tony18m2001

Thank you so much HarryB for starting this thread. I live in Leicester which has had more lights per head of population than any city I can think of. Even the roundabouts now have useless traffic lights. I have posted the link on Facebook to bring it to a wider audience. I only hope the council is watching. Tony

My Cadence was originally provided with 36V filament bulbs, but I persuaded Scott at 50Cycles to let me swap the headlamp for an eZee spare LED one. I still have the filament rear one - the current consumption is sometimes useful to drop the battery volts down after charging till the controller will accept it. The front and rear are wired in parallel - 36V each from the main battery. I had to replace my throttle control so I replaced the light switch with a simple toggle switch screwed to a 15mm plastic pipe clamp. Flecc - on a different issue, I am still using your NimH battery after over 3600 miles. Range is a few miles before I get a cutout on hills, but I can always nurse it over my 12 mile journey. The rebuild with Aldi C cells has got a bit sidelined, but still expected this year. cheers, Tony

Back in October 2009 I posted regarding my Ezee battery rebuild using Aldi NiMH C-cells. I mentioned that I couldn't fit them in the battery box, so I am going to overflow into a small extra box. Should finish that this christmas break and post some results/pics. Anyway - I promised to post a picture of the swollen Phy-lions in my existing battery - so here it is. I have a question - I have taken the battery management electronics off the cells - does anyone know of use for same? I can't quite identify the chips because of the conformal coating on the pcbs. It seems a shame to throw them in the electrical recycling bin. BTW, I tried putting some charge into the cells, but some of them are showing less than 0.5V, so are completely useless. Tony

Only just noticed your classified - I'm interested at the sort of price you are suggesting - is it still available? Private mail for negotiations. Tony

Rebuilding an Ezee Cadence battery pack with Aldi 'C' cells continued I posted this in April and need some advice. I did discharge tests on the 64 Aldi C cells and was happy with their 4Ah capacity (although I did manage to overcharge a couple which exploded the plastic insulator end of their cases - still seem to work OK, but presumably now of lower capacity so I wont be using them). I have finally got round to opening up my Li-ion battery case and have a problem - I cant work out how to fit 64 (or 60) cells in it. I always end up with a few that I cant sandwich between the 2 layers and still close the case. I am loathe to throw away the C cells and start again with AA cells as Flecc did So I am wondering what would happen if I substituted some 2500mAh AA cells in the assembly. I have just ordered 32 AA NimH from Hong Kong (eBay) at around £0.50 each. There are various ways I could do it and I would appreciate advice on the following options - originally I was going to connect 2 C cells in parallel and then 30 or 32 duos in series to make 36 or 38.4V, 8Ah: 1. I could make a 6.5 Ah battery by connecting 1 AA in parallel with 1 C, then these duals in series - is there a problem with self discharge between just 2 cells of different capacity? 2. I could probably stretch this idea to C + 2 X AA - would fit I believe. 3. I could substitute triplets of AA cells in parallel (=7.5 Ah) for some of the paired C cells - would this overstress the AA's? - I might be able to squeeze some sets of 4 AA's in parallel which would then presumably be safe from overdischarge 4. I could make a whole bank of AA's in series and parallel it up (via Schottky diodes?) with a bank of C cells. ps I can post some pics of the Phylion Li-ion cells if anyone is interested - the cases were quite swollen after a year or so of disuse. pps Flecc - your NimH 'loan' battery is now cutting out regularly after over 2000 miles or so at around 4Ah of discharge - the internal impedance has gone too high, I guess - my Cycle Analyst shows a minimum voltage as low as 25V. I might try and see if the problem is with just a few of the cells, once I've got a working substitute battery. ppps - thank you Fecn for you confirmation of the performance of Aldi C cells. Tony

Rebuilding an Ezee Cadence battery pack with Aldi 'C' cells continued I posted this in April and need some advice. I did discharge tests on the 64 Aldi C cells and was happy with their 4Ah capacity (although I did manage to overcharge a couple which exploded the plastic insulator end of their cases - still seem to work OK, but presumably now of lower capacity so I wont be using them). I have finally got round to opening up my Li-ion battery case and have a problem - I cant work out how to fit 64 (or 60) cells in it. I always end up with a few that I cant sandwich between the 2 layers and still close the case. I am loathe to throw away the C cells and start again with AA cells as Flecc did So I am wondering what would happen if I substituted some 2500mAh AA cells in the assembly. I have just ordered 32 AA NimH from Hong Kong (eBay) at around £0.50 each. There are various ways I could do it and I would appreciate advice on the following options - originally I was going to connect 2 C cells in parallel and then 30 or 32 duos in series to make 36 or 38.4V, 8Ah: 1. I could make a 6.5 Ah battery by connecting 1 AA in parallel with 1 C, then these duals in series - is there a problem with self discharge between just 2 cells of different capacity? 2. I could probably stretch this idea to C + 2 X AA - would fit I believe. 3. I could substitute triplets of AA cells in parallel (=7.5 Ah) for some of the paired C cells - would this overstress the AA's? - I might be able to squeeze some sets of 4 AA's in parallel which would then presumably be safe from overdischarge 4. I could make a whole bank of AA's in series and parallel it up (via Schottky diodes?) with a bank of C cells. ps I can post some pics of the Phylion Li-ion cells if anyone is interested - the cases were quite swollen after a year or so of disuse. pps Flecc - your NimH 'loan' battery is now cutting out regularly after over 2000 miles or so at around 4Ah of discharge - the internal impedance has gone too high, I guess - my Cycle Analyst shows a minimum voltage as low as 25V. I might try and see if the problem is with just a few of the cells, once I've got a working substitute battery.

Ezee Cadence battery pack with Aldi 'C' cells I've just started on the journey towards rebuilding my old kn*****d Li-ion battery by buying 31 packs (2 cells spare) of Aldi Activ Energy C cells (4Ah) - recently reduced in price to £1.99 for a pair - that's £61.69 for the set - cheapest on the planet AFAIK. I've numbered them 1 - 62 and am setting about charging them and doing a discharge test on 8 at a time at 1.2A each to weed out the any weak cells. I'll keep you posted of the stats on this. When the battery is complete, I intend to monitor it on my Ezee Cadence with my newly acquired CycleAnalyst power monitor. Watch this space - and Flecc might have to come to you for answers on best mechanical/electrical arrangement in the battery box. Tony

NiMH charging voltage Well - the battery was once yours, Flecc, so you might know if it had been modified Peak voltage at cut-off on my new charger is 45.5V with drop off to around 43.5 when the temperature stabilises. This is around the same voltage as I got with previous charging regimes. So I guess my Ezee Cadence controller max volts is set on the 44-0.5 volts side. If anyone else is looking at this thread who might have any inside info on hacking the controller to change this voltage - please reply or PM. Could also be useful if one wanted to add a couple of cells for a small boost. Tony

Power meters and Ezee Over-Voltage Thanks Flecc for the link to the WattsUp meter - its certainly cheaper than the CycleAnalyst, but doesnt have the odometer input and handlebar mount. On the subject of NimH batteries and the Ezee - do you know how to adjust the over-voltage trip on the Ezee controller? - I find that I have to remember to disconnect my new charger an hour or more before I use the bike else the volts are too high - have to ride with the lights on for some time before I can get the motor to go. Are the NimH and Li-ion motor controllers set differently? Tony

cheap NiMH charger plus Cycle Analyst computer Slightly off topic - move to different thread if you think fit. I have been using by old Li-ion charger for a year or so to charge a NimH battery on my Ezee Cadence with occasional full top ups from a separate power supply. I was recently doing a web search and found a Canadian company The Renaissance Bicycle Company ( www.ebikes.ca Homepage of the revolution ) who sell very cheap chargers: Elegance CG362Ni-EL 2A NiCd/NiMH charger It comes with the correct plug for the Ezee battery and the thermistor spec is correct. It has universal mains i/p and comes with a US plug which I cut off to fit a normal English 13A. It does pulse charging and measures the battery voltage correctly when charging. Trickle charges after peak voltage/temperature detect. Best thing is the price - only 45 USD. They also sell a power monitoring box called the Cycle Analyst - this is just the sort of thing I wanted to design for my Cadence but had never found the time to do, so I bought one - 140 USD. They only charged 25 USD for the p&p for both - the charger is in a light weight plastic case which helps keep shipping costs down. The service from the company was excellent - thoroughly recommend them. I am fitting the Cycle Analyst this Easter and taking photos if anyone might be interested - involves connecting a high power shunt in series with the battery negative lead, so turning the bike upside down and much burrowing by the side of the chainwheel is involved. Tony

Hi Flecc et al I wonder if I can keep my Ezee Cadence running long enough on its NImH battery (thank you Flecc - still running although red battery light is coming on earlier now) till these SCiB batteries become available to all. I was just made aware of them in this article: Electronic Product Design EPD Magazine - Electric bicycle is powered by SCiB The lifetime sounds wonderful, but we will have to see how they parallel up for sufficient power in our hilly country. Tony

Glad to see it looks like you have survived a nasty incident Homemoz. Barriers can be just as dangerous the other way - I had nasty incident with a car park barrier in Gibralter last year - I was carrying a couple of diving cylinders and had to duck under a car park barrier. I put the cylinders under the barrier prior to going round the other side to collect them. My head was over the barrier as I deposited the cylinders and it suddenly lifted so I found myself flat on my back with blood pouring from a cut lip - I got away lightly. I never found out whether the cylinders triggered the barrier, or a driver slid a card through a reader some distance back from the barrier, not realising I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Next time I'll be very circumspect about barriers! Tony

Hi folks Related to this battery recharge thread. A question for the experts - I have an old NiMh battery for my eZee Cadence to use instead of the original Li-ion battery which was wearing out - I will eventually get one of the newer better Li-ion batteries. Meanwhile, I can charge the NiMH with the original Li-ion battery charger to a max of 41.5V or use a separate constant current power supply charging arrangment which is presently a bit of a nuisance to set up. The question is - if I only do 12 miles per charge, is it better to fully charge the NiMH battery, or is the lower endpoint from the Li-ion charger better to preserve its life? Tony

Hi Andy I hope the following bit of technical information helps you see about the way batteries charge. I used to own a Powabyke, and because of the monitoring connector on the battery, I used to do tests on charging and discharging the battery. Attached is a typical set of curves of charging voltage against time recorded from a data logger. I can't quite remember, but I believe the battery was being charged with the standard Powabyke charger (I'm a bit vague because the charger blew up somtime around then). The 3 12V batteries were of various vintages and you can see how the batteries were showing the same rising voltages for about 200 minutes, then the end-point voltages of the different batteries began to tell, with battery 2 rising fastest and then dropping again before charging ended. By adding up the 3 battery voltages, you can see that an endpoint of 45V total was appropriate for these particular batteries - perhaps your new ones wouldn't need to go quite so high. In any case, I dont believe the last minutes add much to the charge - perhaps Flecc might comment. Tony

Thank you all for your useful replies. I guess I'm going to have to bite the bullet and buy a new charger. I still want to do a few experiments with a separate power supply (1A) and monitor the voltage/temperature characteristics with a data logger. Before I do that I'll look for the exploding NiMh thread! I also keen to try looking at the discharge all cells procedure recommended by flecc as an occasional requirent to keep the cells 'synched' I bought an XLR plug and socket from Maplins yesterday for this experiment.