iCharger

[expresso]

if you look closer - you will see that blue line with 3.580V is not the one of the 8 cells


its the pack volt i believe - total volt - after a charge it settles down a bit -

look at the other lines - 8 lines theres the blue line there together with the rest of the Cells


look at the left side - he has cells checked volts - and also Volts - -

either way - that Blue line thats off from the rest - is not one of the Cells

you have to look closer at the graph -

[shirley_hkg]

[expresso]

if i do end up doing that for real - it would be just one - i would put it on ebay - wont be giving it away there -

my point is - dont stress too much over the PL 8 if you dont have one now - or cant get them etc, - icharger can do a fine job - i am sure - it wont make that drastic of a difference

i was worried if there was nothing else to use but the PL 8 - now i am not so worried - icharger can and will be fine for anyone starting today

i love my PL 8 - for me its great - but not everyone has one - and now will never have - i wouldnt want one if i just started now - its out of bussiness -

why get one now - talking about new users today - not us who have them already and used them for years - i would want more in that case and i found a few - if they deliver on there promises - not till i get them here in my home to test etc, will i know -

we shall see -

[shirley_hkg]

if you look closer - you will see that blue line with 3.580V is not the one of the 8 cells


its the pack volt i believe - total volt - after a charge it settles down a bit -
YOU are right.

maybe i sell some of mines

I'm sure people here would like to take them home. Just put on a price tag.

[Burgerman]

i was worried if there was nothing else to use but the PL 8 - now i am not so worried - icharger can and will be fine for anyone starting today

I told you that 2 years ago.

its the pack volt i believe - total volt - after a charge it settles down a bit -
YOU are right.

I thought it was cell 8? Thats certainly a confusing graph. 2 blue lines...
But even if thats pack volts - while still on charge all cells should be at 3.600v right? Thats 28.80v continuous. Which it is not showing? And yes it will drop AFTER charge, not while ON charge?? So graph not making sense!

[steves1977uk]

BM, if you look at the chart there's a slightly thicker blue line that goes upwards near the overall volts of the pack. But on that chart it's gone beyond 28.8v, so the voltage could be much higher if people are going by that. That software needs a major overhaul.

Steve

[fishinjunky]

Do you guys think it's showing over the 28.8v because of the compensation for voltage drop?

I wonder if it can be calibrated.

I'll do some testing with my multimeter through out charging an compare to the graph.

What is a reasonably priced and reasonably accurate multimeter? I think fluke is best but I little out of my budget

I just want to make sure my pack is healthy before installing it in my chair. What do you guys think how have I done so far?

[Burgerman]

Dont worry about putting it in the chair. It will likely be a software bug or a badly calibrated charger or some other weirdness.

Measuring volts is not as simple as you may think.
The charger has a inverter that supplues a voltage higher than the battery. It then pulses that as a square wave to the battery.

So the charger can have an AVERAGE output to the battery of maybe 28.80V. But that may be 30V pulses at say 18khz. As square waves. And the voltage can then be sensed by the charger in the following ways.

At the charger output during the ON periods.
At the battery during the ON periods. Because of connector and cable resistance these are different.
At the charger during the OFF periods. This is the battery voltage as almost zero current flows.
At the charger AVERAGED to approximate true charger ooutput voltage.
At the battery AVERAGED sensed at the BALANCE wires.
At the battery balance wires sensed during the ON times. This will be lower than the charger due to battery charge wire and connector resistance.
At the battery balance wires sensed during the OFF times. This will be SAME as the charger due to battery charge wire and connector resistance having no effect because of no load/Amps flowing.

So which voltage are you going to measure?
On my expensive fluke if I measure say the charger output while charging I get 4 DIFFERENT figures. Realtime True RMS, Averaged, peak, low, at the same time on one screen. These are often very different. If I do the same at the battery these too are very different to the chargers output because of wiring resistance, inductance in the wires due to pulsing, and even dissimilar metals in connectors and terminals.

So just randomly picking something to measure esp with a non true RMS meter can completely baffle you!
Your chargers firmware takes and knows all of the above. What it presents you with to view as "voltages" depends on the guy that wrote the firmware, or the PC software...

[fishinjunky]

Dont worry about putting it in the chair. It will likely be a software bug or a badly calibrated charger or some other weirdness.

Thanks bm,
We're installing it tomorrow

[Burgerman]

I was still editing and writing. Read above again!

[fishinjunky]

I was still editing and writing. Read above again!

Ok thanks that saves me a ton of confusion.

[fishinjunky]

Another thing to keep in mind about the iCharger that Junsi doesn't warn enough about.
When plugging a pc into the iCharger you must use the ungrounded usbb cable supplied with the icharger. If you use a regular USB an have the iCharger power supply plugging into a a/c outlet an also have the PC plugged into a a/c outlet it can cause grounding issues an ruin your iCharger an pc. It's OK to use a regular USB if you are using a laptop on battery.

There's been reports of people running their iCharger an pc

[Burgerman]

Its the same when I measure the AC voltage in my bedroom.

I get the following on a supposed 50hz 230V connection.

245v nominal true RMS AC volts.
343v peak
686v peak to neg peak
9.9V AC neutral to earth average and 16 volts peak.
And ac is non symetric by 1.9 volts averaged.

A simple voltmeter thats accurate would just read 245v.
Which is correct? They all are.

[fishinjunky]

bm if you see this i was wondering something,
with the icharger duos i was wondering if both channels share the same components except for the two sets of female banana plug outputs or does each channel have its own components separate from each other?
The reason im wondering is i run mine in synchronous mode combining both channels when charging at 40amps it puts out 20amps from each channel.
When in asynchronous mode an charging at 40amps it pushes all 40amps through just one channel.
is it beneficial to charge in synchronous mode only pushing 20amps through each channel versus asynchronous mode an maxing one channel out at 40amps for long periods.
is this less taxing on the charger?

[Burgerman]

Maybe. But also means you have no spare side and running it at any current is a risk. So who knows...

[fishinjunky]

Maybe. But also means you have no spare side and running it at any current is a risk. So who knows...

I would like to have a few extra unneaded icharger 4010duo to kill stress testing to get an idea of their limitations an see how many different ways you can kill one

[Burgerman]

You never know. A transistor is the fastest fuse on 3 legs.

[fishinjunky]

I wanted to post in this thread the settings I use for charging with a iCharger4010 duo

Charging 8 cells / size 200ah

CHARGING CURRENT: 40amps for fast charging or 20amps for slow charging at night.

CHARGING END CURRENT: 1% (1% is the lowest you can set)

CHARGING CELL VOLTAGE: 3.6V

CHARGING MODE: Normal balance

BALANCE START: cv -0.1 is what you set to start balancing at 3.5v if charging cell voltage is set to 3.6v

Go to charging mode click set beside Normal balance then select END CURRENT AND DETECT BALANCE

Leave capacity as IGNORE

leave ceĺĺ count as AUTO

[fishinjunky]

Some disappointing news on the new iCharger DX8 DUO. Looks like it has a few bugs. Not saving new presets. I won't be getting the new dx8 or updating the firmware in my 4010 DUO
Not my video.
https://youtu.be/Hm_ldMJny9Q

[Burgerman]

When it comes to chargers, even basic plug and play lead brick chargers the devil is always in the details. And these details are in the firmware and software.

And thats why is almost impossible to recmmend chargers and why its always false economy to buy cheap chinesium non branded stuff. And why it took me years to get hyperion to fix all their issues, charge algos, bugs etc. And the same with the Celpro PL8v2. Years testing updated firmwares and beta stuff. In both cases.

And now those are all gone...

So you might need to do the same with the iChargers. Or I might... But I dont have or need one. Partly because no (worthwhile) dedicated PC software.

[Burgerman]

This is the same reason that most chargers are crap...
Theres maybe a phone books worth of code in a decent charger. But not only does that book full of code need to be error free and bug free, it has to be well designed. And written by someone that understands batteries. Most programmers dont. It also has to be capable of spotting errors, and allowing all the correct options.

Thats maybe years worth of development, and new versions fixing problems, and sdding or removing parts that were not thought of or that were unwanted. So most of the cost is in the hidden code. The hardware is cheap. Thats why there were the Cellpro Revolectrix PL8 and the Hobby King identical looking and electrically identical charger. That one was cheaper. Because it lacked all that fancy well developed and tested, updated, code. So you couldnt use the thing. It was terrible in comparison. And no PC software either.

The devil is in the details. And those details are hidden in the code.

[fishinjunky]

This is the same reason that most chargers are crap...
Theres maybe a phone books worth of code in a decent charger. But not only does that book full of code need to be error free and bug free, it has to be well designed. And written by someone that understands batteries. Most programmers dont. It also has to be capable of spotting errors, and allowing all the correct options.

Thats maybe years worth of development, and new versions fixing problems, and sdding or removing parts that were not thought of or that were unwanted. So most of the cost is in the hidden code. The hardware is cheap. Thats why there were the Cellpro Revolectrix PL8 and the Hobby King identical looking and electrically identical charger. That one was cheaper. Because it lacked all that fancy well developed and tested, updated, code. So you couldnt use the thing. It was terrible in comparison. And no PC software either.

The devil is in the details. And those details are hidden in the code.

And those little devils in the details are the ones to screw us up. And unfortunately i dont think we will be able to get in contact with Junsi to work with them to make fixes in the firmware. I may try but not hopeful (i would like them to change the end current from a percentage to just MA or be able to set lower than 1%). Im not having any issues with my icharger 4010duo but i dont think it has the firmware update as the DX8 DUO with bugs. An all your really getting with the new DX8 DUO versus the 4010 DUO is a hardware face lift an less power. Yea i dont consider the 3rd party software as reliably useable for the icharger maybe if it was upkept by junsi an updated regularly but as of now i consider the software as a novelty.
BM , i wonder if a company will eventually purchase the code an software used in the pl8 from revolectrics?

[Burgerman]

Who knows...

[ex-Gooserider]

I keep wondering if we wouldn't be better off to start working on an open-source hardware charger design of our own...

It would seem like that might be less of a pain than convincing charger makers to fix their bugs only to have them then go out of business or discontinue the product....

I know that BM talks about the 'phone books of code' in a charger, but I wonder how much of that is because the typical commercial charger is trying to be able to charge all sorts of chemistries, cell capacities and cell counts, etc.?

What about making a charger design that was intended ONLY to charge large capacity LiFePO4 packs with 8 cells, and do NOTHING else.... I'd expect that would greatly simplify both the hardware and software designs...

Such a design would be vulnerable to changes at the component level, but that seems less of an issue, since they seldom get rid of a component w/o providing a suitable replacement....

Obviously it would then involve the question of manufacturing it, but that could be solved (probably by Shirley for the best price... )

Thoughts?

ex-Gooserider