ATC185S 200S DC Conversion for LED

[ironchop]

Update:


It's all still working great. I've even been riding through the river with it several times and no problems.

The capacitor isn't a battery, but even after sitting a week, the small LED will still come on a partial brightness. So, not being a battery, it isn't going to hurt it if accidentally left on. The capacitor is working.

I do have a super capacitor on the way, but that's going on something else. Maybe once shipping is back to normal, I'll put a super capacitor on this. The only drawback is a super capacitor will have circuitry, which won't affect anything with installation, but it's more failure points.

Thanks for the update.

I used a battery on my 200X and that added a whole lot more work to effect, like removing the airbox and redesigning it, fabricating a battery box with mounts that wouldn't break from rough riding. If I had used a capacitor instead, I could have saved myself three or four hours of work and some money as well trying to sort it out in one shot.

I was really impressed with the LEDs but mine was a bit of overkill with one spot and one flood. A few ppl at Trikefest probably got tired of the temporary blindness from my oncoming traffic if I turned them both on at the same time, but they were very durable and effective. I almost set the shoe tree on fire with my lumens😂

[ATC King]

No doubt about not having a low beam. If I didn't already have the light I used, I would've opted for a single unit with a low/high. Would probably be a good idea to add a high beam indicator too.

It certainly crossed my mind about avoiding having to build a sturdy battery box. Little things like that do eat up some time. Another reason for the capacitor is I'm tired of trying to keep all the vehicle batteries around here, charged up. Several of the vehicles sit for long periods between use. Capacitor don't care.

The super capacitors (in a bank) wouldn't be any larger than the giant one I used, but would be about the price of a decent AGM battery.

What's gathering steam right now is a hybrid battery of sorts, where a smaller lithium battery is used in conjunction with super capacitors. Light weight and compact, but still powerful enough to start engines. The battery quickly charges the capacitors and they do most of the high demand work, then once the engine is running what little energy it took from the battery, is quickly replenished. More circuitry though, to keep everything balanced and charged.

For something like a Big Red, that may mean a lithium battery with 1/4 the CCA (tiny), but with actually more cranking power from the capacitors. A downside is not being able to crank it very long before having to stop and let the capacitors recharge. A problem it solves for lithium batteries is their sluggish cold performance.

It's something I'm going to try on my vehicles.

[ATC King]

I bought a super capacitor module.

http://www.intronicspower.com/produc...07-31-2015.pdf

"This module has a capacitance of 58.3 farads at a
maximum rated voltage of 16.4V."

"ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM RATINGS
Maximum Voltage 17.1V
Maximum Short Circuit Current 840 Amps"

This is going into my pickup as an addition to the battery, for even more starting power in colder weather and to further smooth out the electrical system. Like when large loads are suddenly applied, other than starting, so the entire system stays better regulated for any electronics on the truck. For instance, just turning on the headlights usually causes a noticeable twitch in the whole system, but these capacitors can dump power so quickly, that momentary voltage drop should be minimized. I'll find out.

In the meantime, I've still got to get a box to put it in, and before I ordered it, I checked what size cable it could use and the specifications said up to 4awg. Turned out the marine grade 4awg I had didn't fit. I need to get some 6. I made up some 10awg leads for now.

After playing around with it a little, I pumped it up close to 16v, and put it on my 200ES to see what it would do.



My ES starter is on it's last leg and the engine compression is low, so this thing whirls over for quite a bit before it'll start. It's not got that insta-start thing going on like it should have. Regardless, the capacitor module alone started it three times before the voltage dipped under 12v. With a tiny lithium battery used in conjunction, this module wouldn't have any problem serving as a battery replacement. It spins the engine over great, better than the AGM battery that's currently on my ES.

Even on something without a starter, I'd still want to use a small lithium battery in conjunction, to keep the capacitor charged. The reason is, when a super capacitor is uncharged, when you go to charge it, the resistance is so low, it's like a direct short. I don't think that's good at all for the charging system, so keeping this module charged up after the initial charging, would be a good idea regardless.

That also means when someone goes for the initial charging of a super capacitor module, they want to make certain they have manual control over the charger. When empty, this module will gobble up a lot of amps very quickly and could fry an automatic charger, or cause it to not charge at all because it interprets the situation as a short and kicks off. There are ways of fooling the charger, but if it won't handle it, it won't handle it.

The module charges quickly, but will definitely strain something not set up to handle it, and voltage NEEDS to be kept in check, so not to go over the maximum, which can damage the module. A voltmeter should be use while charging, even if someone is using a programmable power supply with one built in. It will arc violently if attached to battery in it's uncharged state (this guy learned), because of the extremely low resistance.

This particular module doesn't have a complicated balancing circuit. It only uses a diode and LED to bleed voltage at each capacitor, to keep them balanced. Six capacitors, in series, each with one diode on one LED. Not much to go wrong as far as circuitry. The LEDs light intensity varies on the charge state. At 12v, they're not even perceptible, unless it's in a dark area.

This picture is at more than 15.5v


The LEDs are used as a visual identifier of module state by intensity and their uniformity. Being that most car batteries will have a resting voltage under 13v, it'll look like the LEDs aren't even lit.

This is a higher powered module, which I don't need on the 185S. I would go with something smaller on it, but still use a small lithium battery in conjunction, and add a on/off switch. On one of the E-start trikes, this and a small lithium battery may fit into a custom box that would fit in the battery location, or put one in the battery location and the other in the trunk.

The big deal is the lifespan these should have. Basically the life of a vehicle. With just changing out a small lithium battery every once in a while, and sill having kick-butt starting power in freezing temperatures.

[ps2fixer]

Sounds like there's a way to make the capacitor numbers make sense to those of us that work with batteries (like myself xD).

Multiplying 3000F by 2.7V gives you the charge in Coulombs, i.e 8100 coulombs. Dividing this by 3600 sec/hour gives you 2.25 ampere-hours.

According to that math, 58.3 * 16.4v = 956.12 / 3600 = 0.266 ah. Clearly that's for over an entire hour though, so lets convert it to say 10 seconds of crank time. 0.266 * 60 (60 mins in an hour) gives us 15.96 amp minutes, there's 6 groups of 10 secs in a minute, so again * 6, so 95.76 amp/10 seconds. If I did the math right, you can draw 95 amps for about 10 secs before draining the charge. Clearly it's not quite that simple of math, but atleast I can wrap my head around it, seems to be about the perfect size.

I was going to mention the charging concerns, but you already addressed that xD. Seems the math is somewhat accurate. I'm pretty sure I've seen one of the 3 wheeler manuals state the starter was 100amp so figured that load was about right for cranking.

Just wondering where do you get the lifespan of the super caps? Everything I've seen is between 10-20 years while car batteries are around 5-10 years. I've had exceptions to that and had 12-15 year old batteries work alright, but haven't been around super caps much.

Not the greatest source, but one of the first results on google: https://hackaday.com/2017/01/19/will...ace-batteries/

In vehicle service, batteries have a life expectancy of 5 to 10 years while supercaps can last for 10 to 15 years.

Seems like another route to get around needing a battery to keep the super cap(s) in check is to have a circuit to limit the charge rate. Should be a pretty simple mod for a car, the only wire that would need to be changed would be the charging cable from the alternator. Could do the math and limit the cap to say 10amp charge. Not sure if a large resister would work for this situation or if some sort of power supply would be needed.

I guess the other factor is the self discharge rate of super caps, according to google

The supercapacitor discharges from 100 to 50 percent in 30 to 40 days. Lead and lithium-based batteries, in comparison, self-discharge about 5 percent per month

Shouldn't be a problem for something used weekly, but monthly or longer it could be a problem (like for an atv). Of course the super cap doesn't care about being discharged, so it will charge/recover just fine, just an extra step for a machine that sat too long.

Anyway, interesting to hear your results on this. I wonder if they would be a solid option for the atc185/200 etc machines since the lights by design use 100% of the alternator's capacity, so the short circuit effect when the super cap is discharged shouldn't be a problem, and it would be more than enough just to smooth out the power for an LED. I suspect something around 1 farad would be plenty for that kind of job since there's no need for starting.

[ATC King]

On the lights; they do use all the power, but the filaments in those stock lights are a big ol' resistor. A uncharged super capacitor is like a direct short because of the very low resistance. That's how it'll treat the stator, reg/rec, like it's directly shorted to itself. Some of that magic blue smoke is likely to leak out.

Same as for automatic car battery charger. It'll see it as a short and kick off (if it's smart).

Once the super capacitor is charging up, the resistance climbs. That initial lack of resistance is going to the charging system. The charging systems on these trike are low powered and the time it would take to sufficiently charge a dead super capacitor would be an extended time while the system is being overworked. Maybe thinking about the charging system like RMS versus Peak, would make more sense. Or, even subwoofer resistance affect on an amp, like going to 2ohm when 4ohm is the most the amp can handle. Not enough resistance is a problem.

as for lasting the life of car, yeah, that's not the life of a car that I'd own, but by today's standards, it'd last the life of most cars before they see the crusher. It's not just about the years, it's also about the cycles. A lead-acid battery cycle life pales in comparison. Think city driving, short tripping. A lot of variables, like you mentioning sill functioning, decade old lead-acid batteries. That's not the norm, and I've got some from 2008 still going. I imagine when super capacitor technology makes it into more cars, those parts are probably still going to be good by the time the car is trashed. It wouldn't be surprising that a used super cap market pops up a few years after they become common in cars.

They're already a selling point for dash cameras, because the lithium batteries currently used in many of those doesn't tolerate the heat they're exposed to and constant full drain cycles. One of my dash cams uses a super capacitor instead of a battery.

1F should be plenty and I've actually been looking at the capacitors sold for car audio systems. One of those already has everything needed, in a easily mounted cylinder. I'm not certain how well they'd hold up to the elements though and may need to be put into a welding rod canister or something similar. They probably have some type of BMS or other means built in too.
Edit: I was looking at those car audio capacitors and they are just as they've always been, some type of electrolytic capacitor. The new one's aren't super capacitors, they're the same old style inside those fancy cans. They do have voltage regulation and some other features. Maybe worth trying for the money. They are very large, so it'd probably have to go on the frame, under the air box. Would work about like what I already have, just more capacity. I watched some 'what's inside' videos, and it looks like they don't need to be as large as they are, some had foam filling up most of the space. I guess size sells.

There are $15 AGM batteries on EBay. Like those for a computer UPS. No need for a lithium if someone didn't mind maybe buying a new $15 battery every six months or so. They're not very well made. The 'valve' venting system they claim to have is nothing more than a rubber cap on a plastic nipple, just under the top cover. During an overcharge situation, pressure pushes past them and as the battery cools, the get sucked down. I would try it, just to see how long it'd last in ATV riding conditions.

For something long term and more reliable, here's Antigravity's smallest lithium battery. https://antigravitybatteries.com/pro...l-case/ag-401/

Here's something about cycles on Maxwell's site, with the same capacitors in my module: https://www.maxwell.com/products/ult...-small-modules
"all of these products will perform reliably for more than 500,000 discharge-recharge cycles."

[ps2fixer]

Yea that makes sense, I guess I didn't think about the filaments having a little resistance, it's not much though, what like 0.5 ohms per bulb in series? I do get your point though, I'm pretty sure the stators are pretty robust on the 3 wheelers, I have yet to see one fried from being shorted out, but I've seen them with bad wires (age) and the insulation wore through where the resistance of the coil went out of spec. Can't remember what it was that I was working on, but it had the power from the stator bolted directly to ground. No clue how long it was ran that way but the stator was fine.

I might be an odd duck, I'm a computer guy, like electronics, play with circuits a little and such, but I HATE new vehicles. I drive a 1990 car, a 1998 pickup, and my winter beater is a 1997. Car before that was 1992. I don't mind fuel injection, but beyond that my cut off is around the year 2000. I see way too many cars that are just a few years old with electrical problems, and it's not even something complex. Like one lady I know has a Chevy car and the mirror control switch is bad already. I've had 20+ Toyota's with power mirrors (I've bought a lot of scrap, wrecked, or parts vehicles) and never had one that didn't work. My 1990 car just had the battery fail on it sitting at my dad's for exhaust work (he's an ase certified mechanic and have better tooling than me for that kind of work). I'll have to check the date on the battery but I'm thinking it's like a 2009 or 2010 battery. It's drained dead 5 or so times since I had the car too. Even though it's a 1990, it has some stupid electronics I don't like about it, one being the alarm system that's factory installed, not dealer installed which means it's reversible. My 1998 pickup had a dealer installed security system, it's not in it any more, no more doors automatically locking, and it auto unlocks if you leave the key in the ignition yet and you can unlock both doors with the door key (unlock 2x to activate the feature).

If modern cars can't handle 10 years, then we have really went down hill in tech, the 70's cars could do 10 years pretty easily, I'm driving 20-30 year old vehicles xD.

For the BMS like board on the car audio cap, coat it in epoxy to seal the board assuming no heat sinks and such. I'd think the actual cap should hold up fairly well, maybe paint any unpainted surface and put dielectric grease on the connections. I'm not sure what's used on car computers, but it feels similar to a silicone, maybe the mix used for the back side of solar panels would be about right and should be fairly cheap.

Yea the AGM batteries probably wouldn't last long on a 3 wheeler big time if it's not a well regulated system. It's been a while but yea the over voltage makes the acid boil/offgas and for a sealed battery that's a no go. I'd have to do some digging on the UPS's I brought home from my last job (they where throwing them out), but I think they are about 8-10 years old with the orig batteries. They tossed them because we had a power outage, generator kicked on and they where not happy with the other 20+ ups machines all the same model in the building flicking on and off at the same time. They all kept cycling and the two bigger units I got were for the servers. I used it with expired batteries for a few years before the capacity got too low and I bought replacements off ebay. They are fair sized for what it is, something like 2x 14ah. Been thinking about grabbing 4 golf cart batteries, or a couple 200ah battery and hooking it up to the external battery port (24v system). It's designed for sealed lead acid batteries, so it shouldn't allow them to get over voltage. I could use the extra capacity since I have 2 computers, 2 monitors, and all my networking equipment on them plus a NAS (network attached storage), and a phone + phone server (basic VoIP).

I think my uncle was trying to run cheap sealed lead acid batteries in a lawn mower, if I recall correctly they did alright, I think they lasted about 2 years and that's removing them for winter and storing in a heated garage.

I know the super caps can withstand several multitudes more charge cycles than normal batteries, but I think the main thing that kills them would be time. I don't think I could name one vehicle that would normally be started 500k times in 10 years. That's over 130 starts per day. If time has less of an effect on them than what websites suggest, then it seems like hands down they would be better than a standard battery setup. They are smaller and such generally anyway, so if you change vehicles, could swap it out to the newer vehicle too. Maybe one battery for the rest of your life =). If I recall correctly a normal cap is known to last around 20 years for a quality brand, yet there's plenty of electronics that are much older with good caps yet. I can't remember the law, but because most electronics have more than one battery, for every extra battery, the chance of a failure is increased that many more times. Like 1 battery vs 4 batteries, you should be 4 times more likely to have a battery problem vs the single battery setup.

For car batteries, I can see why some people have terrible luck with them while other's they seem to last forever for. I rarely have battery problems, I have like 3 spare batteries for junk vehicles and they generally go bad from sitting before I need one lol. For lead acid based batteries, voltage is everything, if they get too low on charge they degrade pretty fast. A full discharge on them is extremely bad for them. I've been looking on and off for a trickle charger that doesn't work like a charger, but instead maintains the battery for long term storage, something like it charges the battery to say 13-13.5v then lets it sit till it hits 12.4v (slightly under fully charged) and bumps it back to the charge range to bring the battery back to 12.6v. I know they exist, I've seen one at a parts store, but marketing and listings are so poorly done it's hard to find what I want. Maybe I need to program a micro controller to do it for me, or go the less complex route and dedicate a 2 amp battery charger per battery and throw them all on a timer to run 30-60 mins a day (just enough to keep the battery topped up).

This is a really neat topic, I've seen the super caps used in cars in the past and figured it would be a neat tech to play with. The only down side is generally you loose cranking capacity using the super caps, like how long you can crank for, not the actual amps. With a good running machine it shouldn't need much crank time to start though, if not then there's clearly an issue that needs to be fixed.

[ATC King]

We'll have to wait to see how these work their way into gas and electric cars, but in the meantime, I'm going to incorporate them into my old crap. Super Cap + Old Crap = Super Crap?

I'll post my results.

Also, the old aluminum electrolytic caps are what I'll keep using for the pull start trike DC conversions. They're actually stupid expensive for what they are though, considering the price of new super caps and the performance difference. The problem is the low voltage of each super cap, and the need to make a module out of them, when I can run just one 16v old style cap. Simpler packaging, and I'll stick with that for now, on those.

[Blmpkn]

So much electrical nerdiness in here lol. I like it. I don't understand it, but I like reading about it.

[ATC King]

Feel free to jump in anytime.

A lot of this is new to me, with the super caps. They've been available to the general public for a good while now, but I'm just getting into them.

Some early adopters thought they'd work good as a car battery replacement, but soon found out that wasn't the case. Some of the companies, originally selling them as battery replacements, changed their focus. Some started marketing to the car audio crowd.

Here's one that's selling as a add on to a battery, so a smaller battery can be used: https://ioxus.com/english/products/ustart/

https://showtimeelectronics.com/ioxu...or-uc-31-uc31/

What I'm using isn't anywhere near that powerful. I'm just dipping my toes in the water and wanting a slight increase in cranking power with my pickup's standard battery, and a more stable electrical system.

[ps2fixer]

One idea that might be good is to make a fuse encase of a short on the super caps. I'm not sure what the formula is called but it's basically a bare copper wire that can burn away after x amps is down, like 800a. Doubt you can find a fuse for that so I suspect the only way is to build your own. 800 amp might be too high and the actual wire harness still ends up being the fuse (first thing to burn out and catch fire). Not really a requirement, just thinking encase a wrench ever dropped under the hood and shorted out the terminals or similar. Could stop from having a bad day lol. The idea comes from large DIY battery banks made from 18650 cells, there's a guy on youtube that bought sized wire like that to use as a fuse (20 amp per cell) encase any of the cells went bad and drew too much or any kind of shorts happened. Of course it's a little different type of a setup.

I'm also somewhat new to electronics even though I've messed with them most of my life. I know the surface level stuff fairly well, and some basic power supply stuff and very very basic micro controller understanding (I can program them atleast). Beyond that is uncharted territory for me. I've only made two electronic things from scratch, a peak voltage adapter for my multi meter (high voltage cap + diode + high resistance resister to drain the cap slowly), and a thermostat for my house/wood stove setup. It includes 3 temp probes (house, wood stove room to detect if wood stove making heat, and under the house to monitor water pipe air temps) and it controls 2 solid state relays, one for the wood stove blower and a fan that blows air under the house from the wood stove room. The programming was simple, wiring was more or less simple, hardest part was getting the right math to convert a resistance value into a temp and the physical build of it. I guess I can say I've done more with electronics than most, but no where near as much as anyone that is actually big into electronics.

[ATC King]

I made a bracket specifically for the capacitor.




Funny story...

I thought there was enough clearance where I originally had it, but it turned out the rubber supports for the seat squish more than I thought, and the seat latch bracket actually poked a hole in the capacitor. It's still working though, so I put some silicone over the hole and back on it went.

[big specht]

So after all this reading what all hanging out stuff is needed to use led light or a 185/200 ?

[ATC King]

I'll try to condense it.

A little electrical humour. Capacitors used to be called condensers.



All parts I used were regulator/rectifier (Cheap Ebay unit), 16v capacitor, and a custom plug-and-play wire harness. Two main components and a harness. Easy stuff. Maybe if enough people wanted a plug-and-play harness, ps2fixer would oblige.

It doesn't have to be as large as a capacitor as I used, but does need to be 16v or even a little higher.

What makes this easy on a 185S/200S (and some other hardtails) is the stator is not grounded on one end. Both wires from it go out and to the wire harness. Other trikes like the 200X, would require a modification to the stator or something a little funky be done to the wiring.

The capacitor is only there to smooth out the power. It will hold a charge, but doesn't have the density of a battery. A powerful LED will quickly drain it without the engine running. A large capacitor or super capacitor will illuminate a low power LED for a while though, without the engine running.

Many LED spot and fog lights have voltage limiting circuitry built in and can operate on a range of voltage, like from 10v-24v, but that doesn't mean it's good for them or their circuitry to continually deal with voltage fluctuation, which is why the reg/rec and capacitor is important.

An LED is technically a diode and only allows current in one direction, and can function on AC within it's specified voltage range, but again, that isn't good for it and the pulsing light is annoying as hell. There are several YouTube videos of people hacking on LEDs to their trikes without a proper DC system and the result is as expected.

With a proper system, other accessories could be added, like a USB port for charging a phone. A battery can be used in lieu of the capacitor, but that would be better to add a on/off switch and fabricating a robust battery holder (just more stuff and cost).


Edit: I guess there wasn't a wire harness explanation in here, so...

Depending on the trike, there's going to be a yellow and green wire coming from the stator. Those will connect to the typically, pink and yellow wires of the reg/rec. This is for a four wire reg/rec. Those with a fifth and black wire, use that wire not for a ground, but voltage sensing and it's supposed to be hooked to a switched power source, which can be confusing, but it's definitely NOT a ground wire. Some of Honda's motorcycles use a reg/rec like that. The reg/rec green wire is connected to the green (ground) wire in the harness and the capacitor's negative terminal. The reg/rec red wire to the harnesses yellow wire and the capacitor's positive terminal.

With an inexpensive motorcycle wire connector kit, and some terminal crimping pliers, it's not difficult to build the needed harness and there's absolutely no modifications needed to the stock harness; plug-&-play.

[ATC King]

System is still working good. I did have to replace the damaged capacitor though, it gave up the ghost.

I noticed the headlight flashing at higher RPMs, checked the capacitor, and it was dead (not holding a charge). Even with the capacitor removed, the headlight would flash at higher engine speeds, so that shows what it's doing to smooth out the system.

I replaced it with the exact same type. For anyone who hasn't read back a post or two, the original got a hole poked in it by the seat bracket because of where I had it installed.

[big specht]

Thanks for the up date