New 16-cell Battery Management System (BMS)
- Thread starter GGoodrum
- Start date
EMF
100 kW
Like WOW! That looks really professional. 8) What a tidy package for all that it can do. Simply amazing.
recumbent
100 kW
Nice work Gary,
The batteries, charger and BMS are going to be available next week maybe?
Halliluyah
My brand new recumbent is waiting for it's power supply to complete the project.
The batteries, charger and BMS are going to be available next week maybe?
Halliluyah
My brand new recumbent is waiting for it's power supply to complete the project.
PJD
100 W
Gary,
Do you have info on obtaining that nice case - or will you have them avaialble as an extra with the full BMS kits?
Do you have info on obtaining that nice case - or will you have them avaialble as an extra with the full BMS kits?
Hi Gary
Looks great! well done, you and Bob have done a great job there, was a little worried reading this over on PA though? whats the deal there? I know that place blows a lot of smoke but cant be sure, if its true thats a real shame.
Knoxie
From Power Assist Forum.
**********************************************************************************************************
Simon and Everyone else
Gary won't be assisting Don any longer on e-bike packs.
The HPS (Automotive Packs) are what LifeBatt is all about and in the end
(these last few weeks) Gary and I decided the E-Bike Batteries should use
the HPS Cases.
Also abandoned was the BMS Gary and Bob McRee designed and we agreed the
LifeBatt VMS made more sense although tweaked slightly for E-Bike use.
The LifeBatt E-Bike Pack could have been Charged in only 20 Minutes (unlike
8-10 Hours for a Li Ping Pack)
We also agreed to keep the HPS Diagnostic Connector which allowed users to
connect the HPS power pack to their home computer to see what is happening
with their battery pack.
We also agreed to keep the Gold Plated battery terminals.
The Dupont R Hard Shell Cases were waterproof and fireproof and shockproof.
What went wrong was we wasted a good 6 weeks looking into different battery
cases, modifying the BMS, haggling a lot over the cell prices trying to cut
a better deal and in the last 2 weeks realized we are fast running out of
time before the E-Bike Riding season begins.
Once we finally had all our ducks in a row (or very close to it), the
factory in Taiwan wanted 4 weeks Lead Time to make the e-bike specific
packs, add 3 weeks for sea freight and one week in Customs and then we
realized it was just not going to work. We'd be Launching in late June early
July instead of May 01st.
Despite what Randy Draper believes LifeBatt has secured a slew of Automotive
contracts that have LifeBatt producing hundreds of thousands of Cells to
meet the demand.
In part it is this whole Automotive side to LifeBatt that slowed us down in
that we are expecting the factory to slowdown on the Automotive side to give
us 10,000 e-bike packs at a minimal profit when it is the Big Bucks
Automotive side that pays the rent.
Don Harmon did a pretty good job trying to get us the e-bike packs and
trying to convince the factory in Taiwan to give us what we wanted.
Despite what people think Don does not own the Factory in Taiwan, he and
Michelle are investor/partners with the Company who have Territories they
oversee and manage. LifeBatt is North America, Great Britain, Sweden, Mexico
and a few other areas and BMI is another Division that takes care of the
rest of the Planet.
So for Don to get as much of the Factory and Owners to see the e-bike
battery packs as something they need to be involved in while everyone in the
Corporation is into Automobiles wasn't all that easy to do. It would be like
you asking GM or Ford to slow down Car production and make 10,000
Skateboards.
A lot of Don going "Ape Shit" on the various E-Bike Groups stems from his
trying to support the E-Bike Community while trying to build up the
Automotive side and keep the Big Boys in Taiwan from thinking Don should be
devoting 100% of his time and efforts on the Automotive side.
He has Taiwan on his back and then everyone and his Dog are taking cheap
shots at Don and so yeah he goes totally Pit Bull on people who criticize
him in the Groups.
Don did BS Bob McCree a few times and that was a Boo Boo on Don's part.
Plus Don can be a nasty arrogant SOB but you cannot expect everyone to be as
humble and perfect as I am.
In the final Days we got the Factory to agree to $570.00 for a 36V X 10Ah
and $690.00 for the 48V X 10Ah E-Bike Pack with a 3 Year/3,000 Cycle
Warranty. This was still $30.00 above what we needed the price to be and it
removed OEM and Dealers.
Don agreed to absorb the sea freight shipping, Broker fees, Customs and
temporary warehousing costs so that the $570.00/$690.00 price did not have
to go any higher. This showed Don was still on our side right up till
yesterday when the Factory came up with this "sorry cannot be done in 3
weeks" and it all fell apart.
Onto Plan B
About 4 weeks ago when we realized we were fast running out of time and we
kept hitting Walls that slowed us down we came up with an Alternative
Lifepo4 supplier that would kick in if LifeBatt did not work out and well
LifeBatt has left the building.
We should know within 2 weeks if the alternative will work but I do know the
pricing will be closer to what Li Ping is doing.
joshua goldberg
***************************************************************************************************************************
Knoxie
Looks great! well done, you and Bob have done a great job there, was a little worried reading this over on PA though? whats the deal there? I know that place blows a lot of smoke but cant be sure, if its true thats a real shame.
Knoxie
From Power Assist Forum.
**********************************************************************************************************
Simon and Everyone else
Gary won't be assisting Don any longer on e-bike packs.
The HPS (Automotive Packs) are what LifeBatt is all about and in the end
(these last few weeks) Gary and I decided the E-Bike Batteries should use
the HPS Cases.
Also abandoned was the BMS Gary and Bob McRee designed and we agreed the
LifeBatt VMS made more sense although tweaked slightly for E-Bike use.
The LifeBatt E-Bike Pack could have been Charged in only 20 Minutes (unlike
8-10 Hours for a Li Ping Pack)
We also agreed to keep the HPS Diagnostic Connector which allowed users to
connect the HPS power pack to their home computer to see what is happening
with their battery pack.
We also agreed to keep the Gold Plated battery terminals.
The Dupont R Hard Shell Cases were waterproof and fireproof and shockproof.
What went wrong was we wasted a good 6 weeks looking into different battery
cases, modifying the BMS, haggling a lot over the cell prices trying to cut
a better deal and in the last 2 weeks realized we are fast running out of
time before the E-Bike Riding season begins.
Once we finally had all our ducks in a row (or very close to it), the
factory in Taiwan wanted 4 weeks Lead Time to make the e-bike specific
packs, add 3 weeks for sea freight and one week in Customs and then we
realized it was just not going to work. We'd be Launching in late June early
July instead of May 01st.
Despite what Randy Draper believes LifeBatt has secured a slew of Automotive
contracts that have LifeBatt producing hundreds of thousands of Cells to
meet the demand.
In part it is this whole Automotive side to LifeBatt that slowed us down in
that we are expecting the factory to slowdown on the Automotive side to give
us 10,000 e-bike packs at a minimal profit when it is the Big Bucks
Automotive side that pays the rent.
Don Harmon did a pretty good job trying to get us the e-bike packs and
trying to convince the factory in Taiwan to give us what we wanted.
Despite what people think Don does not own the Factory in Taiwan, he and
Michelle are investor/partners with the Company who have Territories they
oversee and manage. LifeBatt is North America, Great Britain, Sweden, Mexico
and a few other areas and BMI is another Division that takes care of the
rest of the Planet.
So for Don to get as much of the Factory and Owners to see the e-bike
battery packs as something they need to be involved in while everyone in the
Corporation is into Automobiles wasn't all that easy to do. It would be like
you asking GM or Ford to slow down Car production and make 10,000
Skateboards.
A lot of Don going "Ape Shit" on the various E-Bike Groups stems from his
trying to support the E-Bike Community while trying to build up the
Automotive side and keep the Big Boys in Taiwan from thinking Don should be
devoting 100% of his time and efforts on the Automotive side.
He has Taiwan on his back and then everyone and his Dog are taking cheap
shots at Don and so yeah he goes totally Pit Bull on people who criticize
him in the Groups.
Don did BS Bob McCree a few times and that was a Boo Boo on Don's part.
Plus Don can be a nasty arrogant SOB but you cannot expect everyone to be as
humble and perfect as I am.
In the final Days we got the Factory to agree to $570.00 for a 36V X 10Ah
and $690.00 for the 48V X 10Ah E-Bike Pack with a 3 Year/3,000 Cycle
Warranty. This was still $30.00 above what we needed the price to be and it
removed OEM and Dealers.
Don agreed to absorb the sea freight shipping, Broker fees, Customs and
temporary warehousing costs so that the $570.00/$690.00 price did not have
to go any higher. This showed Don was still on our side right up till
yesterday when the Factory came up with this "sorry cannot be done in 3
weeks" and it all fell apart.
Onto Plan B
About 4 weeks ago when we realized we were fast running out of time and we
kept hitting Walls that slowed us down we came up with an Alternative
Lifepo4 supplier that would kick in if LifeBatt did not work out and well
LifeBatt has left the building.
We should know within 2 weeks if the alternative will work but I do know the
pricing will be closer to what Li Ping is doing.
joshua goldberg
***************************************************************************************************************************
Knoxie
GGoodrum
1 MW
I'm not a member on that forum, mainly I think to keep my blood pressure down. Lots of drama over there, I'm I'm just not into drama.
First and foremost, I haven't abandoned anything. I went along with Joshua in a last ditch attempt to find some way to get LiFeBatt's pack prices down. The numbers Joshua quotes were going to require we buy 300 packs at a time. No way I'd invest on the order of $200k for packs that I hadn't even tried on an ebike yet.
The reason for the looking at various options were to have as littlle impact as possible on their present production of the automotive-oriented HPS series packs. We can't just use these as is, as they don't have an active cutoff feature, for low-voltage conditions, as there are always other vehicle systems that take care of this. The other problem is that the "standard" HPS configurations for the 36V and 48V 10Ah packs are not the best, in terms of cell arrangement, for use on an ebike. Actually, we decided we could live with the 36V version, as it has the cells in a three high, four deep, "brick" configuration, but the 48V, which has all the cells in an even bigger 4x4 stack, really needs to be different. The way they build all these HPS series packs is that there is a 4-cell "building block" module, and a 4-cell VMS board. The modules can be configured in many different arrangements, and each has its own VMS board. All of the VMS boards have input and output UARTs, and harnesses in the packs simply daisy-chain them in series. On the front of the battery case is a small PCB with a couple of LEDs and two DB9 connectors. These DB9 connectors are used to daisy-chain multiple packs in series. At the end of the chain is the vehicle management system that brings in data from each VMS board, which all have unique IDs. It is a clever design and it allows each cell in each pack to be closely monitored. Anyway, for the 48V/10Ah pack, I told the factory that for an ebike configuration, the four modules needed to be two high and two deep, instead of a single four module stack. They actually had no problem with this.
We still had the problem of no active LVC cutoff, so I inquired about the possibility of having them do a replacement for the DB9 connector board, that included an active cutoff of the negative power lead if the VMS boards detected a low voltage condition, and they said they could do this, if we ordered a 1000 of them. Again, looking for the path of least resistance, I decided that any change that required more than a simple change in the arrangement of the modules, was just not going to work. I decided it would be easier to simply add the cutoff function to a small board that could be a "lump" in the output cables.
With all the "techincal" issues addressed, we then went back to the cost issue. I have always maintained that the standard LiFeBatt prices were just too high. Part of the justification for that is that come with 3 year warranties. I tried to argue that if warranty was the issue, how about having lower-priced ebike packs with a shorter warranty, but that didn't fly. In the end, LiFeBatt came back and said that after re-reading their agreement with Phostech, they were not going to be allowed to be directly involved with the production of ebike packs, period.
This whole excecise with them was always a parallel effort to our original longer term goal of producing high-quality, ebike-specific, 36V and 48V packs, that would use a form of the BMS board that Bob and I have been slaving over for the last couple of months. The "production" version would use SMT parts and would be manufactured, along with the cases, down in Mexico. We've tried every which way to somehow get the cost of the LiFeBatt cells down to the point that we could do packs at competitive prices, and still make a ducat, or two, but this just isn't going to happen anytime soon. Eventually, the cell prices will come down, mainly because LiFeBatt has negotiated a new deal with Phostech to get much larger quantities of powder for the factory, but this won't really have any impact until the end of the year.
The bottomline is that we are now actively looking at other sources for cells. The LiFeBatt cells are very high quality, but there are lots of new sources coming online with cells of similar quality and workmanship. Although the "duct tape" packs are working okay for many here, I still feel in the long term, more problems will surface, mainly due to the use of the prismatic bags. I believe the cylindrical cans provide far more robust packaging for these, and they won't have near the temperature differences per cell, which eventully will cause a quicker loss of capacity for cells buried deep inside a pack. We have one new source of a 10Ah cell that looks quite promising. I've seen the discharge curves and they look very similar to the LiFeBatt cells, which is to say they are also in the 10C-15C continuous range. I am arranging to get some sent over here so that Bob and I can test them with our BMS board.
In the meantime, I will still offer to do the G10-based packs, using LiFeBatt cells, to those here who want them, and we will offer BMS boards and CMS units as well. I hope to make the CMS units available this wekend and will add them to my site. The BMS boards will not be too far behind.
-- Gary
Lots of drama over there, I'm I'm just not into drama.First and foremost, I haven't abandoned anything. I went along with Joshua in a last ditch attempt to find some way to get LiFeBatt's pack prices down. The numbers Joshua quotes were going to require we buy 300 packs at a time. No way I'd invest on the order of $200k for packs that I hadn't even tried on an ebike yet.
The reason for the looking at various options were to have as littlle impact as possible on their present production of the automotive-oriented HPS series packs. We can't just use these as is, as they don't have an active cutoff feature, for low-voltage conditions, as there are always other vehicle systems that take care of this. The other problem is that the "standard" HPS configurations for the 36V and 48V 10Ah packs are not the best, in terms of cell arrangement, for use on an ebike. Actually, we decided we could live with the 36V version, as it has the cells in a three high, four deep, "brick" configuration, but the 48V, which has all the cells in an even bigger 4x4 stack, really needs to be different. The way they build all these HPS series packs is that there is a 4-cell "building block" module, and a 4-cell VMS board. The modules can be configured in many different arrangements, and each has its own VMS board. All of the VMS boards have input and output UARTs, and harnesses in the packs simply daisy-chain them in series. On the front of the battery case is a small PCB with a couple of LEDs and two DB9 connectors. These DB9 connectors are used to daisy-chain multiple packs in series. At the end of the chain is the vehicle management system that brings in data from each VMS board, which all have unique IDs. It is a clever design and it allows each cell in each pack to be closely monitored. Anyway, for the 48V/10Ah pack, I told the factory that for an ebike configuration, the four modules needed to be two high and two deep, instead of a single four module stack. They actually had no problem with this.
We still had the problem of no active LVC cutoff, so I inquired about the possibility of having them do a replacement for the DB9 connector board, that included an active cutoff of the negative power lead if the VMS boards detected a low voltage condition, and they said they could do this, if we ordered a 1000 of them. Again, looking for the path of least resistance, I decided that any change that required more than a simple change in the arrangement of the modules, was just not going to work. I decided it would be easier to simply add the cutoff function to a small board that could be a "lump" in the output cables.
With all the "techincal" issues addressed, we then went back to the cost issue. I have always maintained that the standard LiFeBatt prices were just too high. Part of the justification for that is that come with 3 year warranties. I tried to argue that if warranty was the issue, how about having lower-priced ebike packs with a shorter warranty, but that didn't fly. In the end, LiFeBatt came back and said that after re-reading their agreement with Phostech, they were not going to be allowed to be directly involved with the production of ebike packs, period.
This whole excecise with them was always a parallel effort to our original longer term goal of producing high-quality, ebike-specific, 36V and 48V packs, that would use a form of the BMS board that Bob and I have been slaving over for the last couple of months. The "production" version would use SMT parts and would be manufactured, along with the cases, down in Mexico. We've tried every which way to somehow get the cost of the LiFeBatt cells down to the point that we could do packs at competitive prices, and still make a ducat, or two, but this just isn't going to happen anytime soon. Eventually, the cell prices will come down, mainly because LiFeBatt has negotiated a new deal with Phostech to get much larger quantities of powder for the factory, but this won't really have any impact until the end of the year.
The bottomline is that we are now actively looking at other sources for cells. The LiFeBatt cells are very high quality, but there are lots of new sources coming online with cells of similar quality and workmanship. Although the "duct tape" packs are working okay for many here, I still feel in the long term, more problems will surface, mainly due to the use of the prismatic bags. I believe the cylindrical cans provide far more robust packaging for these, and they won't have near the temperature differences per cell, which eventully will cause a quicker loss of capacity for cells buried deep inside a pack. We have one new source of a 10Ah cell that looks quite promising. I've seen the discharge curves and they look very similar to the LiFeBatt cells, which is to say they are also in the 10C-15C continuous range. I am arranging to get some sent over here so that Bob and I can test them with our BMS board.
In the meantime, I will still offer to do the G10-based packs, using LiFeBatt cells, to those here who want them, and we will offer BMS boards and CMS units as well. I hope to make the CMS units available this wekend and will add them to my site. The BMS boards will not be too far behind.
-- Gary
I seem to recall that Patrick had a line on raw cells from the same factory in Taiwan, and at a somewhat lower price. Might be worth looking into.
GGoodrum
1 MW
fechter said:
The problem is that in order to get the highest quality powder from Phostech, and at the best prices, they signed an agreement with them. Evidently Phostech also signed an agreement with another company (PHET?) for doing packs that will end up on vehicles that weigh less than 80 kgs and have speeds less than 40km/hr. This pretty much covers all ebike and scooter-bound packs. I believe both BMI and LiFeBatt are bound by this agreement. We do have an alternate way to get BMI cells, which I believe is what Patrick originally had access to, but in the end, these were going to cost about the same by the time we got them over to this side of the pond.
Deepkimchi
1 kW
I stopped by Power-Assist. Its like walking into a bar with an ongoing free-for all brawl. Not much technical discussion. Old Randy is there too.
Main thing for me is getting a reasonbly priced 36V 10-12 ah pack with about a 2 year warranty that works. Dealing with someone I can trust that is 1/2 way nice when writing.
Even when a $40-50 cell goes bad once a year is not a tragedy, as long as I can get a quick replacement.
A real bummer would be paying $ 1,000-1,500, or having something fail and waiting 2 months for parts during riding season.
Y'all hang in there Bob & Gary :wink:
DK
Main thing for me is getting a reasonbly priced 36V 10-12 ah pack with about a 2 year warranty that works. Dealing with someone I can trust that is 1/2 way nice when writing.
Even when a $40-50 cell goes bad once a year is not a tragedy, as long as I can get a quick replacement.
A real bummer would be paying $ 1,000-1,500, or having something fail and waiting 2 months for parts during riding season.
Y'all hang in there Bob & Gary :wink:
DK
PJD
100 W
Whoa! I see a big hole in the coverage here.
When I say "scooter" I mean a Vespa or Piaggio equivalent. i.e. 120 to 200 kg. 70 to 10O km/h Maybe you here would call it a "motorcycle".
At least for we will still have Thundersky, whose quality seems to be improving - unless Phostech goes after them.
Hello Gary,
I believe in an earlier post you mentioned it was possible to use a 16 cell BMS with a 12 cell pack by making some simple modifications. Are these simple modifications reversible? Is it just a matter of adding and removing a jumper wire?
I am interested in building a pack to run at 36V, but would like the option to increase it to 48V at a later date by adding more cells. If possible I would prefer not to have to replace the BMS when I do.
Sincerely,
Paul.
I believe in an earlier post you mentioned it was possible to use a 16 cell BMS with a 12 cell pack by making some simple modifications. Are these simple modifications reversible? Is it just a matter of adding and removing a jumper wire?
I am interested in building a pack to run at 36V, but would like the option to increase it to 48V at a later date by adding more cells. If possible I would prefer not to have to replace the BMS when I do.
Sincerely,
Paul.
PJD
100 W
I don't think Gary will mind me answering for him. Yes, adding cells, up to 16, is easy. Just remove the jumper from the four unused "channels".
kbarrett
10 kW
OK,I'm confused.
Does this CMS come with an LVC, or do I need to buy one separately?
Does this CMS come with an LVC, or do I need to buy one separately?
ngocthach1130
1 kW
I'm all for cheaper batteries by sacrificing the warranty. I'll accept the industry standard of 1year limited warranty. If the battery goes well for one year then i think it'll be fine for the rest of its life. I'm not big on long warranty. I bought sandals in vietnam with label saying "the rubber in this shoes will self degrade in one year." LOL creepy. I think there would be a high demand for battery if the price is reduce by about 100 dollars or so.
PJD
100 W
http://www.tppacks.com/
It was a couple pages back.
mi7d1
100 W
No problem here using Firefox 2.0.013 running on MS Vista
(edited to add the OS)
Another edit here: I misunderstood and was mistaken. When I mouse over the menu on the on the left it does indeed superimpose upon itself. With IE the sub menus expand to the right.
(edited to add the OS)
Another edit here: I misunderstood and was mistaken. When I mouse over the menu on the on the left it does indeed superimpose upon itself. With IE the sub menus expand to the right.
knoxie said:
mi7d1 said:
Using Firefox 2.0.0.13 on Windows XP fails here. Also fails on Firefox 1.5.0.12 running on Linux.
Suspect something is nonstandard.
The direct link to Ebike Products is:
http://www.tppacks.com/products.asp?cat=26
Nothing there yet on the new CMS.
Richard
Jeremy Harris
100 MW
Thanks for the direct link - I thought it was just my PC that meant I couldn't get through the overlapped menus!
From reading up on this stuff, it seems that Firefox is 100% industry standard, but IE isn't. People write stuff that isn't industry standard, test it with IE (where it works OK) and then those with other browsers seem to have these sort of problems.
My guess is that it costs people money, as some of us must just click away from any site that doesn't work.
Jeremy
From reading up on this stuff, it seems that Firefox is 100% industry standard, but IE isn't. People write stuff that isn't industry standard, test it with IE (where it works OK) and then those with other browsers seem to have these sort of problems.
My guess is that it costs people money, as some of us must just click away from any site that doesn't work.
Jeremy
slayer
1 kW
ME TOO I HAVE AT WORK FIREFOX AND THE SAME PROBLEM BUT AT HOME I HAVE THE MAXTHON AND IT WORKS FINE http://www.maxthon.com/
paultrafalgar
10 kW
knoxie said:
Get overlapping on Minefield (Firefox 3.0-pre) on Debian Linux Etch.
Microsoft's web page building tools add nonstandard `extensions' to the code that only it's Internet Explorer knows about. Yet another tool for the monopoly to maintain control of the market and make a mess in the process.Jeremy Harris said:
Folks that do business with their web pages should test with as many browsers and platforms as they can. And stick to the standards.
Even the Microsoft page builders can be configured to produce standards compliant pages.
Richard
PJD
100 W
Progress report, anyone?
