Does anyone use a CBA on their scooter batteries?

[Father]

I have two Dive-Xtras P1 scooters.
One was getting shorter run times than the other. I asked Dive-X and they recommended either sending the battery back to them to hook up to their analyzer or buying my own. Shipping Li-Ion batteries is a pain so I opted to get my own CBA. I don't know dick about these things, but the tech said " the best method to bring the capacity back up would be to cycle the battery 3-5 times on a computerized battery analyzer". So I bought one.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't kick the can for a while before actually putting this thing into action.
I'm only just starting to scratch the surface on understanding how this thing actually works, but I'm realizing that the discharge rate on the CBA alone is limited to <3 Ah. The Dive-X tech mentioned they run theirs with two amps and now I understand why.

I'm guessing that running it at a higher Ah discharge rate is the equivalent of running the scooter at a higher gear in the water. I only use these scooters for recreational diving, normally not much longer than 60 minutes and the majority of operation has been in the lowest possible gear/speed... I dive with other people who have Sea-Doo Explorers, so even in the lowest speed I'm outrunning them.

I've only recently started diving with other P1 owners who run their scooters in 2nd - 3rd gear for th majority of the dive and my scooter has been dying after an hour while theirs (using the newer PTB) run the entire dive.

I'm wondering if cycling my battery on the CBA enough will eventually fix this, or if the battery is just doing what batteries do... which is to say they are eventually just going to die because batteries don't last forever. Or if the batteries built up some kind of memory to the lower discharge rate and in order to fix it they need to build a new memory to the higher discharge rate.

Did I mention I'm stupid when it comes to electricity and electronics? Because I am.

 

[Jon Nellis]

Li-ion does not experience "memory" like old NiCad batteries do and cycling them at a low current will not help. Li-ion does degrade with age and that degradation can be accelerated by high temps and keeping them fully charged most of the time. I've been to Kwaj a few times and know the climate. If you have left your black scooter sitting in the sun (think "solar oven") or a hot car for any prolonged periods, the heat has probably taken a toll on your batteries. 5-7 years is the normal life of Li-ion, but longer life is possible when cared for. We have scooters in service with the Honolulu fire dept, kept fully charged and sitting in a vehicle every day, ready for action. They only get about 3-4 years from a battery with minimal use, because of that and budget for replacements accordingly.

I doubt that cycling your battery will provide any benefit, if you have been using it regularly already. That is cycling. Maybe a small benefit if it had been sitting unused for a couple years, but still doubtful.

Cheers,
Jon

 

[Father]

Li-ion does not experience "memory" like old NiCad batteries do and cycling them at a low current will not help. Li-ion does degrade with age and that degradation can be accelerated by high temps and keeping them fully charged most of the time. I've been to Kwaj a few times and know the climate. If you have left your black scooter sitting in the sun (think "solar oven") or a hot car for any prolonged periods, the heat has probably taken a toll on your batteries. 5-7 years is the normal life of Li-ion, but longer life is possible when cared for. We have scooters in service with the Honolulu fire dept, kept fully charged and sitting in a vehicle every day, ready for action. They only get about 3-4 years from a battery with minimal use, because of that and budget for replacements accordingly.

I doubt that cycling your battery will provide any benefit, if you have been using it regularly already. That is cycling. Maybe a small benefit if it had been sitting unused for a couple years, but still doubtful.

Cheers,
Jon

I'm pretty vigilant about keeping it out of the sun and as cool as possible when outside. I normally throw a towel over it when I'm riding it to the marina/shore and keep it in the shade when I'm setting up. Not much I can do about whatever heat it's exposed to from the motor running, but I assume the water outside of the scooter acts like a heat sync.

I bought the scooter about 4 years ago (May 2015). I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that the batteries are running down.
I can still get an hour+ dive out of it on slower speeds, but I'm a lot less confident in it now that I've had to get towed a few times.

I kind of thought the same thing about discharging it through use and wondering what the benefit of doing it with CBA is. I'd have to ping Dive-X to get that answer. I normally don't run it all the way down... so is there a benefit to recharging it from just short of the "unsafe" level?

 

[sunnyboy]

You may want to invest in the Dive-X programmer. It's a board that plugs into the P1 trigger connector and battery, plus a computer via USB. It allows you to download and observe run-time data as well as modify the programming if you desire.

When I got my P1 it was a demo unit, and ran about an hour on "middle speed". I wasn't really thrilled with the battery life, so plugged in the programmer and couldn't figure out the settings I was seeing.

I called Dive-X and they walked me through it. Turns out the reason it didn't make sense is someone had set the program to Cuda, which is WRONG for a P1. (yea, you can do that with the programmer). The Dive-X person walked me through the correct settings for a P1 (mostly a lower cutoff voltage) and after that my P1 had much more life.

Before the correct program, it died a couple of times on longer "on the trigger all the time" dives, but since then it's been fine on the same dives and longer.

 

[Father]

You may want to invest in the Dive-X programmer.]

I have it. I reset most of the speeds.
I’ve downloaded the runtime info but didn’t really know what I was looking at. I think I understand it more now in that it’s telling you how much Ah are used in each speed.