Thank you so much for this great work. Iāve been loosely following your progress from the beginning and Iām catching up now on what Iāve missed lately and itās a lot.
I have 2x the V0.8, and reading back, I saw you mention the MoreAmpsShield last December (2017). I havenāt seen anything about this since then. Do you have any idea when I could expect more from this?
Iām debating what to do right now as 80a is just not enough for me (was trying to do 200a+, as I run 4wd). I read before the plan was to allow this to support 140a in theory as it is. Have you tested this yet? Is there a 140a fuse that will fit nicely?
Charging wise, limit is 15a, correct?
Iām a bit confused on the charge current. You said to detect charge, it needs to be 3v above pack voltage? So it wonāt detect a charge if say my pack is at 49v and the charge current is 50.4v? Do I need to set it to 53.4 then?
Iām still confused about the canbus connection to the vesc, but hopefully I find something that clarifies this soon (still not done reading all of the topics and every message, soooo much to read, haha). Do you just need to connect CAN L BMS -> CAN L VESC and CAN H BMS to CAN H VESC?
The manual would be great. I might through something together in the mean time for others, because itās not efficient for everyone single person to read all of these lengthy threads. Already been about 4 hours and I still have at least 2 more to go through.
Thanks again for this amazing piece of work. Would love to use the full power potential of my setup though (200a+, could even set each vesc to 80a for 360a total in theory). I think itās worth limiting my power output for the time being and using this instead of not using a bms, since Iām now using a 25ah lipo pack. But would love to get this running at higher amps.
In general, the ESC should have no effect on the bms. They are separate, compartmentalized systems. This bms has a canbus port, which the vesc also has, and it seems thereās some firmware stuff being implemented so the VESC and BMS can be blended together nicely. But this is the icing on the cake.
Personally, I would recommend a VESC, especially a VESC 6. Iāve tried pretty most vescās out there and the only ones standing still are the official VESC 6 (damn you Frank for charging so much!!! I know how cheap your BOM is now!) and the Axle and Chaka Vesc 4.12ās. It pays in the long term to use quality parts (remember, electric skateboarding can be deadly, especially if you experience electrical failures at the wrong time).
@rene Do you or anyone one else have any adivce on crimpting the J12 connector? Maybe the wire Iām using is too large or something, but Iām having a hard time getting those little legs to clip. It looks pretty clen and narrow, but when I pull it out, the legs look bent inward and I have to use tweezers to pull them back out. But everytime I try to insert it, the pins get pushed in and stay, they donāt spring back out and get connected, even though I get the entire pin in.
Any advice is much appreciated as itās driving me crazy to where I want to just de solder the port and solder directly. to the pcb haha. But Iām trying to restrain myself.
Does anyone know of the proper name for this connector? I wouldnāt mind even picking up a pre-crypted cable with the port on it. All I can find on the schematics and BOM is J12.
So this wiring diagram unfortunately doesnāt help with the latest gen of switches. They have the following listed names: C, NO, NC, LED, and A.
Doesnāt anyone know the correct wiring?
I would love to get this bms working. Iām just finding it hard as information gets old and then theirs no documentation for most of what Iām have to do as the end user to get this running.
What would have been amazing for future groups buys would be if cables were pre-crimped and wires pre soldered to the switch. I would pay an extra $30 to not have to guess and break stuff trying to figure out what is what.
So far, I likley blew the first one because I got frustrated with this stupid balance plug.
The second one is like the first, in that I plug it into the computer and windows chimes and it shows under devices. But it doesnāt find it when I used the DieBieMS tool. Both are v0.8. I get no lights on the bms, either. I connected my battery to it and tried to use the switch, but nothing works. Itās been over 15 hours now Iāve spent trying to get this bms working and Iām ready to just throw it in the trash and move on.
Update: So the second one I was able to get the firmware updated, and it now powers on when I plug in the usb. But it shows 0 volt for the battery pack. It this because I donāt have the battery balance wires plugged in? It shows the bms temp correct (I activated rt data).
The correct wiring for the switch is:
C and NO for the switch. That is the red and black wire.
LED and A is for the LED. The green and the blue wire.
The yellow one is not used. Same with the NC contact of the switch.
My BMS has been working great in my board, but I have been trying to plug it in to my computer over USB to change some settings and have encountered some issues. If I plug it in, lights do not come on, but it does appear as SLAB_USBtoUART in vesc_tool, Ackmaniacās tool and DieBieMS tool, but after trying to connect in all 3, I get a No firmware read response error. I get the same issue when using CAN forwarding to connect to it.
I also cannot seem to flash it using my STLinkV2 using the debug connector on the side of the board, it is apparently not recognised or connected, even after I double checked all the connections.
Any ideas?
Edit: My debug connection wasnāt as good as I thought, I soldered it and manually flashed the bootloader and firmware to the correct addresses using OpenOCD, but still getting the No firmware read response error
Edit 2: I tried flashing the VESC boot loader, and the older DieBieMS firmware, using a different machine and still no luck
I tried my best to wire up the based on what I knew at the time to do the power switch. Hooking it up to my battery, and then pressing the switch turned it on (with the usb).
I have the switch weird up correctly now. Working on the display and waiting for pre crimped wires so I hopefully can get them to fit into the connector for the balance wires.
I wired up the switch correctly and it seems to work. The bms turns off after a few seconds though. Iām assuming this is because I only have batt - and batt + connected, with no balance cable yet?
Also, when I plug the screen in, nothing happens on the screen, but the power switch blinks a few times before it turns off. Unplugging the display returns the power switch to the state above (no fast blinking before turning itself off).
EDIT: Solved! If you mess up the wiring, it will I guess it will blink before shutting off! Glad it doesnāt just blow up! Now it shows a battery with and x, then says bye and shuts off, haha.
I guess this is all normal since I donāt have balance wires connected yet.
The other thing Iām wondering if any can answer isā¦
Is this really bms limited to 80 amps (as the silk screen infers)? That is to say, If I put a 130 amp fuse, would that be an issue? (JTAG originally said 140a theoretically)
Also, I saw this asked before, but I didnāt see an answer, as to what is the type of fuse these are called? Trying to find replacements but not sure. I have been running 120 amp across 4 vescs and was very happy with the performance. If I could keep that and not have to put this bms in parallel, I would love this bms that much more!
If that works, looks great. If theoretically 140a is the true amp, 125 would be a nice in between. Since Iād want to limit it 10 amps lower than the fuse so I donāt blow fuses during hard accelerations.
That is exactly what my thinking was. I am building two 12S6P packs using samsung 25rās. So this would fit nicely; especially paired with either the Unity or FSESC dual.
Yep that sounds about right. I ride 4wd, so itās tough to get a bms that can power 4 vescs to their full potential. That and I just built a 12s 25ah lipo pack (a bit over a kilowatt of juice) that could easily do 400 amps con. 120 ish is still limiting, but ok for now until the more amps shield is ready.