Comment

Comment by Gort 12-mile Pinklegneep on May 17, 2012 at 6:41pm

Battery tech is incredibly slow and steady in its progress. There are periodic announcements of some huge gains in density, discharge, or charging time but not all three which are pretty much the prerequisites for some great leap in actual consumer use.

As for their utility in boombikes, if you really need more power than some sealed lead-acid can put out you're also going to wind up needing a housing that'll weigh something massive in order to make it sound worth doing at which point you've already signed on to pulling some serious weight.

Comment by Matt on May 17, 2012 at 5:58pm

Will this technology come to fruition while any of us are still pulling systems? If it does, will we ever see a version of it that is light, small and inexpensive enough for practical use by us, or those who might come after us? I don't have the answers, but this does give us reason to believe that the future of Bike Sound is ... light ... http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/smart_grid/article/battery50...

Comment by Spencer "Thunderball" Thayer! on July 14, 2011 at 3:48am

So did you use the wifi solution or an FM transmitter?

Comment by Todd Allen on June 25, 2011 at 4:15pm

Matt, batteries of differing voltages and differing capacities may be used without trouble in series so long as one stops as soon as the lowest capacity battery is discharged.

 

In parallel batteries of differing capacities can be used together so long as they are all of the same voltage and of an appropriate chemistry.  Don't parallel connect batteries types that exhibit a voltage drop at the end of the charge curve such as nimh or nicad. 

 

And it's not just the faceplate voltage, but the actual state of charge which should match.  ie, don't connect a fully charged 12 volt battery to a significantly discharged one or you might get fireworks.

 

Once slight downside of parallel connected batteries is that if one goes bad it will likely destroy all the connected batteries. Thus it is usually recommended to use batteries of a similar age or at least not connect a very old battery on its last legs to several fairly new ones.

 

Finally some lithium batteries contain integrated electronic BMS units.  The BMS must be designed for parallel connections or you may have trouble such as one or more BMS's going up in smoke when approaching full charge or full discharge.

Comment by Matt on June 24, 2011 at 4:23pm

I get that it is bad to run batteries of differing voltages in series or parallel, but would there be consequences to running batteries of different amp hour ratings in parallel? 

For my purposes, I managed to come across a second Shorai 12V/7Ah battery that I would be interested in running in parallel with my 12V/18Ah battery. Would this be a terrible idea?

Comment by Spencer "Thunderball" Thayer! on June 15, 2011 at 7:29am

Terrible user rating. Why use it?

Comment by Matt on June 15, 2011 at 4:45am

Thanks H and Alex. Looks nice and light, but is it class D?

Comment by Matt on June 14, 2011 at 9:45am

They sounded great! Since I was standing near Todd prior to the ride, I was wondering if that was you. :)

Comment by Spencer "Thunderball" Thayer! on June 14, 2011 at 6:02am

I'm just the trailer away from being finished. Matt, the PA speakers I was rocking the lot during the Pre/Post Naked Ride are the ones going on the trailer.

Comment by Matt on June 13, 2011 at 6:20pm

I also had the Shorai at the Memorial Day ride. I recall showing it to you. I keep it in a small rubbermaid container that I used to store rye bread in.

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