Hi everyone.
I realize that I've been sounding more and more like a Billy Mays style infomercial pitchman lately.
It's hard to avoid that sort of bombastic rhetoric, when I am just so proud and excited about MaxxFusion!
Well, I excuse myself for sounding that way by knowing not only that it is all true, but also knowing that if I do find any flaws I will be the first one to admit it. And then go on to fix it.
It's come to my attention that the LCD displays for the new Mini PCC never actually show one bar. No matter the actual charge level, they always show two bars (with one blinking) while charging, and three when full. So it's not an accurate indication of the charge level, just whether or not it is full yet.
This is emerging information, and I am still working on it. I have two reports, and I rechecked my two and they are both like that too. It appears to be how they function, not isolated bad units. And otherwise, they seem to work as advertised.
If anyone else has more info, please share. If yours does display one bar with a fully discharged batt, I need to know.
I am scrambling to get my translator to ask the chief engineer about it via cell phone since she's still in her home village. Communication will be a bit difficult this way, but I will find out as much as I can. I will find out if this is fixable on our unshipped units, or at least in the next version.
Now I'm sure someone is asking how I could have not noticed this. I sure did. And thanks to the magic of hindsight, it's actually pretty obvious. My testing method for the LCD display was to pop in a battery which was at half charge, and see if it read it accuratly as 2 bars with one blinking. D'OH! Next time, I will have three batts pre-prepared, one that should read at one bar, one at two, and one at three. And, while I can't do many, I need to test at least a couple from each production run through a full charge cycle, starting from totally discharged, and check each level.
I need to start using my 65mm batts more so I'll have enough drained ones to test.
[EDITED] THE MINI PCC LCD DISPLAY IS ACCURATE AFTER ALL, BUT IT DOESN'T READ WHAT WE THINK IT READS!!
I had a VERY productive and enlightening discussion with my friend, the Chief Engineer at our factory.
Among other things, we also discussed the new Mini PCC's LCD displays. As some of our customers have complained, it seems to almost always read two bars, and hardly ever three, and apparently never just one.
Well, it turns out this isn't a design flaw, it's a limitation of the nature of the batteries themselves and how the PCC reads them at all.
The PCC reads the voltage level of the battery and determines it's charge level from that. The lipo battery's voltage profile is that it drops quickly from a peak of 4.2v at full charge to about 3.7v, then decreases much more slowly until 3.5v where it more quickly drops to 3.3. But there's a little catch at the end, it doesn't stay at 3.3v for long, it rebounds back up to 3.5v within a minute or two if left at rest.
So, even if you had more bars, the number of bars will stay in the middle position for most of the charging cycle, and will very seldom read just one bar. And if you tighten up the middle range, then the first and last bars will come on too early and stay on too long, just the opposite problem.
I hate to say it, it's not a case of them not living up to expectations in terms of performance. It's a matter of our expectations being wrong, because we didn't understand how the science applies here. We can't read the display as a graph. It doesn't go by even thirds of the charging cycle. It can't because the voltage doesn't behave that way. It's more like lowest voltage state, middle voltage state, highest voltage state, with the middle state the longest, and the lowest the shortest. And that's how the PCC reads the battery, so that's all the bars CAN indicate.
I'm already spreading this around as quickly as I can. But we are stopping all returns over the issue, and will reach out to all customers who have contacted us over this to make sure theirs stays in their hands instead of wasting time coming back to us.
I realize that I've been sounding more and more like a Billy Mays style infomercial pitchman lately.
It's hard to avoid that sort of bombastic rhetoric, when I am just so proud and excited about MaxxFusion!
Well, I excuse myself for sounding that way by knowing not only that it is all true, but also knowing that if I do find any flaws I will be the first one to admit it. And then go on to fix it.
It's come to my attention that the LCD displays for the new Mini PCC never actually show one bar. No matter the actual charge level, they always show two bars (with one blinking) while charging, and three when full. So it's not an accurate indication of the charge level, just whether or not it is full yet.
This is emerging information, and I am still working on it. I have two reports, and I rechecked my two and they are both like that too. It appears to be how they function, not isolated bad units. And otherwise, they seem to work as advertised.
If anyone else has more info, please share. If yours does display one bar with a fully discharged batt, I need to know.
I am scrambling to get my translator to ask the chief engineer about it via cell phone since she's still in her home village. Communication will be a bit difficult this way, but I will find out as much as I can. I will find out if this is fixable on our unshipped units, or at least in the next version.
Now I'm sure someone is asking how I could have not noticed this. I sure did. And thanks to the magic of hindsight, it's actually pretty obvious. My testing method for the LCD display was to pop in a battery which was at half charge, and see if it read it accuratly as 2 bars with one blinking. D'OH! Next time, I will have three batts pre-prepared, one that should read at one bar, one at two, and one at three. And, while I can't do many, I need to test at least a couple from each production run through a full charge cycle, starting from totally discharged, and check each level.
I need to start using my 65mm batts more so I'll have enough drained ones to test.
[EDITED] THE MINI PCC LCD DISPLAY IS ACCURATE AFTER ALL, BUT IT DOESN'T READ WHAT WE THINK IT READS!!
I had a VERY productive and enlightening discussion with my friend, the Chief Engineer at our factory.
Among other things, we also discussed the new Mini PCC's LCD displays. As some of our customers have complained, it seems to almost always read two bars, and hardly ever three, and apparently never just one.
Well, it turns out this isn't a design flaw, it's a limitation of the nature of the batteries themselves and how the PCC reads them at all.
The PCC reads the voltage level of the battery and determines it's charge level from that. The lipo battery's voltage profile is that it drops quickly from a peak of 4.2v at full charge to about 3.7v, then decreases much more slowly until 3.5v where it more quickly drops to 3.3. But there's a little catch at the end, it doesn't stay at 3.3v for long, it rebounds back up to 3.5v within a minute or two if left at rest.
So, even if you had more bars, the number of bars will stay in the middle position for most of the charging cycle, and will very seldom read just one bar. And if you tighten up the middle range, then the first and last bars will come on too early and stay on too long, just the opposite problem.
I hate to say it, it's not a case of them not living up to expectations in terms of performance. It's a matter of our expectations being wrong, because we didn't understand how the science applies here. We can't read the display as a graph. It doesn't go by even thirds of the charging cycle. It can't because the voltage doesn't behave that way. It's more like lowest voltage state, middle voltage state, highest voltage state, with the middle state the longest, and the lowest the shortest. And that's how the PCC reads the battery, so that's all the bars CAN indicate.
I'm already spreading this around as quickly as I can. But we are stopping all returns over the issue, and will reach out to all customers who have contacted us over this to make sure theirs stays in their hands instead of wasting time coming back to us.
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