Battery charge monitor vs. LCD charge monitor: which to believe?

emjay

Pedelecer
Apr 16, 2014
35
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Quick question: I did a longish ride yesterday and when I arrived back home my LCD was showing one out of four bars of charge. But when I pulled the battery out and checked it using the button on the side it lit up three out of four LEDs. Any guesses on which is more likely to be accurate? For reference, it's this LCD:

https://bmsbattery.com/parts/826-s-lcd6-lcd-meter-for-s-series-controllers.html

and this battery:

http://eclipsebikes.com/product_info.php?products_id=111

Follow up: is there a way to figure out the true charge remaining using a multimeter? It would be good to know how much to trust the LCD meter when I'm out and about.
 

Nealh

Esteemed Pedelecer
Aug 7, 2014
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West Sx RH
P5 parameter can be set to gauge your battery as an indication of charge level, what is your P5 set to ?
 

anotherkiwi

Esteemed Pedelecer
Jan 26, 2015
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The European Union
I have never understood P5, what does "this parameter is determined by the battery characteristics, ordinary 24V lithium is generally is 4-11, 36V lithium is between 5_15" mean?
 
D

Deleted member 4366

Guest
P5 is a simple damping factor. The higher you set the number, the slower is the display's response to changing voltage.

You don't need to use P5. If you press the power button twice, the odometer changes to actual battery volts.

segments on battery displays don't mean anything. they're only a rough guide so that you can see when your battery is getting low. Every one is different, so you watch it a few times to see how it behaves on your particular bike. Obviously, you need to run your battery flat to see what happens at the bottom end, like how many miles you can do after it goes down to one bar, bearing in mind that that will also change according to several factors.
 
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Reactions: anotherkiwi

emjay

Pedelecer
Apr 16, 2014
35
15
123
Thanks all, I'll try the power button double-press trick and do some torture tests on my battery. By the way, is this P5 parameter thing documented anywhere? I can't find any reference to it in the user manual, which is brief to say the least.