Charging a Ping battery for the first time. LEDs?

[cirrus18]

The battery comes without any instructions so one is not sure what's what.

I put the battery on to charge and after an hour or so the LED on the charger went from red to green and all the LEDs on the battery management module, which were unlit up until now, turned red. So, presumably it was now fully charged.
I was surprised to see that after a short while, battery unused , all the battery LEDs switched off and are now blank. I had presumed that these LEDs would indicate the batteries charged state.

I wonder if someone could let me know what these LEDs are supposed to indicate, their purpose, any other information they might think useful. Cheers.

 

[jerrysimon]

Check out Dan's recent post on this it may help

http://www.pedelecs.co.uk/forum/electric-bicycles/4734-diy-stage-2-received-li-ping-lifepo4-battery-photos.html#post59988

Regards

Jerry

 

[daniel.weck]

Thanks Jerry.

The electronic board attached to the battery is the BMS (Battery Management System), which is a crucial component that (amongst other things) balances the charge between the cells of the battery pack, so that the "strain" is distributed evenly across the cell pouches. The LEDs blink when this process is taking place.

The BMS not only provides this optimization scheme, it also protects the cells against over-charging, etc. The battery will reach its full capacity after a few charge cycles. I believe that the BMS v2.5 designed by Li Ping is a reliable kit, but I'm going to purchase a watt-meter to monitor the actual battery health (Cycle-Analyst, Watts-Up or Turnigy do the job, albeit at different price points).

Cheers, Dan

 

[cirrus18]

I e-mailed Ping and got this answer.......................


"When all the LEDs on the BMS light up, the battery pack is fully charged and balanced. After that, if you disconnect the charger, the LEDs will be still on or blinking for a while. That's normal. You don't need to wait for them to be off and can use the pack immediately. You can ignore the charger light, if there's no problem with the pack. The charger light can be used for troubleshooting."

Pity he doesn't include any information in with the battery.

 

[daniel.weck]

I e-mailed Ping and got this answer.......................
...
Pity he doesn't include any information in with the battery.

There's some basic information on Li Ping's website:

http://www.pingbattery.com/usrguide/Wiring Guide V2.5.pdf

...such as:

Tips:
* First charging costs more than 10 hours. Red light turns to green, then turns to red again after a while, again and again. It’s normal. The charger is balancing the capacity of battery cells.
* The battery pack’s capacity will be activated to its full capacity after 3 to 5 cycles. Before being activated, it seems to have 80% to 90% of its full capacity.