Poll: Have you experienced an unexpected shut-off while riding?

[Michael Vu]

My firewheel has shutoff 3 times all from pushing it beyond its limits. My Gotway Msuper has had no shutoffs. And obviously my buddies ninebot has shut off twice unexpectedly.  

[Alluresport]

I have a TG F3 that shut off without warning. Banggood says they'll send me a replacement battery because my battery doesn't charge fully and the unit cuts power unexpectedly. One of the times it happened, I was riding it very slowly (~3mph) or so and had 2 power leds lit at the time, and I was on a leveled surface. I know the battery is a problem but I think it also circuit related. It looks like it's completely random, but I'm afraid of riding it now that I know it can do that. On the other hand, I also own a TG-F5 and that has worked beautifully for months and I have no complaints. Very disappointed with the F3, however. 

[lizardmech]

None yet, I seem to have a generic with a new board that is quite good. Has overspeed and low battery tiltback. Riding up hills to the point the engine stalls did not produce a shutdown.

[Trant]

Hi I'm new here, but would like to let people know about my experience with my X3.  It has unexpectedly shut down 4 times now.  Twice I have been face planted in the street, the other times I managed to save myself.  I bought the Airwheel from Airwheel.com and they have unsupportive, almost confrontational.  They are not accepting that it is a problem, and say they have never had another report of a similar problem.  I am surprised having read some of the post on this forum.

Air wheel.com are not accepting any responsibility at this stage.  I have agreed to pay post and packing for them to have a look at it, but I just don't trust it anymore and want a full refund.

Has anyone else had similar experiences.  And how come the price of the Airwheel X3 is plummeting.  Sends warning signs to me.

[tjcooper]

Really need some help here: 3 unexpected stops today on a new Huanxi H3 unit (actually an H3 MoHoo).   Today I had 3 occasions where the wheel came to an immediate stop while I was going forward.  This morning I had 2 occasions where I was going forward slowly training without training wheels.  I thought I had hit a small branch or something on the ground, but when I looked the ground was just smooth asphalt.  This evening in the parking garage I was moving at about 6 mph doing slight downhill run in the parking garage when the wheel just “stopped” and threw me five feet forward onto the cement.  Thank God for good knee pads and "hard-bar" wrist pads.   In both cases the battery was at 3 bars.  Being a "newbie" I was not pushing the limits of anything on the system.  I later charged the unit with a professional charger and it took only 43 Watt/hour of energy.  That is like ¼ of the battery capacity of 135 Watt/hour.   I am now afraid to ride the MoHoo.   I could get seriously injured if it locks up the wheel again and I was near traffic.  Has anyone else seen this happen on a fresh battery pack?  Is there a special place to discuss this phenomenon in this forum?

    tjcooper

[SlowMo]

 

@tjcooper and @Trant, there could be a solution which is shunting the BMS but the BMS might not be the problem. It could be due to the small  motor which cannot sustain the rider's body weight during sudden accelerations and climbs. It could also be due to over leaning. 

The best solution to avoid such unexpected free wheeling of the EUC is to get much better brands like IPS, Kingsong, Gotway, Uniwheel, Inmotion, Firewheel and others.

[John Eucist]

@tjcooper this is what @SlowMo means by "shunting the BMS" (link below) but I have never done this myself and not sure how safe it is nor do I know if it's applicable in your case.

 

[Chriull]

1 hour ago, tjcooper said:

Really need some help here: 3 unexpected stops today on a new Huanxi H3 unit (actually an H3 MoHoo).   Today I had 3 occasions where the wheel came to an immediate stop while I was going forward.  This morning I had 2 occasions where I was going forward slowly training without training wheels.  I thought I had hit a small branch or something on the ground, but when I looked the ground was just smooth asphalt.  ...  I later charged the unit with a professional charger and it took only 43 Watt/hour of energy.  That is like ¼ of the battery capacity of 135 Watt/hour.   I am now afraid to ride the MoHoo.   I could get seriously injured if it locks up the wheel again and I was near traffic.  Has anyone else seen this happen on a fresh battery pack?  Is there a special place to discuss this phenomenon in this forum?

Similar wheel behaviours are discussed all over the forum - is unfortionately "quite common". This could be quite anything. Often it is just a bad charge/reused/low quality batteries. Maybe in combination with a not very well designed BMS/controller board. But i think the Huanxi/Mohoo got quite good reviews?

You have the chance to get your unit replaced?

56 minutes ago, SlowMo said:

 

@tjcooper and @Trant, there could be a solution which is shunting the BMS but the BMS might not be the problem. It could be due to the small  motor which cannot sustain the rider's body weight during sudden accelerations and climbs. It could also be due to over leaning. 

With a small motor (350W?) and "only" a small battery (135 Wh should be 15-16 cells in series and none in parallel?) it is quite easy to overlean - maybe also especially as beginner as the fine balancing is just about to be learned. If to this combination comes a tall and maybe a little bit heavier rider it could easily be to much for the wheel...

Shunting could help - but easily "overstress" the batteries. But at least one could prevent a faceplant - better dead batteries than lying in hospital! You just have to be carefull to prevent short circuits and check the batteries more carefully - since the can get easily "overstressed" with shunting, they could in combination with a not too well designed BMS get dangerous... (anyway if so, you could have the same situation without shunting, but just a little bit later)

So,

56 minutes ago, SlowMo said:

The best solution to avoid such unexpected free wheeling of the EUC is to get much better brands like IPS, Kingsong, Gotway, Uniwheel, Inmotion, Firewheel and others.

or you invest in a 16s2p (or 15s2p, whatever your wheel uses and there is enough place in the battery compartment) and have a happy driving. If your wheel is just to small/powerless/slow for you and you want to upgrade to a stronger one you should have very good chances, that you can still use your stronger battery pack!

[Knoxious]

I think I had 2 shut offs today on my IPS Zero (340W). I have just had the speed limiter removed, and both times I went for a hard acceleration... I thought I'd hit the front casing from too much forward lean, but it seems (due to lack of scraping on the front of the casing) that I might have overloaded the motor? I'll try to be more helpful next time! (no beeping, nothing, just me hitting the floor running!)

[Pilotguy]

A brand and model breakdown would be very useful !!!

[davek]

Never an unexpected shutdown with my KS-14C.
But as the weather gets warmer it overheats more often on steep hills.
Beeping, slows down and peddles come up.

[SlowMo]

9 hours ago, Knoxious said:

I think I had 2 shut offs today on my IPS Zero (340W). I have just had the speed limiter removed, and both times I went for a hard acceleration... I thought I'd hit the front casing from too much forward lean, but it seems (due to lack of scraping on the front of the casing) that I might have overloaded the motor? I'll try to be more helpful next time! (no beeping, nothing, just me hitting the floor running!)

You can try recalibrating your IPS Zero and check again. Also, please don't do rapid accelerations to avoid over leaning.

[tjcooper]

SlowMo,

the MoHoo H3 from Banggood.com is the new model that has "voice command" to tell you if you are over leaning and it supposedly tells you when your battery is low (never leaned over very far and never taken battery below 3 of 4 bars so I have no way to prove that it actually works).  Huanxi says the H3 (which is what the re-branded MoHoo is) has all the BMS safety features build in and is the newest motor controller technology.  I have written them about the problem but not had a response yet.

Bottom Line: I am too new to EUC to do any high speed or steep angle riding.  The launch that sent me 5 feet in the air was for me going up a 3% grade in a parking garage.  Something I have done 50 times while learning balance and turning.   Was going like 5 mph when it happened.  I have done  faster on that slope with no problems at all.  I have a strong electronics and out-runner motor background from 20 years of flying brushless RC airplanes and drones.  I even wind my own W-delta motors for the airplanes.  I made my own electric bicycle from scratch and created my 10S LiPo battery by wiring together the individual cells.  My intuition tells me I had a controller fault that said a complete motor shutdown was needed.  There was no petal-up de-acceleration or slowdown or voice warning.  The stop was so quick that my new 14" tire left a small skid mark where the rubber could not take the frictional force of the stopped wheel.

Most of these little controllers use Arduino-like processors to control the gyro and deal with speed control.  They often times keep on-board log files of error conditions for the last power-on cycle.  Does anyone know if the Huanxi have these log files and how one would gain access?  The unit has a USB port for charging iPhones, etc. and a Bluetooth port for playing music.  It might be that one or the other of these ports could be "toggled" to give out diagnostics and/or error conditions.  Anybody have any experience in this?

I can build my own 16S2P pack for the system (just use a XT-60 connector to the outside of the EUC and put my second battery pack which is in my backpack to hook up to internal battery in parallel).  But my intuition tells me that I could have a 5000 Watt power source at 67.2 volts DC and the problem would still happen under certain conditions.  I have asked Huanxi if I can get a replacement mother board.  My only other option is to return the unit to Bangood.com (it has 1 year warantee) and try to get my money back.  But I really want to learn how to use the EUC and motor around San Francisco like the other 1000 people I see up there doing that.

    tjcooper

[SlowMo]

10 minutes ago, tjcooper said:

the MoHoo H3 from Banggood.com is the new model that has "voice command" to tell you if you are over leaning and it supposedly tells you when your battery is low (never leaned over very far and never taken battery below 3 of 4 bars so I have no way to prove that it actually works).  Huanxi says the H3 (which is what the re-branded MoHoo is) has all the BMS safety features build in and is the newest motor controller technology.  I have written them about the problem but not had a response yet.

It is really recommended to to buy the top brands as mentioned above specially Kingsong and IPS units for safety reasons. I have a generic X3 clone with 170wh battery pack which I shunted. It always gives the floaty feeling of tilt-back when being pushed hard but never had a single occurrence of it's motor shutting off. The rest of my units (5 of them) are not shunted and runs smoothly without problems.

[Chriull]

31 minutes ago, tjcooper said:

...  The launch that sent me 5 feet in the air was for me going up a 3% grade in a parking garage.  Something I have done 50 times while learning balance and turning.   Was going like 5 mph when it happened.  ... 

My intuition tells me I had a controller fault that said a complete motor shutdown was needed.  There was no petal-up de-acceleration or slowdown or voice warning.  The stop was so quick that my new 14" tire left a small skid mark where the rubber could not take the frictional force of the stopped wheel.

...  I have asked Huanxi if I can get a replacement mother board.  My only other option is to return the unit to Bangood.com (it has 1 year warantee) and try to get my money back. 

Replacement or money seems the best option - why hassle with a "bad" unit!

31 minutes ago, tjcooper said:

 

But I really want to learn how to use the EUC and motor around San Francisco like the other 1000 people I see up there doing that.

Hope you manage a replacement/new wheel and can enjoy it!

[Keith]

Well this is embarrassing, my KingSong 14C 340Wh has just dumped me on my face - something really unexpected.

I joined the ride in Hyde Park on Sunday and was demonstrating its top speed of 25kph (OK showing off ;-( ) I had accelerated evenly until I got 4 beeps and it started to tilt back; I then started to brake - not hard - I just wanted to slow down enough to do a wide 180 degree turn. All of a sudden the pedals became floppy and next thing I was flying through the air. Ironically I had knee and albow pads in my backpack, but I was wearing wrist guards and a leather jacket. I got small grazes on my right knee and elbow and a damn great bruise on my right hip, I think a was quite lucky helped by the fact the wheel had started to slow down.

With hindsight I'm convinced this is a regenerative breaking failure. I'd made sure the wheel was fully charged for the trip, leaving it on charge for a couple of hours after the charger turned green. I'd done less than half a mile and still had full battery lights. I've travelled at 25kph for hundreds of yards in my local park with no problems. 

We have discussed this in another thread before I think. If the battery is full there is nowhere for a regenerative braking charge to go, it can't go into the battery so no current flows and the wheel loses all torque. Had the battery not been so full I do not think I would have had a problem.

I went on to ride all afternoon clocking up nearly 12 miles on my wheel and getting down to 2 lights on the battery meter. That is the longest ride I have ever done. Even at very low battery the wheel behaved well but, surprise, surprise, I never went faster than 10MPH (16kph) all afternoon.

[Makoben]

Tjcooper, my wheel from Banggood was sent with a bad battery. I contacted their help desk and suggested they send me a new battery. They asked for a video documenting the problem. I sent the video and they Banggood sent not only a new battery but a new board. The wheel works as good as a generic wheel can.

Mike

[tjcooper]

Mike,

much thanks for the Banggood story.  I have just sent them a still of my unit with the story that happened to me.  I suggested a new control board because my battery was so full when the 3 sudden stops happened.  But maybe I should request a new battery pack also.  I do all my own batteries for my other rc stuff.  I my just make up a 16S from Panasonic 18650 cells and put it in parallel to the unit inside to insure I have a huge battery reserve.  

QUESTION: what model EUC do you have from Banggood?  How long have you had it?  How long did it take you to learn to ride before you felt you "had the hang of it"?    Thanks.

   tjcooper

[Makoben]

@tjcooper read my post on learning to ride an EU without an EU. It still is an ongoing story and training. If you have any questions I will try to answer them.

Mike

[tjcooper]

Mike,

can you give me the direct reference to "ride an EU without an EU"?  I could not find it under "Makoben" or "EU without an EU".  Thanks,

   tjcooper

[esaj]

2 hours ago, tjcooper said:

Mike,

can you give me the direct reference to "ride an EU without an EU"?  I could not find it under "Makoben" or "EU without an EU".  Thanks,

   tjcooper

Here you go:

 

[tjcooper]

UPDATE on "unexpected stop"

I was visiting my daughter in Davis CA for Easter.  The park next to her house has great level cement and asphalt paths to test out EUC.  I put on training wheels to go over longer distances.  I stayed below 4MPH to insure I would not get "unexpected stop" Oh, was I wrong.  Twice I got launched like 4-5 feet forward while going on flat surfaces.  Both cases were in first 10 minutes of operation after charging.  Had 4 bars for first launch and 3 bars (out of 4) for 2nd launch.   I was up off the training wheels for both launches.  This convinces me that this MoHoo unit has serious electronic problems.  Asked Banggood for new battery and new motherboard so I can test what is causing the problem.  My guess is its the motherboard.   Measured the internal Resistance of the battery pack (I have some very specialized battery measurement equipment) and the results seem very reasonable for 16 S of the 18650 units....but there are so many cells there could be a problem hiding in the statistics of 16 cells.

Unit is not safe to ride anymore so I will now work on the "EC training without an EC" that Makoben  posted on YouTube.  Hope that I can reach quick resolution from Banggood.  Will let the group know what eventually happens.

    tjcooper

[SlowMo]

5 minutes ago, tjcooper said:

UPDATE on "unexpected stop"

Sorry to hear about this shut-downs repeatedly happening. Kindly reconsider my post above dated 21.03.2015.

[DS]

On 3/20/2016 at 0:11 AM, Keith said:

With hindsight I'm convinced this is a regenerative breaking failure.

If I were you, I'd make more similar tests, but taking the appropriate secure measures.

There was only one documented regenerative breaking failure with Ninebot AFAIK, and it was stated that the failure could happen only if you start downhill with a full 100% charge. Even 100m flat or uphill riding are enough to prevent the overcharging. This may be not relevant with KS14.

[tjcooper]

Makoben,

could you give the the model number and when you got Banggood to send you a replacement battery and motherboard?  That would be very useful to me when I talk to them next.  They have asked for a video to demonstrate the problem.  I sent videos on YouTube of my first 15 minutes of riding the machine.  But they seem to indicate they want to have video of the "unexpected stop" failure.  I have indicated that I will try to take video stream when I go 5-7 mph and have problem happen (it is completely random and in no way related to battery discharge).  I have also indicated that requesting this video testing they become liable for any personal injury that happens to me from an "unexpected stop".  I told them that it is unsafe to ride even with full safety equipment because you never know when (in terms of time, slope, battery discharge) it will happen.  Last two happened within three minutes of each other on a full battery on level ground.  And then I rode for 20 more minutes at very slow speed with no problem......aside from the large amount of sweat on my face worrying about the next "unexpected stop".  I am an incurable optimist when it comes to new technology.

SlowMo,

I truly understand your mantra "buy top of the line and you will have less problems".  I just don't have the bucks right now to buy an 18" super cruiser when I don't know if I will like EUC's for general riding.  I had people caution me when I said I would consider buying a unit and they said only by 16" IPS because they have no problems.  If I had the $1k to spend on it, I would have tried it.  But I am putting 2 kids through graduate school now and I have to watch the nickles and dimes.  Besides, Huanix and MoHoo got good reviews for BMS and build quality on this forum.  I bought it solely because it had an easily removeable battery pack.  Wish I had known about the "unexpected stops" problems.  Maybe I would have skipped EUC altogether and stayed exclusively with my built from scratch electric bike.

     tjcooper