Report Card for Beta Units...??

[dapdan]

Mario,

It appears that I have an issue. I took the time to setup the kid properly and was dissapointed after all of my efforts that the kid was not showing an output into my battery bank. It was bright and sunny yet no output from the kid. I tried a power cycle and the same results. I was able to successfully update the firmware on the kid before connecting to my PV. I even tried changing the mppt function from solar to solar 2 p&o without sucess .

Cheers...
Damani

[dapdan]

Midnite,

All is well. I did a factory reset, went through the setup process and the relay click on and the kid is charging.

Cheers...
Damani

[dapdan]

Midnite,

How does one adjust the absorb and/or equalization time for the kid. Or is it that these time are only adjustable when the custom battery setting is selected.

The second question can the kid be used to charge a 36v bank. The manual only indicated 12,24 & 48. Further to this, is it possible to custom set the bulk and absorb voltages say if you were charge an odd number of cells say 7, 13 or 25 cells.

Cheers...
Damani

[Robin]

You can charge a 29.867V battery bank if you wish. I'm not sure how to make the changes though as my KID is in Hawaii. I should get another one for my office, but we have shipped all the beta units. New circuit boards are supposed to show up next week. We have two pick and place machines dedicated to the KID and ready to get the show on the road.
Mario is going to have to jump in here for advice. He is about ready to release another version of the code that includes password protection. The new code may help with your issues, but I am not sure what he has out there now? Since it is Saturday, he may not be reading this? Mario will quickly learn that weekends are no longer HIS time anymore. TeeHee.

[dapdan]

Lol Robin.

Cheers...
Damani

[dapdan]

Midnite,

Another question. I have realized that when the back light of the display goes off the screen is absolutely unreadable in natural light...is this normal? I read that you guys plan on changing the colour of the display...will the new display be readable without the back light on.

Cheers...
Damani

[dapdan]

Midnite,

I have also realized that the setup soft key does not function when on the main screen. My question is how does one change the setup voltage. I change voltage regularly between 12 and 24. When I tried changing the voltage from 24 to 12 the setup soft key does now allow me to do this. How does one change system voltage on the fly. I even tried a power cycle to see if it would allow me to change setup voltage without success.

Cheers...
Damani

[Bunkie314]

FW 1709 day two of operation. Appeared to be charging from other indications but the screen had black squares on the top line and  nothing on the bottom line. No response from any of the buttons.  Had to remove battery and input power. Battery voltage seems to still be wandering over time.

[dgd]

FW 1709 day two of operation. Appeared to be charging from other indications but the screen had black squares on the top line and  nothing on the bottom line. No response from any of the buttons.  Had to remove battery and input power. Battery voltage seems to still be wandering over time.

I concur. Battery voltage is drifting away over time.
The display goes into weird mode with just the top line of black squares. I described this error when running 1703 and posted pic of it. It seems to happen after  period of resting as if display driver hardware was hibernating. Only a power reset wakens the display again. Meanwhile the charging process appears to continue...


dgd

[Robin]

Well. Mario will need to chime in here regarding menus and wavering voltage. It sounds like dgd has a bad display though. If you have to send it back for repair, we can supply the green or gray LCD if you wish. That goes for all of you here. I prefer the blue myself, but if I had ti read it in direct sunlight, I would switch over to gray. The next two versions of back light should be better when the back light is off. We have a couple thousand green background LCD's to blow through before changing the gray back ground. Both new ones have black letters so they will be much better without back light. I will ask Mario to post how much power is required to leave the back light on? I believe it is only 1/4 watt, but let's let Mario or Mike post the real number.
Thanks for the help and for being patient with us. The KID is destined to be a great little controller and with your help it will be sooner than later!
As you can tell, it is hard to work out all the bugs in the lab.

[Halfcrazy]

The display issues should go away soon. Mario is working on the code so that it auto refreshes every 5 minutes. This will solve the locked up displays. As for battery voltage drifting that's an odd one. I have not seen that so Mario will have to chime in

Ryan

[dgd]

As for battery voltage drifting that's an odd one. I have not seen that so Mario will have to chime in

Its just a display thing. The KID still works properly and changes mode from bulk to absorb at the correct battery voltage - as measured externally with Fluke, even though the KID display voltage was 1.2 volts too low.

dgd

[Robin]

I believe you can calibrate the voltage reading of the KID to agree with your Fluke meter.

[Bunkie314]

I've tried calibration several times. It appears to drift as time goes along. I thought maybe it had something to do with the way I had it connected to the batteries.  I ran dedicated 8 gage wires to the shunt and battery positive post.  Still seems to be out of calibration the next day. I've been checking and calibrating at night with no input. It changes the next day.

The display issue may be something with a different unit as I have two betas. One blue display # 37 and one green #36. During the Bootloader and FW update I swapped usage to the green display, #36. Its much easier to see over the black letters on the green display in my opinion. My point being the display comment above may have nothing to do with the FW revision. I'll swap out to the other unit in a couple of days and report back in.

Robin,

I love working in the lab! You never know what you run into after sending something out and putting it in service. Your point is well understood. Hope I'm being helpful.

[dapdan]

I can confirm from my own observations that there is some upwards drift of the readings on the kid. My case is a little different. At around dusk today the controller was reporting about 12w and I know that could not be the case. When I did a power cycle it then reported that it resting with no output.

Cheers...
Damani