Tidial Force owners

[miro13car]

I own TF bike and I am wondering if there are any TF owners on this forum.
Well, I have been thinking what after my wheel battery drops to 80% capacity. I know , I know there have been many dispute about it on another forum dedicated to TFs.
I want to discuss it however in more focused and civilized environment of Endless-sphere with has much less off-topic content.
So, any owners?
Miroslaw

 

[fechter]

Welcome miro13car!

The TF is a very nicely designed bike. I've only seen pictures, so I don't have much first hand experience.

It seem like since the company is belly-up, any battery replacement is going to be a DIY job.

The most elegant solution would be to tear apart the existing pack and replace all the cells with new ones, and try to retain the hub casing, temperature sensors, and whatever else they had in there.

Plan B might be to install a new pack somewhere else on the bike (like maybe a bigger one) and strip the guts out of the original hub pack to save weight.

 

[xyster]

Would the TF battery hub provide enough space for 8+ah of prismatic lipoly's in a DIY config? I'd think it would...
Stuffing it with canned a123's or emoli's could be good too...

 

[patrick_mahoney]

The Tidalforce bikes - nice bike by the way, miro - implement regen. That would complicate matters because the bicycle must have some sort of charging circuit in it. You would want to match the battery with the original one, I'd think - which is probably where the controversy you mentioned, miro, comes in.

I suppose, you have a couple of choices - try to get a close match and rewire everything as Fetcher mentioned. Or, disable the regen by adding in a big resistor load to it (converting the regen as heat) and then implementing any battery pack you feel like adding that is compatible with the motors/controller.

 

[Reid Welch]

Yeah, welcome! Here we never fight but we do razz each other on occasion.

Patrick brought up that good point I wouldn't have otherwise thought:
you need a battery that can re-accept energy without damage for that regen braking.

Where are your thoughts at this time on this matter?
You probably know more about the bike than most anyone here;
experience is the truth teller.

Glad to meet you. Can I have an easier name to call you by?
Ah, :wink: How 'bout "car"?




cheers,

"Low Tide" Reid

 

[miro13car]

Well , thank for your welcome,
That's what I love
technical talk not OT blah, blah.

Yes, I know about this bicycle something, a half , I opened front hub, because I had failure 2 weeks ago.
I contacted LEVT which is service company contracted by WaveCrest for servicing TFs so we owners are not really abandoned.
The way I look at it. Every bike which electronics are run by sofware.
We owners are at the mercy of service for running digital codes every time processor need to be replaced but it happens very rearly.
So going back to what happened. Sudden cut in communication between handlebar console and BMS board - the reason all white oxidation deposit covered connector in front hub.
TF has TInstrument bq2013 digitally controlled fuel guage to display 5LED SOC status which I figured out even before openning hub
and PIC chip for BMS. PIC is loaded with in-chip code , no external memory. These are 2 major chips.
I guess bq2013 communicate with BMS over 1-wire serial and PIC communicate with dash/console/.
Well battery replacement is a big topic here.
Dream would be to implement Lithium cells into original TF BMS and fuel guage would have to be replaced, existing bq can work with acid and Nickel only.
White deposit was resistance introduced causing 1wire link lose comm with dash, that's my wild guess,
yes I need another electronic guru to ask me a questions about it and draw conclusions.
I understand Fetcher is knowledge here and others tech.
Miroslaw

 

[fechter]

Hmm... the TI datasheet says the bq2013 uses a shunt to measure the current and it keeps track of the amp-hours. It is also "self calibrating" over time, so I don't see why it couldn't work for lithium batteries. TI also makes battery fuel gauges made for lithium.

Plan B would be to just ditch the built in gauge and put a simple voltmeter on the dash to watch the batteries. Lithiums have a BMS to prevent battery abuse.

The TF controller is quite complicated and is similar to the Voloci controller. If it ever blew up, you could bring the motor wires out to something like a Crystallyte controller. I bet it would be fast with a 70 amp controller :wink:

How does the power get from the front wheel to the fork? Is there a rotating contact in the axle or something? I always thought having all that weight in the front wheel would suck for handling.

 

[miro13car]

Thank you Fetcher for answer.
Yes bq2013 is specified for Nickel and acid only.
There are alogarthms built into it I guess designed that way and programable points, but I am not sure I haven't researched the chip in depth.
Yes, there is well known way of powering TF with non-TF battery.
By installing jumper in battery B connector in console any 36V battery can be plugged into battery B connector on the back of bicycle. Jamper disable regen cut outs, all dashboard is dark, key doesn't work and throttle is live the moment you plug that battery. As you might know TF allows regen current to flow to original battery only when it lost 20% of charge. With the jumper you can imagine situation when tens of amps of curent is dumped into fully charged battery - no good.
TF electronics are very well designed, no jerking on throttle here, very smooth pick up and robust electronics - dispate condensation in front hub Iwas surprised they survived on NON - conformal coated board, just bare SMT chips and components there on PCB - no ANY kind of coating, I was shocked. I work with industrial electronics and I know that selling something electrocics board for outdoors use not coated is plainly asking for trouble. And troubles abound all accross USA especially North, Canada
- dead front TF hubs. Why would WCrest sell them to dealers like that?
Lone connector in front hub, guess what not a gramm of dialectric grease on it. After opeiining i WAS SURPRISED THAT IT SURVIVED THAT LONG - 5700KM.
mMiroslaw

 

[fechter]

So I assume you got it working again?

It never ceases to amaze me how even the best e-bikes and scooters have major design flaws. Certainly the TF and Voloci were top of the line.

I don't think conformal coating or dielectric grease would have really increased the production cost that much. It would likely pay off in lowered warranty failures.

Oh well, that's why we build them ourselves...

 

[miro13car]

Reid, thank you for answer

You hit the nail in the head - any battery for TF must accept heavy regen currents, because any non-TF battery hook up in place of TF extended battery connector/batteryB/ with jumper installed in dash will have to take inrush regen right away - no limit untill 20%discharge like with Tf battery with electronic board.
Feacher,
BMS is fixed now
Miroslaw

 

[fechter]

It might be possible to use the stock TF battery board with a different battery by "spoofing" the input. Like what they do on a Toyota Prius plug-in conversion. Use a resistor voltage divider to feed the inputs of the BMS with voltages that are in the "normal" range, even though the battery is a completely different configuration. This way the graph and protective features will still work.

 

[miro13car]

Fetcher,
You also asked how the power get from the front hub to the fork?
Similar like in any hub motor, through center hub which doesn't rotate, except there are more wires.
2 power wires carrying 36V , so called communication 12-wires cable which carries LEDs voltages to the dash for SOC plus charger cable. Charger cable is is 3 wire and charger for sure communicate with BMS chip. How the power is acctually turned on/connected to power wires?/?. through FETs or IGBTs , there are 4 of them. No any relays.
Fetcher ,
As far as I know that controlleremploying Cristallite controller , I don't know if it possible.
TF motor has 12 or 14 poles/electromagnets/ each individually controlled .
Position of the throttle A/D converted is fed into port extender to processor. also other imputs from dash like TURBO mode are fed to processor through port extender chip in dash.
Processor from what I heard is DSP type. What does it process?
Motor has sensors/like speed/ which send signals to it, what else???
I don't know system to the end yet.
It looks like no other owners here.
Miroslaw

 

[fechter]

Having all the communicaton digital certainly makes it more challenging to hack or modify.

OK on the battery wires, I should have thought of that.

Even with 12 or 14 poles, the TF controller is probably 3 phase. My BMC brushless motor has 18 poles. It would be possible to determine just by counting the phase wires to the controller.

The DSP performs several functions, primarily determining when each phase is energized and adaptively changing the timing advance.