So, just bought a few new components, everything worked fine but now I am unable to get the board to turn on.
I bought an ESC from ownboard and a new pair of hubs and dropped it into a Halo Board deck enclosure and connected to the existing battery. Everything was working great for the past 20 miles and today nothing.
The first thing that was odd was that I went to charge the battery (which was probably 20%) and within 10min the battery indicator turned green. Weird because normally take a few hours to charge. Upon further inspection, the battery indicator on the charger is green and every ~1-3 min it turned red for 1sec and turns back green.
Now, the power button - tried turning it on with charger disconnected, nothing. After plugging the charger in and trying the power button again, I get a brief blink out of the power button and then goes dark again.
My guesses -
battery may have been pushed harder then usual. torque was fine at end of ride last night, but after switching the new esc and hub a few days ago my reactions was that I was getting a lot more range then before (the old halo esc would just start beeping when battery was low and would stop giving power to hub, probably to prevent battery to go below a certain level)
it was a bit wet last night, something could have gotten moisture, but doubt it’s the ESC as this ownboard ESC is wrapped up pretty well).
power button is bad? I still get a blink out of it, so some connection is happening.
So now, I’m clueless as to what to check next. Not sure how to test the BMS and also not sure why I am getting zero response out of the board if my battery pack is giving out 37v as above.
Actually figured it out tonight. One of the connections from a cell block feeding the BMS somehow got disconnected. Sodered it back and voila, worked again.
any suggestions on wrapping material to get the whole pack water resistant?
Nice work! You may have just saved that battery pack!
Regarding waterproofing the pack… that’s the quest, isn’t it?
I have heard @b264 recommend shrink wrap and neutral cure silicone for the ends. Others are tinkering with potting the cell groups or whole packs. There are entire threads dedicated to this quest.
@iamasalmon - thanks for your support!
The battery pack as a whole charged and discharged as expected now. Think the battery pack is saved!
I read up on the threads and in addition to shrink wrap + neutral cure silicone there is a recommendation to use acrylic conform for the BMS. Sounds like a reasonable thing to do, my one question though is that my BMS is already all soldered up, Id rather not have to unsolder everything, apply the acrylic conform and have to re-solder everything (call me lazy!)
Glad you got this figured out! Textbook electrical troubleshooting right there. Just carefully checking voltages and continuity, process elimination👍
Regarding the conformal, I’m pretty sure you can just slather it on. I’ve been able to yank those jst connectors free after a generous conformal coat (destroying the waterproof seal). I covered over all my solder points up to the insulation or adhesive shrink wrap or both, tried to cover all the exposed metal…
Nice! I got too excited and just wrapped the battery pack back up (and applied hot glue and silicone where necessary). Conform I’ll have be next time around.
Considering there was clear signs of rust inside the pack I’m assuming what caused the issue was water. So upon closing the board back up, I applied extra silicone around the perimeter inside the board enclosure and more on the outside after screwing everything down.
The only two parts that are of potential concerns now for water damage are the charging plug and the power button (one of those LED ones that comes with the Ownboard ESC). Are there any rubber flaps or something that could be added to protect those? Or maybe water proof parts?
