Hey all, I plan to make my own battery for the Boosted Rev at some point. Hate that I am limited to about 6-8 miles for my commute in mode 3. However, I would like to not cut the waterproof connector for the battery off and would love to actually find the connector used by Boosted for the battery. Would anyone happen to know anything about what the connector is called, where to find it, or who the manufacturer is? I have a good feeling that the connector can be found as Boosted’s motor connectors had a similar thing where many people thought it couldn’t be found by anyone other than boosted, but then they were found. Hoping that is the case here. Please let me know if anyone has info on these connectors or maybe even tips on how to identify the connectors from looking at the battery on my Rev.
Post pictures
Sorry it took so long @Bindings_McGee. Here are the some pictures I took. Didn’t notice till now but make connector actually says Higo on it! Never noticed that it was there when I saw videos of people opening up there Rev.
@berno3 any progress with this battery? do you at least know which cells are inside (chemistry, capacity)?
Hey @tinp123, sorry but so far I haven’t taken the battery apart as I currently use the Rev a lot for transportation and don’t want to risk damaging the battery or the battery’s water resistant enclosure which I need. I probably won’t use it for commuting starting mid-june and can take it apart then. To determine the cell’s chemistry However, two notes I did make are
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Found the connectors on Alibaba
I will try to get links posted to it and a pdf of the “spec” sheet. Note it may be expensive to get the connectors unless you are getting a lot of them since I have only found them on Alibaba so far. I wonder if with some more searching the parts could be found on AliExpress for single order quantities. This turned out to be the case when I spent a lot time trying to find Boosted’s motor connectors on the boosted board v2 and v3’s -
The fully charged battery read 0 volts between the main battery terminals when I had it disconnected.
This makes me fearful that we can’t simply plug any diy battery, other than one with boosted’s BMS, into the esc and ride.
I will also post a of a spread sheet showing the different voltages read between the different positions on the connector Incase that helps anyone solve anything else!
thank you @berno3 for your detailed answer!
just what I thought, bms is proprietary and REV won’t work with any other bms.
My customer wanted to upgrade cells to higher capacity, but I guess he can’t get much better options than stock cells. especially in such a small package.
can you check voltage of battery when it’s empty?
Hey @tinp123, Sorry to have been MIA I was focusing on school and haven’t been able to put in the time to post all the things I talked about in my last post done. However, do you just need me to tell you what the battery voltage is when the battery is dead or do you want to know that in addition to all the other things I said I would post? Let me know. Either way I will post what the battery voltage says when it is fully drained tomorrow.
I stumbles across this forum searching for someone who can build boosted rev batteries. How difficult would it be to take a battery apart and replace the cells and or replicate the battery that comes with the scooter?
The BMS in the battery talks to the ESC telling it things like state of charge amongst other things. The only thing (I know of) close enough to replicating this is found in this Github repo. https://github.com/rscullin/beambreak . However, this is for the boosted board v2 extended range battery and the battery emulation isn’t 100% done. You can read more of the details in the link.
Basically people can’ t replicate the battery at the moment. Also, I do not know of anyone taking the rev battery apart all the way. From what I have seen people have only taken off the ends of the battery container, but have not taken the cells all the way out because it was too difficult. Again from what I know replacing cells has not been done either. Also, I am pretty sure that if the battery was not working because the cells became unbalanced the BMS would remember this as an error and not allow the battery be used even if the cells became balanced again or above minimum voltage.
the community has emulated a boosted board v2 extended range battery (I believe).
If your battery goes bad then you need to get another one so it can talk to the ESC and vice-versa. If you can’t do that then you wold scrap everything other than the frame and motors and replace the battery with a diy one and a ESC. This forum is great for finding out info about the latter option. If you decided to diy the scooter you could sell many of the parts that still work from the scooter to make your money back.
100% impossible. I’ve taken one apart and it is in no way serviceable. Things are glued in, tabs are welded, things are fragile.
Even if you managed to replace cells, you’d have an incredibly hard time getting it all fitted back together. And even if you did, there is zero hope of ever making it water-resistant again as you would have had to destroy the end caps in order to open it in the first place.
Building off what @TowerCrisis said.
This is not to say the task is impossible. I would strip the scooter down to frame and motor, then rebuild it with a vesc and some 3d printed battery case.
You wouldn’t ever want to pay someone to do this as the hours designing, printing, and designing again would be very very silly compared to just buying a scooter from a company that hasn’t gone under.
But, it is possible. Nothing is impossible in this world of DIY RnD.
Got any pics?
You opened your rev battery up didn’t you? Any updates? I’ve got one that’s not taking a charge I’m going to have to pry open when I get some time.
Yeah. It was way easier then everyone was saying. Just be smarter then the glue.
Very user replaceable.
Not.
It’s copper lazer welded nickel. Fyi. It’s possible but good luck
Managed to get it charging again without having to open it. Do I know what I did. Absolutely not. But it appears to be going through some kind of balance cycle now, because it charged a little and is now discharging for the past 24 hours. ESC is slightly warm.
The weirdest thing is that the charger doesn’t turn red. You just get a little red lightening bolt on the handle bar screen.
Lol, good luck my man. What’s the charge bottleneck? The smarts in the scooter? The charge port? The smarts in the battery? The battery cells?
Multitude of potential issues. The REV I use has been plagued with issues ranging from 0 power until a reboot, stuck in startup loops, all the way to lethargic throttle input.
I wanted to see if I could get it all working. If not I don’t care. Gonna swap it out anyway.
I tore a Boosted Rev Battery down, replaced the cells and made a waterproof 3D printable casing. If anyone is interesed, I made a blogpost about it. michael-castiau.blogspot.com/2021/05/boosted-rev-battery-replacement.html