KS14s owners

[Paddylaz]

How many of you guys are there on here? What are your medium/long term opinions on the wheel?

I could be going crazy but I almost feel there is a weird under-representation of owners of the 14s on the forum  - but it's a wheel that I think is by a comfortable margin the most attractive proposition right now, until these next-gen beasts arrive. Plenty of 14d/16 owners around here though.

What say you, sirs? And how much happier are you after that firmware update?

[dbfrese]

I'm a 14S owner, moved up from 9bot1 e+ at the end of December. I updated firmware, but haven't noticed much difference. Could be lack of a lot of exprience with the wheel prior to upgrade. I do definitely prefer the extra safety margin, range and speed.

[Ombre]

Me too... in fact, most of our local riding group are on 14S (five of us so far, plus two 16S and one Inmotion V5F+).  Most of those people aren't active on this forum, so I'll speak for them: I think most of them chose the 14S because it represented the best choice for a smaller wheel with a realistic 30 mile range.  

One of our group upgraded to the 16S because he wanted more speed (22 MPH vs 18.6).

I didn't update the firmware because I saw no reason to do that.

The 14S is a great wheel: fast enough (18.6 MPH), reasonable weight (~38 lbs), decent range, powerful motor. My only "complaint" (if you could call it that) is that the extra battery gives it a fairly wide set of hips.  The 14D is a more comfortable ride for that reason.  But the 14D has about half the usable range.

Oh, one other complaint: the King Song apps are pretty much garbage. Fortunately there are alternatives.

[Cloud]

Can I ask you guys, how is  the speed limitation in ks14s at lower batter levels? In earlier models / firmware upgrades the speed limitations were a bit drastic and would start at a comparatively high battery level . What is it like in the latest firmware?

[Ombre]

The speed starts to drop off at exactly 30%, but only by 1 kph. The speed decline is linear, so that by about 15% the wheel is going pretty slowly.  For me it bottomed out at 5% and about 8 MPH, at which point I stopped riding and caught a ride home.

With the much larger battery of the 14S, this isn't as much of a limitation as you'd think.  There's still 25-30 miles of range in it before the speed limitation starts to be really noticeable.  And I like the added protection given that the likelihood of a cut-out at speed increases substantially with lower battery voltage.  In other words, if you ran the wheel at 18.6 MPH right down to 5% you'd be likely to be eating asphalt at some point. The speed limiting algorithm is designed to reduce the chance of that.

[Cloud]

30 minutes ago, Ombre said:

The speed starts to drop off at exactly 30%, but only by 1 kph. The speed decline is linear, so that by about 15% the wheel is going pretty slowly.  For me it bottomed out at 5% and about 8 MPH, at which point I stopped riding and caught a ride home.

With the much larger battery of the 14S, this isn't as much of a limitation as you'd think.  There's still 25-30 miles of range in it before the speed limitation starts to be really noticeable.  And I like the added protection given that the likelihood of a cut-out at speed increases substantially with lower battery voltage.  In other words, if you ran the wheel at 18.6 MPH right down to 5% you'd be likely to be eating asphalt at some point. The speed limiting algorithm is designed to reduce the chance of that.

30% is not bad at all! In the past, KS used to start limiting at 50-60%. 30% makes much more sense. I feel much happier now ) .  The linear speed decline is very nice too.  In the past the more stringent speed limits would kick in at certain speeds, SK there were situations when during a sudden temporary battery voltage drop, the next speed limit would kick in suddenly giving you an aggressive tilt back risking throwing the rider off. I am glad these days are over.

Let me ask you though, were you talking about the tilt back or the beeps? Do they both accuse at slower speeds in the same fashion? Thanks

[The Fat Unicyclist]

3 hours ago, Ombre said:

The speed starts to drop off at exactly 30%, but only by 1 kph. The speed decline is linear, so that by about 15% the wheel is going pretty slowly.  For me it bottomed out at 5% and about 8 MPH, at which point I stopped riding and caught a ride home.

With the much larger battery of the 14S, this isn't as much of a limitation as you'd think.  There's still 25-30 miles of range in it before the speed limitation starts to be really noticeable.  And I like the added protection given that the likelihood of a cut-out at speed increases substantially with lower battery voltage.  In other words, if you ran the wheel at 18.6 MPH right down to 5% you'd be likely to be eating asphalt at some point. The speed limiting algorithm is designed to reduce the chance of that.

Do hills have much of an impact on this?

eg. If you are at / near 30% does a sudden uphill introduce a significant reduction in performance (due to the larger draw from the battery).

[Carl Svanfelt]

Hi,

This is my first post on this forum. I have also noticed that it's not much written about KS 14 S. My wheel will arrive later on, at the end of this month, so I have planes to getting a change on this. I have also purchased a lot of equipment to make videos of my experiences with the KS 14 S wheel here in Finland.
Has invested $ 400 extra on a microphone system that completely removes the wind noise at the recordings. Most videos on YouTube would be nicer to watch if the audio quality could only be better!
Today I got the helmet ready (also fits with the GoPro Karma stabilizer).
Greetings from Finland
Carl

[Marty Backe]

I love my 14S. Just finished swapping the control board after ~400-miles. My KS14S YouTube playlist has lots of videos.

[Ombre]

On 4/1/2018 at 5:41 PM, Cloud said:

Let me ask you though, were you talking about the tilt back or the beeps? Do they both accuse at slower speeds in the same fashion? Thanks

I believe it's both tiltback and beeps.  Beeps for sure, at least.  

 

On 4/1/2018 at 8:22 PM, The Fat Unicyclist said:

Do hills have much of an impact on this? eg. If you are at / near 30% does a sudden uphill introduce a significant reduction in performance (due to the larger draw from the battery).

Really good question, but I can't say definitively since I haven't been anywhere near a hill when this has occurred.  My theory would be that hills have some impact because the algorithm is based entirely on the voltage of the battery. A higher load lowers the voltage when the wheel is in use, so you'd see a commensurate decrease in the speed limit. But I would expect it to be fairly gradual.

Interestingly, when I do go below 30% I've found there's a temporary work-around. Just take a break.  With no load on it, the voltage of the battery will rebound in a few minutes (often 4-6 percentage points), which then puts the wheel above the 30% level for a little while, and so the speed limit is lifted.

[Cloud]

16 minutes ago, Ombre said:

I believe it's both tiltback and beeps.  Beeps for sure, at least.  

1. Would you say the pedals are tilted higher at a larger delta between the current speed and the speed at which tilt back first kicks in ? In other words, if tiltback kicks in at 30 kph, and you are riding first at 32 and then at 35, will the pedal angle be steeped at 35 than it was at 32? 

2. If yes to question 1,  If one quickly accelerates to 35 kph, will the tilt back kick in more aggressively than if he slowly accelerated to 35?

3. And if yes to question 2, with that in mind, what happens during drastic voltage drop events, like a steep hill ( in the post above)? Can a rather aggressive tilt back suddenly kick in and potentially cause the rider to lose balance during a voltage drop because all of a sudden you are at a 15% lower battery level climbing a steep hill?

thanks!

[Ombre]

I'm afraid you are asking questions that I can't answer.  I haven't done such extensive testing that I can offer anything more than guesses. But I will say that the tiltback behavior of the 14S has been so far markedly more refined and less abrupt than an Inmotion V5F (for me, at least).