SEA_ARCHER
Registered
I wanted to post my setup for my Apollo AV2 that I recently purchased. It took some searching and planning, but I am quite happy with the setup.
Here in SE Florida, I often do 4 nitrox dives when I go out all day. Depending on depth I needed more run time than the Apollo stock lithium battery. The Apollo Li battery is advertised as 120 min but that could be a stretch and I wanted to have two batteries. The new AV2 and two Apollo/Tusa lithium batteries would have set me back $5000. I wasn't quite ready to spend that much on my entire setup just yet.
I searched and searched for cheaper LiFePo4 (Lithium) batteries but it is hard to find the perfect shape to fit inside the scooter and also maximize amp hours. Most of the options out there have a separate bpm and the lithium cells are not in any type of a case. They usually just have heavy duty shrink wrap around them. After literally dozens of hours scouring the internet, I found a 24 Ah 24 v battery (576 watt hour) that looked like it might fit. It was a little more pricey than the 20 ah batteries I was finding but it was in a sealed hard battery case and included a nice charger (4 hour charge).
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XDR37YZ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_P.5AAb3VYTWFY
Upon recieving the battery i was immediately impressed with the quality of the construction. The battery is designed for motorized wheelchairs I believe, so to compete in the medical enviornment it has to be engineered well. The charger is also heavy duty. One nice thing is that the charger has its own separate plug which plugs directly into a dedicated charging port on the battery so the pigtail to the scooter is not involved each time you plug it in to charge.
The Apollo male and female pigtails are unnecessarily complicated in my opinion. They are $38 each and way overbuilt. I would have to have bought two apollo male connectors (one for each battery so$78 total) and would still have had to modify the pigtails to be long enough to reach the top of the Bix battery. I opted to build my own pigtails.
The industry standard for battery connectors is called an Anderson Powerpole plug. They are built in many sizes according to the wire size you need for your amp draw. They are also asexual (there is no male or female, they are designed to connect to each other). I ended up using the 45 amp size with 12 guage wire (you can also use 10 guage wire with the 45 amp connector). The 30 amp size is supposed to work with 12 guage wire but depending on your wire there may be a strand or two that doesn't fit. 12 guage wire is plenty for the amp draw of the AV2 motor and while the 45 amp connector is larger than necessary it is still about one third the size of the stock apollo connector. The Anderson powerpole connectors require a special crimping tool that is $30-40 online but I like tools and now I can make as many powerpole connections as i want for other purposes.
LiFePO4 batteries weigh a lot less than a lead battery so you end up needing to add a lot of weight to ballast appropriately. i came up with a simple, easily adjustable way to add weight to the scooter with things that many of us divers have around. Per another scubaboard member (apollo guru jamesb) the scooter needs to weigh 44lbs to be neutral.
Where I mainly dive we sometimes have strong currents and when the current is strong it is nice to have the scooter be a little more negative than when there is no current. With the Bix battery, the scooter weighs 32lbs so it requires 12 additional lbs to get neutral. most of us have extra weights lying around so i added three 4lb soft weights around the sides of the battery and that got me to 44.6 lbs. After a few dives it worked good but the soft weights were just placed in there and I noticed there was a fine lead dust inside the battery compartment. I wanted a slicker way to keep the weights in tight around the battery.
It turns out there is just enough room to fit four 3lb hard weights around the battery. I used a slim weight belt and snugged them around the battery. The weights fit on two sides and the buckle on one end. The tolerances are pretty small inside the scooter so I trimmed the buckle to fit nicely on the end of the battery. There is only room on one end of the battery and it is important to use a thin style weight belt (my heavy duty JBL freedive belt was too thick).
The four 3lb hard weights plus weight belt ended up being heavier than the soft weights. I ended up with 45.4 lbs total weight which is perfect for dives with stronger current. On days where the current is less i swap out one of the 3 lb for a 2lb.
As far as performancec of the BiX battery, I have only had it out for 10 or so dives so results are preliminary at best. I have not had it out for a 4 dive day yet so I have only needed 1 battery. The last time i ran it for 3 dives and a total of 100 min run time at full throttle for much of the dives. The battery still had plenty of Juice for cleaning and such when i got home.
Here in SE Florida, I often do 4 nitrox dives when I go out all day. Depending on depth I needed more run time than the Apollo stock lithium battery. The Apollo Li battery is advertised as 120 min but that could be a stretch and I wanted to have two batteries. The new AV2 and two Apollo/Tusa lithium batteries would have set me back $5000. I wasn't quite ready to spend that much on my entire setup just yet.
I searched and searched for cheaper LiFePo4 (Lithium) batteries but it is hard to find the perfect shape to fit inside the scooter and also maximize amp hours. Most of the options out there have a separate bpm and the lithium cells are not in any type of a case. They usually just have heavy duty shrink wrap around them. After literally dozens of hours scouring the internet, I found a 24 Ah 24 v battery (576 watt hour) that looked like it might fit. It was a little more pricey than the 20 ah batteries I was finding but it was in a sealed hard battery case and included a nice charger (4 hour charge).
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XDR37YZ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_P.5AAb3VYTWFY
Upon recieving the battery i was immediately impressed with the quality of the construction. The battery is designed for motorized wheelchairs I believe, so to compete in the medical enviornment it has to be engineered well. The charger is also heavy duty. One nice thing is that the charger has its own separate plug which plugs directly into a dedicated charging port on the battery so the pigtail to the scooter is not involved each time you plug it in to charge.
The Apollo male and female pigtails are unnecessarily complicated in my opinion. They are $38 each and way overbuilt. I would have to have bought two apollo male connectors (one for each battery so$78 total) and would still have had to modify the pigtails to be long enough to reach the top of the Bix battery. I opted to build my own pigtails.
The industry standard for battery connectors is called an Anderson Powerpole plug. They are built in many sizes according to the wire size you need for your amp draw. They are also asexual (there is no male or female, they are designed to connect to each other). I ended up using the 45 amp size with 12 guage wire (you can also use 10 guage wire with the 45 amp connector). The 30 amp size is supposed to work with 12 guage wire but depending on your wire there may be a strand or two that doesn't fit. 12 guage wire is plenty for the amp draw of the AV2 motor and while the 45 amp connector is larger than necessary it is still about one third the size of the stock apollo connector. The Anderson powerpole connectors require a special crimping tool that is $30-40 online but I like tools and now I can make as many powerpole connections as i want for other purposes.
LiFePO4 batteries weigh a lot less than a lead battery so you end up needing to add a lot of weight to ballast appropriately. i came up with a simple, easily adjustable way to add weight to the scooter with things that many of us divers have around. Per another scubaboard member (apollo guru jamesb) the scooter needs to weigh 44lbs to be neutral.
Where I mainly dive we sometimes have strong currents and when the current is strong it is nice to have the scooter be a little more negative than when there is no current. With the Bix battery, the scooter weighs 32lbs so it requires 12 additional lbs to get neutral. most of us have extra weights lying around so i added three 4lb soft weights around the sides of the battery and that got me to 44.6 lbs. After a few dives it worked good but the soft weights were just placed in there and I noticed there was a fine lead dust inside the battery compartment. I wanted a slicker way to keep the weights in tight around the battery.
It turns out there is just enough room to fit four 3lb hard weights around the battery. I used a slim weight belt and snugged them around the battery. The weights fit on two sides and the buckle on one end. The tolerances are pretty small inside the scooter so I trimmed the buckle to fit nicely on the end of the battery. There is only room on one end of the battery and it is important to use a thin style weight belt (my heavy duty JBL freedive belt was too thick).
The four 3lb hard weights plus weight belt ended up being heavier than the soft weights. I ended up with 45.4 lbs total weight which is perfect for dives with stronger current. On days where the current is less i swap out one of the 3 lb for a 2lb.
As far as performancec of the BiX battery, I have only had it out for 10 or so dives so results are preliminary at best. I have not had it out for a 4 dive day yet so I have only needed 1 battery. The last time i ran it for 3 dives and a total of 100 min run time at full throttle for much of the dives. The battery still had plenty of Juice for cleaning and such when i got home.
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Thanks!
