Johnw Posted April 24, 2019 Share Posted April 24, 2019 Hey EUC gang, Hoping I can get some troubleshooting advice from you guys. I'm in Canada and have a solowheel G3/V8 from July 2018 with around 700 km's on it. This was my first wheel so I have had a few drops with it (no bad crashes). I parked it for around 4 - 5 months during the winter with 2/3 - 3/4 charge. I've been resuming my EUC commute for the past couple weeks and notice my wheel only charges to 80 - 85% and then the stock charger light turns from red to green. Last week I was riding home on a pretty low battery and the wheel started malfunctioning while I was climbing on a slight hill. the tilt went haywire and I had to jump off... luckily I didn't crash but it could've been worse if I was going faster. I used the diagnose function in the inmotion app and it says everything is functioning normally. I contacted the EUC retailer who thought it could be a bad cell or a defective charger. He sent me a replacement charger but that hasn't worked either. I'm planning to pick up a multimeter to see if the chargers are functioning properly but it's likely fine (what are the chances of having two defective chargers). I've also tried disconnecting the battery to see if that would somehow reset the wheel but no luck. Unfortunately, i'm no longer covered for the battery warranty (6 months). I'm thinking it's likely a bad or dying cell based on the seller's feedback and some posts in this forum. My questions are: Are there any other diagnostics/suggested fixes? Is there any benefit to buying a smart charger at this point (could it rehabilitate a dying cell)? Can I simple live with this battery situation until it get's worse? (currently my commune is only 8 km round trip) so range isn't a problem at the moment and I can keep my wheel charged. If I need to replace the battery pack, any suggestions for sites to purchase from? is ali-express a good option? I would love to try replacing the dead cells to save $$$ but would need a pretty comprehensive guide... saw the 60cell hack and it looked interesting! Finally, OT but what should my next wheel be???? would like something a bit faster to cruise around town. Thanks in advance! John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chriull Posted April 24, 2019 Share Posted April 24, 2019 (edited) Welcome @Johnw! Get in contact with inmotion directly via service@imscv.com. they are very helpful, and active here in the forum, too. For the V10(F) they have for example replacement motherboard/special firmwares for known bugs/faults. Presumably for the V8, too. While you are waiting for reply: 1) measure the charger voltage. Should be around 84V. Multimeters are cheap and nothing fancy is needed. 2) look at the reported voltage from the wheel once it is fully charged - that's more "accurate" than the charge %. 3) open the wheel and measure the battery output voltage. _Do_ _not_ _short_ the battery output! Not even for a split second - the multimeter probe tip will melt and molten glowing metal drops could fly around! Also be sure to have the multimeter set the voltage measurement and not current measurement == short circuit. Maybe start step 3 after you were in contact with inmotion - depending on your electronics expertise? 4) if everything looks bad the last step would be to open the battery pack and measure the individual cell voltages to identify/verify bad cells. A smart charger cannot rejuvenate bad cells. Nothing can make bad liion cells better... Bad/aged cells get the most stress in the pack and degrade by this faster than the good cells - so no hope for future use... Afaik the highest risk with liion cells is while charging and using the cells? So do not charge the wheel unattended and at placed were fire would be a real hazard. Cell replacement is no huge problem, but also not a simple task. Cells should be spot welded and not soldered. Cells with prewelded nickel strips are available and depending on the internal battery pack design the different nickel strips could be soldered together. But still one end of the 18650 liion cells is "very heat sensitive". One wants all the contacts "perfect" and secure to get the best performance and the wheel does not stop while riding... After replacing the cells the pack has to be "repacked" for mechanical "tightness" and water/humidity protection. And as written above the do not shorten anything applies again for the whole process! Afaik Inmotion has an own aliexpress shop, were the dustribute their wheels? Inmotion wheels are sold via gearbest. Maybe spare parts, too? Ask service@imscv.com for the best place to get batteries once you are sure you need new ones. I would not buy battery packs from unknown sources... For a new wheel the top recommendations here seem to be the GW MSX and the KS18XL. Also the Tesla and the V10? If a smaller older not as performant wheel is ok the KS16S is very nice. The GW Nikolai and the KS16X are to come on the market shortly. Both seem to be very promising. PS.: Storing 4-5 month at 2/3-3/4 charge sounds good and should not lead to any problem - if it was not at a very "hot place". Perfect are 40% charge below 25°C and above freezing. Edited April 24, 2019 by Chriull 1 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnw Posted April 24, 2019 Author Share Posted April 24, 2019 Wow.. thanks for the advice! I will follow up with the inmotion customer service and see where it leads... I'll also grab a multimeter to test the chargers and battery. Based on your comments, i'm starting to get a little nervous about using my wheel in it's current state.... i'll be careful with charging it! I just hope the dead cells don't cause the wheel to black out during use. Again many thanks! I will post updates as they come! John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
meepmeepmayer Posted April 24, 2019 Share Posted April 24, 2019 5 minutes ago, Johnw said: Based on your comments, i'm starting to get a little nervous about using my wheel in it's current state.... In general, if a wheel is not 100% confirmed good, you shouldn't ride it. Simply because any failure in functionality leads to a nasty faceplant. Wheels are not "keep going and let's see if this gets worse" devices. Whether a new battery makes sense is probably a financial question. Might cost nearly as much as a new wheel, then you can get a better one for the money instead. Maybe the Inmotion support can help you more. Having a wheel effectively die (the battery is the most expensive part) so quickly is extremely rare. So maybe they find some kind of solution. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnw Posted April 26, 2019 Author Share Posted April 26, 2019 Latest update: Inmotion support was not too helpful, aside from suggesting I buy a new battery pack and directing me to the ali-express site. I have a multimeter now and was wondering what the best way to test the charger voltage was. There are 4 pin holes on the charge connector and my probes don't seem to reach in. do I place two paper clips in opposing holes (like the picture below) and measure? I've tried to scan the forums but haven't found any advice on this... Thanks! John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chriull Posted April 26, 2019 Share Posted April 26, 2019 19 minutes ago, Johnw said: Latest update: Inmotion support was not too helpful, aside from suggesting I buy a new battery pack and directing me to the ali-express site. I have a multimeter now and was wondering what the best way to test the charger voltage was. There are 4 pin holes on the charge connector and my probes don't seem to reach in. do I place two paper clips in opposing holes (like the picture below) and measure? I've tried to scan the forums but haven't found any advice on this... "Perfect" solution! With the charger nothing grave should possibly happen. But its 84V - so one should not really touch the contacts (both of them - since they are most probably not grounded). Should not be lethal, but very unpleasant. With wet (sweat)/humid hands and/or heart problems it could also end badly... So try not to fix the multimeter probes with your fingers to the paper clips! Shorting should not bother the charger, but who knows how it will really behave - so try to keep the clips separated! .... Good luck! 😁 .... ps.: For the pins you maybe have to try a bit to find the right ones... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnw Posted April 26, 2019 Author Share Posted April 26, 2019 Upon further inspection of the brick, it appears that the bottom left terminal is positive and bottom right is negative. that would mean I line up the positive (red) clip to the left and negative to the right. correct? unfortunately it doesn't give me a reading. am I doing something wrong? I would expect some kind of charge... maybe the paper clips aren't placed correctly in the holes? John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Jason McNeil Posted April 26, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted April 26, 2019 (edited) 22 minutes ago, Johnw said: Upon further inspection of the brick, it appears that the bottom left terminal is positive and bottom right is negative. that would mean I line up the positive (red) clip to the left and negative to the right. correct? The diagram is wrong. Pin 3+ & 4-. How do I know? Our charger supplier got the pin-outs wrong (again!), we have 100x 3A rapid-chargers in need of soldering! On 4/24/2019 at 1:12 PM, Johnw said: no longer covered for the battery warranty (6 months). I'm thinking it's likely a bad or dying cell based on the seller's feedback and some posts in this forum. Six months warranty on a brand name battery pack is lame; in Europe, they're required by law to provide 2 years from date of purchase. 1 year should be the absolutely minimum. Edited April 26, 2019 by Jason McNeil 1 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
esaj Posted April 26, 2019 Share Posted April 26, 2019 7 minutes ago, Jason McNeil said: The diagram is wrong. Pin 3+ & 4-. How do I know? Our charger supplier got the pin-outs wrong (again!), we have 100x 3A rapid-chargers in need of soldering! Shouldn't the company that provided you the chargers deal with this? Also, why do the wheel companies insist on using 3/4-pin connectors, when only 2 are needed... There's a gazillion connectors out there to choose from. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason McNeil Posted April 26, 2019 Share Posted April 26, 2019 2 minutes ago, esaj said: Shouldn't the company that provided you the chargers deal with this? Also, why do the wheel companies insist on using 3/4-pin connectors, when only 2 are needed... There's a gazillion connectors out there to choose from Yeah, it's a massive pain... The industry needs to standardize connectors to voltage, eliminating accidental over-charge scenarios by plugging in the wrong charger. Minimotors are the worst, all their 54.6v, 58.8v, 67.2v scooters all uses the same GX16-3 interfaces, it's not uncommon for Customers to own a Dualtron & Speedway, the risk mixing up chargers, despite disclaimers, is a very real one. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
esaj Posted April 26, 2019 Share Posted April 26, 2019 (edited) 20 minutes ago, Jason McNeil said: Yeah, it's a massive pain... The industry needs to standardize connectors to voltage, eliminating accidental over-charge scenarios by plugging in the wrong charger. Minimotors are the worst, all their 54.6v, 58.8v, 67.2v scooters all uses the same GX16-3 interfaces, it's not uncommon for Customers to own a Dualtron & Speedway, the risk mixing up chargers, despite disclaimers, is a very real one. I hear you... what's a bit "funny" is that many soldering stations use a multi-pin connectors. However, these connectors actually make sense, as at least certain irons use the extra pins to identify the kind of soldering iron and/or tip that's connected (and measure tip temperature etc...). Granted that if you take an iron of brand X and stick into a brand Y station, it might not work correctly. But assuming the end-user's not trying to stick "whatever" in there, the chargers could be made "smart enough" to identify the device in question, and if nothing else, not try to charge it and instead give out some kind of error notification (even if it's just blinking the charger leds to give out an error code). USB (before USB-C, I don't know how that works) for charging purposes (not data-transfer) has a similar scheme, where a certain setup between the pins tells the device about the charger/maximum amperage: The list goes on. If so adamant on using multi-pin connectors, why not... use the extra pins for something? Basically, even something as simple as adding a resistor divider (voltage drop) and a simple ADC-input could be enough. Shouldn't be too complicated or cost too much if developed early on, at least as long as you don't try to get a charger for "pennies", which would be something like... <20-40€ in retail? Hard to say for sure, but on the design/hardware side, it shouldn't be a problem in larger scale manufacturing. Edited April 26, 2019 by esaj Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnw Posted April 26, 2019 Author Share Posted April 26, 2019 1 hour ago, Jason McNeil said: The diagram is wrong. Pin 3+ & 4-. How do I know? Our charger supplier got the pin-outs wrong (again!), we have 100x 3A rapid-chargers in need of soldering! Six months warranty on a brand name battery pack is lame; in Europe, they're required by law to provide 2 years from date of purchase. 1 year should be the absolutely minimum. Ahhh thanks for the tip! I was able to confirm my chargers are outputting at 84 volts.... which means I have a bad cell :(. i wish the North American warranty was a year and not 6 months.... it just sucks that my battery is starting to fail after only 9 months...I'll contact inmotion again to see if they can make an exception... 1 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
esaj Posted April 26, 2019 Share Posted April 26, 2019 13 minutes ago, Johnw said: Ahhh thanks for the tip! I was able to confirm my chargers are outputting at 84 volts.... which means I have a bad cell :(. i wish the North American warranty was a year and not 6 months.... it just sucks that my battery is starting to fail after only 9 months...I'll contact inmotion again to see if they can make an exception... That sucks, electric car manufacturers give much longer warranties for the batteries, for example Opel Ampera gives 8 years / 160000km (100000 miles) warranty for the battery pack. Granted that probably it has a much more "smart" battery management system (it's something like a 16kWh system, but it only allows you to use around 10kWh, ie. the battery's never charged to full voltage and never allowed to discharge to critical values, unless of course left unused and uncharged for a long time), and has separate cooling / heating -system for the batteries. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Jason McNeil Posted April 27, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted April 27, 2019 13 hours ago, Johnw said: i wish the North American warranty was a year and not 6 months.... it just sucks that my battery is starting to fail after only 9 months For all the products we offer, including the V8, we offer a one year warranty including the battery pack; if necessary paying out of pocket for a replacement pack. The annualized failure rate on the V8 pack is really low, like 2%/year. 2 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eric Lin Posted April 28, 2019 Share Posted April 28, 2019 Hi John, I'm Eric from Inmotion China, I checked with the team, it is better and safer for you to replace the battery pack, from Jason or the distributor you purchased from. We would never suggest our customers to fix some dead cells by themselves. That's why Anthony was suggesting you to buy a new pack. And we are sorry for the 6months warranty, wish we can offer more to all our customers. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chriull Posted April 28, 2019 Share Posted April 28, 2019 (edited) On 4/26/2019 at 10:46 PM, Jason McNeil said: Six months warranty on a brand name battery pack is lame; in Europe, they're required by law to provide 2 years from date of purchase. 1 year should be the absolutely minimum. We have two different legal expressions here in Europe "Gewährleistung" (?warranty?) and "Garantie" (?guarantee/warrant?). Unfortionately the online dictionary translate them to each other without distinction. The ?warranty? is by law 2 years with burden of proof reversal after 6 month. The (mostly limited) ?guarantee? is a voluntary promise of the reseller. So, for marketing reasons they promise for durable parts 1-2 years (limited) ?guarantee?, which is more or less whats required by law - just no court needed and the limitations are choosen for the cases, they would most probably win at court, the promises for what they'd loose anyhow in court...(1) For "not so durable" products as akkus they limit the offered warranty for this 6 month legal "warranty" were they would be required to proove the customer beeing responsible for the fault... I hope that i did not choose the translations just the wrong way around, so it does not sound to confusing... So the battery pack of @Johnw is still under the legal ?warranty?, but he would have to proove that there was already a (hidden) defect/design flaw when he bought it... Edit: (1) this is most probably a bit exaggerated and most shops give "guarantees" because its "common use" and to compete with the competition?. Edited April 28, 2019 by Chriull 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnw Posted April 29, 2019 Author Share Posted April 29, 2019 On 4/27/2019 at 6:38 AM, Jason McNeil said: For all the products we offer, including the V8, we offer a one year warranty including the battery pack; if necessary paying out of pocket for a replacement pack. The annualized failure rate on the V8 pack is really low, like 2%/year. I wish I purchased my wheel from you Jason! I'll probably do that on my next wheel. I've heard nothing but great things from ewheels. thanks! John 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnw Posted April 29, 2019 Author Share Posted April 29, 2019 On 4/27/2019 at 9:14 PM, Eric Lin said: Hi John, I'm Eric from Inmotion China, I checked with the team, it is better and safer for you to replace the battery pack, from Jason or the distributor you purchased from. We would never suggest our customers to fix some dead cells by themselves. That's why Anthony was suggesting you to buy a new pack. And we are sorry for the 6months warranty, wish we can offer more to all our customers. Thanks for looking into this Eric, As much as I appreciate your quick response, it doesn't quite improve my situation. It's just too bad that i'm unlucky enough to be part of the <2% with a defective battery and will have to spend hundreds of $$$ to keep enjoying my wheel. Hopefully I'll have better luck with this on my next wheel... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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