That was with a HS3548 (which was smoking hot at the end) and into my stock 16S LiFePo4 Stealth Fighter battery. I would not risk the same with LiPo...especially not the Hobby King crap I run now.

If I use my Mini-E with my 12S 8P Zippy Compact 3700Mah LiPo cells, I don't think I will want to set battery Regen amps much over 30A, or 1C charge per cell.
That being said, I will probably start off with my old stock Stealth pack once I get up and running since I'm using half the Zippy cells on my commuter at present.
LiFePo4 can take a bit of a beating and my Stealth battery is beyond salvation at 500+ cycles now, so max Regen settings it is for that pack.

Cheers

 

[Offroader]

How much does regen heat up the motor, a few here commented on that using regen really heats the motor.

Does it really make a big difference if you are not in a hilly area and just using regen for the occasional stuff that we slow down for?

Considering how little we brake, and for the very short duration, it is hard to imagine how much heat it puts into the hub motors.

 

[Allex]

It depends how much regen amps you have.
It should be equivalent to what you feed the motor with?
So if you accelerate at 30Amps it will heat up the motor just as much if you would brake with 30Amps

When I brake down from 80km/h with 30 DC amps the motor temp can go from 80C to 85C

 

[madin88]

It depends mainly on phase amps. also with active mode the motor gets alot hotter than without, but it safes brake pads 8)