[Hackability] battery voltages in mobility scooters

Susan Werner heinousbutch at gmail.com
Wed Aug 29 20:56:41 UTC 2012


Oooh, thanks. That's useful information. Can you give me contact information 
for John? I'd just like to ask before I commit to a certain design.

This might be of interest -- it's a fully analog (so no microcontroller needed!)
power and current monitor that's very easy to use: 
http://www.linear.com/product/LT2940

-- 
Susan

On Aug 29 13:41, Zach wrote:
> Hey Susan,
>   I've never seen a scooter with over 24v....it would be very rare to find.  John is a good person to ask (with the scooter shop).
> 
> Great news:  Got the Bq2013H chips in the mail and after some intense datasheet work I have finally calculated all the set values and parts for our application.  See attached schematic.  I'll update my webpage soon with more details.
> 
> I'm going to build the circuit and test within the week and if it works we can get on designing a PCB board for it!  One downside I've realized is that it works with a max battery capacity of 15Ah (according to the site anyway), which means it will work for most scooters but might not be the best for the especially big ones.  But we'll see.
> 
> --- On Wed, 8/29/12, Susan Werner <heinousbutch at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > From: Susan Werner <heinousbutch at gmail.com>
> > Subject: [Hackability] battery voltages in mobility scooters
> > To: hackability at lists.noisebridge.net
> > Date: Wednesday, August 29, 2012, 4:05 AM
> > I'm working on a DC-DC converter /
> > battery charger circuit with Liz to act as a
> > regenerative brake for mobility scooters, and it's an
> > explicit goal for the 
> > design to be easily adaptable on different models. I've a
> > question -- what is 
> > the highest battery voltage commonly used? I need this
> > information in order to 
> > properly select the DC-DC converter controller and the power
> > transistors for 
> > the DC-DC converter. I know 24 volts is a voltage that's
> > used (two 12V 
> > batteries in series), but are there any mobility scooters
> > that use higher 
> > battery voltages? Are there any that use voltages that are
> > higher than say,
> > 36 volts? The end goal is to have a model-agnostic
> > regenerative brake 
> > controller that needs minimum customization (beyond, of
> > course, desired 
> > voltage output) for each individual installation.
> > 
> > Also, if you'd like to get involved, let me or Liz know! 
> > 
> > -- 
> > Susan
> > 



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