Ping 2.0 Reports

[madmarvin]

I just bought a 24v 20ah Ping battery. So we'll see how it goes. I'm new to ebikes and have a 500w Cyclone kit that I mounted on a 7 speed cruizer bike. I'm looking forward to trying it out!

 

[dogman dan]

There have been other posts about cyclone motors tripping the bms on a Ping, but the guy was heavy. Let us know how it goes. If you have a meter, let us know how many amps you draw.

 

[jha07]

Has anyone had any difficulties getting their ping pack balanced? I recently noticed that my range seemed to be a bit less than when the pack was new. So I decided to check the voltages of each cell. I found that I have one cell that is low (3.3v) while all the others are >3.7v. I've tried letting the pack charge for long periods, up to 3 days, to see if it would balance. No luck yet. I emailed ping about this, and he suggested charging the low cell separately. I am reluctent to do this because I really don't want to be doing this on a regular basis. I remember when the pack was new, I had all the cells balanced, so somehow, the pack went from being balanced to not.

 

[dogman dan]

Do you have any idea how many amps you usualy pull from the battery? Just trying to get an idea if there is any correlation between people with big motors and high discharge rates and loss of range.

 

[Battboy]

I have a similar question on Ping Packs ? Is there anyone out there who has pulled 4C (40 Amps) on a continuous basis in their testing? If so how many deep discharge cycles has been done ever on a Ping Pack ? The answer may have been posted on this forum somewhere - but given the volume of Ping related posts I can't find anything close to refer to.

Thanks,

Don Harmon

 

[nomad85]

Has anyone had any difficulties getting their ping pack balanced? I recently noticed that my range seemed to be a bit less than when the pack was new. So I decided to check the voltages of each cell. I found that I have one cell that is low (3.3v) while all the others are >3.7v. I've tried letting the pack charge for long periods, up to 3 days, to see if it would balance. No luck yet. I emailed ping about this, and he suggested charging the low cell separately. I am reluctent to do this because I really don't want to be doing this on a regular basis. I remember when the pack was new, I had all the cells balanced, so somehow, the pack went from being balanced to not.

I had the exact same problem. I got a single cell charger from volt freaks, and charged the cell through the bms wires. The cell reverted to 3.35 volts after the next charge though. Maybe you will have better luck. In any case contact ping, he is helping me solve the issue. Is your battery a V1 or V2, mine is a V1.

 

[jha07]

Do you have any idea how many amps you usualy pull from the battery? Just trying to get an idea if there is any correlation between people with big motors and high discharge rates and loss of range.

I don't have a meter, but I do have a 20A controller, so I'm drawing less than 20A. From my calculations, I draw about 8-10A average. Just as a test, I ran with a 15A fuse and it lasted for a week before it blew.
My loss of range isn't a lot. Only about 10%.

 

[jha07]

Has anyone had any difficulties getting their ping pack balanced? I recently noticed that my range seemed to be a bit less than when the pack was new. So I decided to check the voltages of each cell. I found that I have one cell that is low (3.3v) while all the others are >3.7v. I've tried letting the pack charge for long periods, up to 3 days, to see if it would balance. No luck yet. I emailed ping about this, and he suggested charging the low cell separately. I am reluctent to do this because I really don't want to be doing this on a regular basis. I remember when the pack was new, I had all the cells balanced, so somehow, the pack went from being balanced to not.

I had the exact same problem. I got a single cell charger from volt freaks, and charged the cell through the bms wires. The cell reverted to 3.35 volts after the next charge though. Maybe you will have better luck. In any case contact ping, he is helping me solve the issue. Is your battery a V1 or V2, mine is a V1.

If by V2, you mean the newer 4Ah cells, I have the V2.
That's too bad your cell reverted back. This is why I hadn't tried charging the cell individually. I figured if the bms can't balance the pack on it's own, it would just be a matter of time before it happened again.
How is Ping helping you solve the problem? Does he think this is an issue with the bms or the cell?

 

[nomad85]

It would be best to charge the cell up to 3.7 volts, you may keep it from permanent damage. My problem is a bit more severe and I lost 50% of my range, and after one charge its unusable unless I charge the single cell again, so I am getting a replacement, I have to pay shipping to and fro, but at least I will have a working battery.

 

[dogman dan]

Bummer, JHA07, I was thinking maybe you were running an x5 or some other high amp setup. Have you looked at wires, bms wires, wires in the charger? I had a charger with a loose wire, It had me thinking I'd killed my battery till I realised that it gave the same led signal as a full battery when the wire lost contact. This shouldn't have happend so soon, but its one of the reasons I keep harping buy the big pack, so you can lose 25% and still have a very usable pack. It should be 1000 cycles down the road though! But every cell the factory makes can't be perfect, and bad ju ju has landed on you. Too bad. I'd talk to Ping about a replacement, or at least credit towards another pack so you can resell the cells out of your first one.

 

[ZapPat]

I have a similar question on Ping Packs ? Is there anyone out there who has pulled 4C (40 Amps) on a continuous basis in their testing? If so how many deep discharge cycles has been done ever on a Ping Pack ? The answer may have been posted on this forum somewhere - but given the volume of Ping related posts I can't find anything close to refer to.

Thanks,

Don Harmon

Don,

As you can see from this thread's previous page of postings, I have tested a Ping battery at 1C constant only so far, and have not had time to do a 2C test so far. As for 4C testing, ping does not rate his cells at 4C constant, only 2C constant with 4C peak. And of course we never really know what "peak" means - how long a peak??

I tried to get Ping to send me a couple extra cells to do potentialy destructive/degrading tests on when I ordered my 48V20Ah pack, but he didn't follow through for reasons unkown to me (maybe economic or other?). Because of this I won't be doing any tests over 2C constant since it is my own pack I'm testing and don't want to scap it. It also makes it impossible for me to do long term deep-discharge tests at different C rates to see how the cells would cope over time. Too bad... Maybe I'll ask him again sometime now that he has his own website.

 

[Battboy]

I have a similar question on Ping Packs ? Is there anyone out there who has pulled 4C (40 Amps) on a continuous basis in their testing? If so how many deep discharge cycles has been done ever on a Ping Pack ? The answer may have been posted on this forum somewhere - but given the volume of Ping related posts I can't find anything close to refer to.

Thanks,

Don Harmon

Don,

As you can see from this thread's previous page of postings, I have tested a Ping battery at 1C constant only so far, and have not had time to do a 2C test so far. As for 4C testing, ping does not rate his cells at 4C constant, only 2C constant with 4C peak. And of course we never really know what "peak" means - how long a peak??

I understand. How many deep discharge cycles have you done @ 2C constant ? Has anyone ever done 300 deep discharge cycles on one of these packs ?

Best,

Don Harmon



I tried to get Ping to send me a couple extra cells to do potentialy destructive/degrading tests on when I ordered my 48V20Ah pack, but he didn't follow through for reasons unkown to me (maybe economic or other?). Because of this I won't be doing any tests over 2C constant since it is my own pack I'm testing and don't want to scap it. It also makes it impossible for me to do long term deep-discharge tests at different C rates to see how the cells would cope over time. Too bad... Maybe I'll ask him again sometime now that he has his own website.

 

[geoff57]

Don are you getting up to your old tricks again.
you know full well what pings cells are able to do.
1c to 1.5c they will give ideal performance with no great drop in voltage.
2c this is the safe limit IMO for ping cells for continuous discharge.
3c to 4c for a burst period of 15 seconds or so should not dammage the cells, this is an opinion and the BMS will not let you test it anyway.

pings best selling pack is probably the 48v 20ah this has the following characteristics
the 4c you were asking for would be 80a, pings BMS cuts at 40 max on that pack
if you bypas the BMS and use a seperate LVC board say from Gary you should be able to draw 80amps out of the pack, it would dammage it
lessen the number of charges alot but you don't care this is a test. now we come to the other side of the equation, what motor can take 80amps at 48volts and what reasonably priced controller can handle 80 amps without blowing its lid.
further more if you can answer those questions do you really think an ebiker would want to ride an ebike that went that fast.

I have said before and will say again your batteries are great but they are overkill for any ebiker that wants to replace their car with an ebike to get to work and has chosen one of pings 20ah packs you can't compeat on price for range only power and people who buy ping know that power is not the best but for range ping is hard to beat.
geoff

 

[jha07]

I tried charging the low cell in my pack by itself. I didn't have an adjustable voltage source so I used 3 rechargeable AA. The 3 AA fully charged was around 4.2V, a bit higher than what I needed, but I knew that would drop as it gets drained. When I first did this, my AA's weren't fully charged, so they got drained down to 3.3v rather easily and didn't seem to increase the voltage in my low cell. I charged up the AA's again and hooked them up. This time, I got the cell voltage up to 3.5V, which I figure is close enough to full charge. I think that cell took about 2.5Ah.
I thought now that my cell was at 3.5v, the bms would be able to finish the job quickly and get it to 3.7v. I hooked up the charger overnight, and when i checked that cell in the morning, it was down to 3.4v. I'm going to leave in on the charger longer, but I really don't think it will get to 3.7v. There must be something wrong with that cell, or the bms.
On a side note, my 2A charge stopped working. I checked the fuse, but it's ok. I'm lucky that I have a 5A charger as well.

 

[Battboy]

Don are you getting up to your old tricks again.
you know full well what pings cells are able to do.
1c to 1.5c they will give ideal performance with no great drop in voltage.
2c this is the safe limit IMO for ping cells for continuous discharge.
3c to 4c for a burst period of 15 seconds or so should not dammage the cells, this is an opinion and the BMS will not let you test it anyway.

pings best selling pack is probably the 48v 20ah this has the following characteristics
the 4c you were asking for would be 80a, pings BMS cuts at 40 max on that pack
if you bypas the BMS and use a seperate LVC board say from Gary you should be able to draw 80amps out of the pack, it would dammage it
lessen the number of charges alot but you don't care this is a test. now we come to the other side of the equation, what motor can take 80amps at 48volts and what reasonably priced controller can handle 80 amps without blowing its lid.
further more if you can answer those questions do you really think an ebiker would want to ride an ebike that went that fast.

No tricks at all - just trying to better understand the real needs of e-bikers - so thanks for the post. It clears up a lot of things for me.

Best,

Don Harmon


I have said before and will say again your batteries are great but they are overkill for any ebiker that wants to replace their car with an ebike to get to work and has chosen one of pings 20ah packs you can't compeat on price for range only power and people who buy ping know that power is not the best but for range ping is hard to beat.
geoff

 

[swbluto]

Yes, true. But I think his newer cells are more capable though the BMS hasn't changed so neither has the current limit. I thought the continuous cut-out was 40 amps(Meaning it exceeds 40 amps for more than 2-3 continuous seconds) and the *instant* cut-out was 60 amps on the 20 AH version.

On another note, is anyone planning on buying a Ping pack? I'm wanting to piggy-back my 4 replacement cell-order with someone else's since shipping 4 cells alone is ridiculously expensive. The original thread is at http://www.endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7452 .

 

[dogman dan]

The really unfilled niche in the bicycle battery market seems to be for the x5 or other 2000 watt motors. But people want to spend less and get a duct tape pack anyway so I don't know what the answer is. We seem to want a bike that does what a motorcycle conversion does, but don't want to spend the money. It's a roadblock for sure. The only thing stopping these folks from using a 30 ah ping is the bms, and that situation is sure to change soon. Once somebody puts out a 60 amp continuous bms cheap, folks will put em on a ping 20 ah pack and maybe get a lot less cycles, but that is what they will want to do.

 

[docnjoj]

Yep to 40 amps, at least briefly! Thats what ate my Bafang gears! 48Vx40A=a lot of watts! Thanks Snowcrow for the math! This on a new 20 ah pack!
otherDoc

 

[ZapPat]

Ping's present BMS uses very cheap FETs, and changing these 4 FETs to something better greatly reduces heat generation during discharge. Now the shunt now produces reletively more heat than the FETs, so the new FETs are not the BMS's limit any more. So putting a bit of solder on the shunt wires would raise the current limit during disharge, but I don't know if the board traces could carry that much continously. I have no problems at ~40A continous, and have not tried raising the BMS current limit myself since 1700~2000W is enough for me right now, plus I don't have the cash to risk damaging my only Lithium battery pack.

Nomad and Jah - What cell in yours packs has been damaged? I'll keep a particular eye on this cell if it turns out to be the same one for each of your packs.

 

[geoff57]

hi
long time since my bms tripped due to too many amps I could not remember the exact number I try not to go over 30 I want to extend battery recharge life.
ping could do with updating his bms boards as well.
geoff

 

[geoff57]

hi
anyone know if ping is still selling his 36v 5amp chargers?

 

[jha07]

I told Ping about my problems with getting my pack balanced and how I charged the low cell up to 3.5v, but the bms still wasn't able to finish the job and get it to 3.7v. He still does not think there is a problem and asked me to charge the low cell up to 3.7v. I'm going to give it another try, but I'm really wondering what good is the bms if it can't balance a cell that is already very close to fully charged.
The only good news is the 2A charger that I thought died is ok. Turns out the breaker for my outlet tripped without me knowing

 

[jha07]

I tried charging the weak cell again. Here is what I did.

The pack was around 80% discharged. I measured all the cell voltages and they were between 3.24 - 3.25v. The weak cell was at 3.20v. I charged that cell individually until it reached 3.27v, making it the highest cell in the pack.

Then I stopped charging that cell individually and started charging the entire pack. I waited until the charger started to cycle on and off. At this time, I checked all the cell voltages again. The weak cell was at 3.9v, and all the other cells were around 3.4v.

I let the charger continue to cycle on and off for the next hour. During that hour, I noticed the weak cell voltage begin to drop as the other cells voltage raised. After an hour of balancing, all the cells were around 3.7v except for the weak cell. It had dropped down to 3.46v.

So in just one hour, the weak cell went from 3.9v to 3.46v and this happened while it was connected to a charger that was still cycling on and off.

I left the charger plugged in overnight, 8 hours, and in the morning, the weak cell had dropped to 3.35v. All the other cells were around 3.7v

I wanted to make sure the BMS wasn’t the reason the weak cell was losing voltage, so I unplugged the BMS cable and charged the weak cell individually again. I got the cell voltage up to 3.7v and stopped charging. One hour later, the voltage had dropped down to 3.4v. All the other cells were still at around 3.6v, and those cells had been off the charger for 24 hours.

I think it's pretty clear that my balance problem is because of the weak cell and not the fault of the bms.

 

[mingonn]

Hi jha07,

You are not alone buddy, I am in the same boat with 2 suspect cells. Waiting for replacements from Ping at the moment. All symptoms sound the same, false peak by the weak cells then upto an hour of requent pulsing (on/off) by the charger as the BMS trys to balance the pack. Weak cells then self discharge or drop voltage over time to around 3.4. I am suspect the weak cells cause the BMS LV cut out to trigger well before the remaining cells get close to the low voltage cutout.

Have tried all Pings suggestions, leaving it charging for 24 hours, individual cell charging with my RC charger (3.6 cut out) but it made no difference, on the cycle program with 1A discharge to 2v I only get around 1500 ma.

Pretty frustrating after reading all the good reports from everyone else, even more so considering my cheepo 4 ah lipo rc pack has faithfully churned out 1000 km now withou a glitch and cells have remained within .01 of a volt with out balancing.

My wife commutes with the Ping pack and is busting my nuts to get it sorted, only 600 km on the clock so far (6 amp current limited)

Will let you know when the cells arrive

Cheers
Derek

 

[swbluto]

My Ping 1.0 battery pack also has a "weak cell group" problem. I find it funny, though, I was the "first" one to notice it only had 7AH of capacity. The seller acted like he was shocked and suspected I did something to the cells... :lol:

(Yeah, I used them. Modestly, of course.)