Hi all,
As I know some here are into RC electric flight and other battery powered kit like power tools ...
A friend has asked me to have a look at an electric scooter that apparently runs on 36 volts worth of LiFe cells.
However, it's not working and we are not sure if it's a faulty cell or not but as I've not really played with these multi-cell Li** cells I thought I'd ask the panel for some general tips please?
Now, I understand some of these packs come with the main power leads and also individual monitoring and control (?) connections to each cell but I'm not sure if these would (typically, in case there are variations) be just wires connected to the inter-cell joints or going to some control / monitoring electronics in each cell?
I have also seen the little monitoring gadgets that display the total voltage and the voltage of each cell but they only seem to go up to 7 cells or so. If this battery is 36V and each fully charged LiFe cell
3.6V, we would need a 10 cell device to be able to monitor them all at once?Or, if this battery was equipped with said monitoring leads, could you simply wire some LEDs (and current limiting resistors) between each cell and then say look for the LED that goes out when you put it on load?
Would it be possible (and advised) to remove (or short) [1] a bad cell from a pack to see if the rest of the scooter was still working ok and replacement packs are pretty expensive and this one is only a few months old?
Cheers, T i m
[1] Or ideally replace of course.