Battery advice please..

[drsolly]

In theory, it could. But to do that, I'd have to do one of two things.

1) run four AWG 10 cables between where the batteries are, and my handlebars (I tried that, it worked, but it's very inelegant), or
2) open up the wattmeter, and take the shunt out (the wattmeter has a shunt inside), and put that in the rear. I opened it up, and I thought that I'd most likely destroy the unit if I tried to do that. However, other people have successfully done that (there's a thread on ES).

Also, the wattmeter is LCD, and has no backlight. Hard to read in daytime, impossible at night, but easy to read when I stop the bike and shine a torch on the meter; I only need to stop when I'm about to change the battery for the next pack, and that's when I want to know the AH delivered by the battery. The voltmeter/ammeter is large LEDs.

 

[Arbol]

Understood, thanks.

Maybe the wattmeter could be used easily if the batteries were inside a triangle box, and the wattmeter is situated on the area corresponding to the top tube. As a stealth bike:

 

[drsolly]

Yes.

But I keep my batteries in my panniers. I use my bike mostly for geocaching, and I often have to lift over obstacles. So it's good to have an easily detachable battery pack, it takes just a few seconds to unplug the EC5 and remove the pannier.

Also, by keeping the batteries in the panniers, I can take with me as many sets as I think I'll need for the route I'm doing, from one 5AH pack, all the way up to seven of them (1 kwh)!

Also - I don't have a triangle; I use a folding bike. It means I can carry it inside the car (no rear rack needed), and it also means I can negotiate some obstacles without needed to lift the bike over them.

I realise that they way I use an e-bike is a bit unusual

 

[Arbol]

Yes, I understand now.

 

[Arbol]

Just as a reference, the S-LCD3 of BMSbattery:

http://www.bmsbattery.com/controller/670-s-led770-e-bike-led-meter.html

allows to set the LVC for the 48V version up to 41.5V. This corresponds to 3.46V in a 12s, so it seems it is "safe".