Originally Posted by
kayak4water
My first call went to bike Friday. One service technician didn't know much about electric assist. They concluded that I should call grin technologies in Canada. The telephone algorithm at grin said I should contact them by e-mail. I called bike Friday back and said I thought they should have taken care of these issues since they had a significant profit margin from electrical assist. BF agreed that they should send out a new controller. Not long after that the Canadians begin an email exchange with me during which we solved the problem.
The batteries are far smarter than I am. They will not accept a charge if the battery has not been switched on. Any battery not turned on will prevent another battery further downstream from the controller from providing juice to the system. A battery turned off will still show the user its level of charge if the user presses the power button--such a display of the LEDs misled me into thinking that the battery was turned on.
Maybe Bike Friday has videos demonstrating how to use these things. If so, I missed seeing a the link in my email, nor did I find the essentials in the paperwork that came with. Nonetheless, I was glad to have help from Grin Technologies to sort this out.
Interesting. One of the reasons I am attracted to the Grin system is I watched a video the main guy did about their batteries. One of the only systems that has a "sleep" mode. Normally not using a lithium battery regularly is bad for the battery. My intended use of the system would be maybe once a month or every 6 weeks. Their batteries in sleep mode discharge a minimal amount and can be left in sleep mode for 10 years, whereas regular lithium batteries are on or off and discharge faster when off and can get ruined. His video showed all the various display codes - very sophisticated. Glad you got it resolved!