Pro Connect battery checking

[Mattyduk]

Hi

I've had my proconnect for around 10 months now and have been very pleased with it. Being the type of paranoid person I am, I want to check the status of the battery i.e is it still taking a full charge.

I can't find the thread - useless with searches ! . Can anybody point me in the right direction as to how to check the battery (something like after fully charging , hold the battery check button in for a certain amount of time ?)

My daily commute is only 6 miles, so I've been getting a full 5 days worth out of the battery on power 2 with a bit of 3 for a hill. In all, I've probably charged the battery under 30 times.

I've begun to use the lowest power setting now, and haven't seen much difference in the battery state at the end of the week, so just want to make sure the battery hasn't drastically deteriorated.

 

[HarryB]

Hold the battery test button down for 10 second and you will see the leds light up - each one represents 2 Ah, so you should get all five up. It shouldn't be dependent on level of charge - that is the theory anyway. In practice I have a feeling that there is a way to to get the five leds back - perhaps doing a full discharge. A few of us have had less than five leds and in my case I sent the battery back and got a new one but I am not convinced that the battery was faulty. 50 cycles may have a view on this but I think you should go on your range - if it is the same as new then I wouldn't worry about doing this check.

PS personally I would charge your battery every day after the journey to work and back, rather than running it down all the time. Li-ion batteries prefer to be lightly discharged rather than doing deep discharges (although to a certain extent the bms will do a good job of protecting the battery).

 

[tillson]

In practice I have a feeling that there is a way to to get the five leds back - perhaps doing a full discharge. A few of us have had less than five leds and in my case I sent the battery back and got a new one but I am not convinced that the battery was faulty.

I have had a couple of batteries drop to 4 lights and 50 Cycles changed them both without hesitation. With hindsight, like HarryB, I don't actually think that there was anything wrong with either of them.

My current third battery dropped to 4 lights after about two weeks of ownership. I had already done the full discharge conditioning cycles prior to this happening. I ran the battery down for a third time, until the motor cut out, re-charged it and the ten second test returned to 5 lights.

I used to charge my battery in the garage, which although heated to some extent, I noticed that the temperature in there was falling to below 10 degrees in the depths of winter. Since then, I have always charged the battery in the house, leaving it for a couple of hours after use to allow the battery to reach room temperature. Since following this procedure I have had no apparent battery problems at all.

I think, in most cases, when the 10 second battery test shows less than 5 lights, it is the test meter "drifting" rather that the battery failing. The full discharge procedure outlined above will most likely re-set it. Additionally, I definitely think the meter "drifts" when the battery is charged at lowish temperatures.

I am now monitoring my battery's condition using an energy meter and I can detect no problems with it at all.

 

[Fecn]

I have had a couple of batteries drop to 4 lights and 50 Cycles changed them both without hesitation. With hindsight, like HarryB, I don't actually think that there was anything wrong with either of them.

I too had a battery swapped and I too think there was probably nothing wrong with it. I suspect that we may get another spate of battery meter issues now that the weather is going cold once again. My theory is that when a warm charged-indoors pack goes out into the cold weather, the cells on the outside will cool off before the ones in the centre. This will cause the outside cells to appear to have lost capacity when compared to the middle ones. I suspect that the disparity between the cells is causing the BMS to consider the pack to have lost capacity. It must be near impossible for the BMS to keep track on things when the outermost cells are getting chilled to freezing point, but the middle of the pack is still at a cosy 15C.

 

[Mattyduk]

thanks for all the replies

checked the battery last night (pressed the button for 10 secs) and it came up as 5 lights, so no problem.

After my run this morning into work, the battery shows at 2 lights, so I've done about 28 miles this week, so I would probably be good for nearly 40, mainly on power button 1.

cheers

Mat