Hi, there is no longer official support for the Vectrix bikes - however there are a few owners in Europe who have developed the required skills to fix them. In most cases the battery is the problem, checking that is the practical way to start.

Sure Seán :)

It works for me on Win 10 as well. However based on my experience the problem is the Diag application tends to crash in case it sees "unusual" CAN messages from the Vectrix - usually a broken firmware on the charger is the cause.

I doubt he would share revision logs however he may actually help which version fits your current setup - https://www.dugasengineering.com/ +1 508 212 7236 (for some minor support fee I guess). But certainly you can try the earlier version before that.

Probably this newer version of the Dugas charger firmware is already designed to work with BMS. Do you have the earlier versions DE-ESD03, DE-ICMR06 and DE-MCR04 ? If not I can send them in an email. I would focus on the ESD firmware primarily.

Let me mention one more aspect regarding this value. The actual way how the Li-ion charger fws work is they are simply "blindly" charging the battery based on the sum HV voltage and start slowing down when the battery is not capable to receive more energy (starting current starts to drop) around 145 volts.

Obviously this is not a safe approach since there is always a chance some of the cells have already reached 4.2 volts while the rest are still on a lower level. This is where the BMS comes into the picture by sending the individual cell voltage values to the charger (a bit simplified explanation) allowing the charging process to wait for balancing etc. The Max Cell Voltage is there for this control mechanism, without a BMS present the changer may not use it at all.

Nice progress! Indeed the Vectrix diag app is the official diag from Vectrix itself and that is the way do upload the firmware images etc. On the other hand the VX1 Configurator app is just a Dugas frontend specifically written for finetuning the parameters only in the Dugas firmware.

My adventure with the Dugas firmware was fairly short because I have the newer chargers and the Dugas version made it acting weird. In case you leave the Max Cell Voltage showing zero does it prevent the bike from running and/or the charging starting ? If yes, there is a way to set these parameters using the handlebar controls (at least on the factory firmware), let me check the steps on my bike during the weekend.

Hi Gary. Correct, those Dugas files are actually newer than the ones I had, should be good. In terms of the order I would go with ICM then MC and finally reconnecting and programming the charger. Only the big data/low voltage connector needs to be removed from the charger indeed (the other two connectors are just for the power cable and the battery high voltage side). I have reprogrammed my MCs at least 10 times and never had an issue, you should be fine as well.

I have the original files you have mentioned, let me set up a share for you with those next week.

Hi there,

   All factory charger firmwares those are written for NiMH have the safety measure you are experiencing - without the CAN messages from the temperature sensors they terminate the charging. The Dugas firmware files (which are not official Vectrix) provide you a feasible option with ESD charger (not feasible for the newer Runke / Gold chargers). It is also highly recommended to disconnect the charger from the CAN bus when you perform the firmware upgrade on the Motor Controller, absolutely no disruption is tolerated during that step due to the limitations of the processor.

Needless to say you will still need a BMS to prevent the risk of cell level overcharge etc. however the Dugas firmware itself is willing to work without it.

The challenge is the CAN, all the components namely the MC, the charger and the BMS must speak the same language (the ICM and the display are less relevant). If you want to go with a 36S system you'd need to replace the firmware accordingly. Keep in mind the Vectrix charger is much more than just a charger, it is also providing auxilary 12V and keeps track of the SoC allowing range estimation, interprets the cell voltage data from the BMS when the bike is running etc.

In summary the "tweaking" would be addressing the complexity of the MC, charger and BMS to work together. On top of this the firmware changes require a special dongle and software (we can share it) as well.