PL 8 - Q and A section - How to Set up - Use etc,

[Scooterman]

All of your cells ended together so are a very good set that are all equal. 80Ah out is about what I would expect. If you warmed them to 25C, and discharged to 2.5V you would see 90Ah. But best not to.

Thank you BM (and Shirley). I'm really pleased with how the cells performed, once you had corrected me on my earlier faux pas, a novice mistake.

Moving on...

I hope the other 12 cells are as good, or nearly as good. But they will be what they will be.

For me the best thing about big lithium is I'll be able to go anywhere you like in a day and not have to worry about running out of power or too deeply discharging the cells. Last summer my lead acid used to worry me on longish trips, not only the worry would I get home, but was I ruining the batteries in the process.

[Scooterman]

Prepare to balance a cell or two MANUALLY , if they were way behind .

What do mean by this Shirley? How can I manually balance a cell or two if they're well behind the others?

We don't want keeping cells at high volt for too long, while waiting the empty cell catching up. Sometimes, we have to stop charging in series, but to charge the un-full cells one by one. Just in case.

BM works the other way round. He lines up all cells in ONE BIG CELL. Then charges them till 3.6V in one go first, and re-arrange them in 8S .

The cells I got differ in 1Ah or 2 in most , so yours will all reach 3.5V in an hour or 2 . Don't panic .

Hi Shirley, I realise this now. One cell went high, while the others were low. CC had ramped down to 2 figures mA and cells would take a million years to balance if left, with one cell sitting high.

I will separate and top up cells individually, then 're-connect in series, discharge a bit, then charge to see if all 4 balance at 3.6v

I'm glad you told me that, I'd have never have thought of it otherwise

Long storage must have caused them to go out of balance.

Learning all the time....

[Burgerman]

As a pack, you can even them up fast by leaving them to charge in series as normal, but watch on screen.

Then take a car headlamp bulb, or anything that will draw a current or a resistor, and solder two wires to it. Attach to the HIGH cells temporarily with croc clips. And the BL8 will show you that cells voltage fall. Fast.

That allows it to ramp up power and charge all the others faster. Keep doing it and you soon have a full balanced pack.

[Scooterman]

As a pack, you can even them up fast by leaving them to charge in series as normal, but watch on screen.

Then take a car headlamp bulb, or anything that will draw a current or a resistor, and solder two wires to it. Attach to the HIGH cells temporarily with croc clips. And the BL8 will show you that cells voltage fall. Fast.

That allows it to ramp up power and charge all the others faster. Keep doing it and you soon have a full balanced pack.

Thanks I get that, I'll have a rummage around and see what I can find.

[Scooterman]

Will this do or is it too much load? Mine is the 24v version

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/192629583590?ul_noapp=true

[Burgerman]

If you already have that yes. Its not going to draw as much on 3.6V.

[Scooterman]

It did the trick thank you

[Burgerman]

So now you learned a thing. How to speed up a well out of balance pack.

There are 3 ways that ever happens.

1. Freshly built pack, so obviously out of balance.
2. Stored a long time, where the internal self discharge on some cells is higher than others. (Why I usually test for this before building a pack, if theres enough cells in a group to let me even it all out.
3. Faulty cell that went bad and has high self discharge. Usually caused by over or under discharging. Mostly going too low in use.

A healthy pack, charged every 3 months or sooner to maintain balance, should never be that bad it needs artificial help. The PL8 should be adequate on its own. If you have a BMS instead, then I wish you luck!

[Scooterman]

This morning I keep on getting a CRC preset loading error on the CCS.

It counts down from 4 seconds, tries to load the preset, then errors and tries again.

The only thing different from yesterday is windows activation but I can't imagine that is causing the problem.

[Burgerman]

Can you change settings. Start stop charge?

Can you load all the settings in CCS?

[Burgerman]

Send me that preset.

Also, is this a proper windows machine or is it a mac with windows running on some emulation?

And did you try another USB cable, and another USB port? And did you reboot in case of some issue?

[Burgerman]

Is CPU running at more than say 3% ?

[Scooterman]

Hi John, thank you for trying to help, I do appreciate it.

All the presets on the PL8 are EMPTY

And the CCS can't load the PL8 presets, I guess cos PL8 presets are all EMPTY?

I've tried a new USB lead and rebooting everything but nothing works.

The CCS is talking to the PL8 cos the led on the fumi3 lights up.

It's windows on a mac via bootcamp

[Burgerman]

If you disconnect thePL8 completely from the computer, no presets? Whats on its screen?

[Scooterman]

Sorry about wobbly cam https://youtu.be/9Qeiq7q5_yc

[steves1977uk]

SM, try starting CCS without the PL8 turned on and it should list the default presets. I've never had a CRC error before Also does the PL8 power up ok? Do you see the FW version on it's screen?

Steve

[Burgerman]

1) Connect the FUIM3 to any USB port on your PC.
2) Launch the CCS.
3) Apply power to the PL8.
4) Connect the 3 pin servo pigtail to the PL8 PC Data port. Make sure you have the black wire toward the outside wall of the case as shown on the label where it says "TO PC".
5) Make sure the COM port selection is set to Auto in the CCS App window (bottom left corner).
6) Click on the firmware tab.
7) Highlight the latest firmware.
8) Click Update Firmware. The CCS will pole all the available COM ports looking for the PL8. Once it finds it, it should automatically re-install the firmware.

Then send it a good undamaged preset.

[Burgerman]

Does it load all the other settings, e.g. supply tab?

Doese it say ready to start at the top?

[steves1977uk]

Just watched SM's vid, the PL8 seems to power up ok, but all the presets are empty Hmmm, a strange one unless the PSU that blew upset the PL8 somehow

Steve

[Scooterman]

BRILLIANT!!! It's working again.

I clicked on the firmware tab as you suggested and clicked on the UPDATE LIBRARY button and everything came back on PL8 and I also sent one of your presets to it.

Thank you so much

PS: Thanks also Steve for trying to help.

[Burgerman]

Its all 1s and 0s...

[Scooterman]

Just watched SM's vid, the PL8 seems to power up ok, but all the presets are empty Hmmm, a strange one unless the PSU that blew upset the PL8 somehow

Steve

I was concerned about the PS screwing up the PL8 too. Plus the PL8 was second or third hand as well. Teach me not to buy cheap

[Scooterman]

Its all 1s and 0s...

Yes but lots of them

[Burgerman]

If it does it again then you know why it was cheap...

[Scooterman]

Hopefully it was just having a bad day



I need to go back and change the positive feedback I gave the guy

It was his PS too!!!

[Scooterman]

I'm currently going down to 2.9v.

My thinking is that when the lines fan out it will tell me which are the strongest and weakest cells for pairing when I come to build the pack. Is that correct?

Also the discharge current is set to 9A but pl8 only discharges 7.5A why is that?

[Burgerman]

Max discharge is:

Up to 40A regenerative.
And up to 100 watts internally.

That energy has to go somewhere. So if doing an internal loss discharge, you are limited to 100 watts. Thats Discharge Amps x discharge Volts = watts... And it heats your room.

[Scooterman]

I’ve just done the math and it adds up to 96w so almost 100w.

You’re so clever, I’d have never have thought of that.

[Burgerman]

Not clever. I just RTFI

In the CCS click help.

[Scooterman]

I can do acronyms as well. How about this one FOAD! (just joking mate, no offence).

I have read it several times, even gone as far as printing it off but I haven't your power of retention. You probably think I'm a lazy cuss regarding reading, studying, and trying to understand stuff. But I'm not I try SO hard, but I forget so much. That's why I often ask you the same question over and over again, ad infinitum .