Motor mover + Li-ion battery = fail?

[Rahdo]

So our small Swift Excel 382 caravan came with an enduro em203 motor mover, which usually works, but sometimes it fails and flashes 4 blue lights on the receiver, which is an overvoltage warning. Apparently this is happening because I replaced the lead acid house battery with a 12V 100Ah LiFePO4 Battery which, when saturated, outputs more voltage and a traditional battery, and that makes the motor mover shut down.

What can I do to solve this, other than spending an hour purposely running down my battery to get it to outputting lower voltage whenever we need to move around, which is incredibly inconvenient as one might imagine!

 

[birdman101]

If the Battery is overcharged and you are using the charger as used on the previous battery have you changed any settings on the charger if it has them. Otherwise it may be your charger is not compatible with the Battery fitted

 

[Rahdo]

when i put the li-ion battery in, i also installed a victron controller since as i understand it the old wiring for lead acid batteries could treat the new battery poorly. so charging the battery is no problem, it's doing great. it's just the 20 year old motor mover assumes lower voltage than what this battery outputs because it's new and things were different back then (i guess lead acid batteries put out 12.7 or so voltage, while this battery happily puts out 13.8, and that's what trips up the motor mover).

so i need something that can reduce the voltage coming from the battery to the motor mover. i read about buck converters, but they are only for small amperage usage, and a motor mover is heavy amperage.

 

[GUMPY]

Who diagnosed the LifePo4 being the fault?

My LifePo4 battery runs the MM just fine at 13.5v
The MM should operate between 11.5 and 14.5v as that's the range of voltage you can get with an LA battery.
In the manual it says that it's suitable for use with an LifePo4 battery.
There may be a voltage limit setting within the software of the MM that has been set low and could be adjusted to cope with the LifePo4.

 

[Rahdo]

well, it's the motor mover itself issuing the error (4 flashed blue lights indicates overcharge according to the sticker on the receiving unit). I don't have a manual for this motor mover at all and my google skills couldn't turn one up.

i don't see anything on this motor mover that indicates i can do anything to modify software or anything. no wireless connection, no panel, just a receiving unit and the actual mechanism outside that connects to the tires and the remote control. i'm wondering if you have a newer version than what i have? i actually tried contacting enduro by email and phone, and got nowhere... no returned calls, no answered emails

attached is a picture of my receiver that flashes the 4 blue lights when it decides not to work...

 

[GUMPY]

Couple of quick hits for a manual

https://enduro-premium.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/11825-EM203-Enduro-manual-2016.pdf

Enduro EM203 Manuals

Enduro EM203 Pdf User Manuals. View online or download Enduro EM203 User Manual

www.manualslib.com

Not sure if that's the correct one.

Any software mods might need to be done by a supllier

 

[birdman101]

We had one of these movers in 2010 and they never ever reply. We dumped it and have had Powrtouch ever since who sort any problems over phone and give a 5 year no quibble warranty

 

[Tobes]

well, it's the motor mover itself issuing the error (4 flashed blue lights indicates overcharge according to the sticker on the receiving unit). I don't have a manual for this motor mover at all and my google skills couldn't turn one up.

i don't see anything on this motor mover that indicates i can do anything to modify software or anything. no wireless connection, no panel, just a receiving unit and the actual mechanism outside that connects to the tires and the remote control. i'm wondering if you have a newer version than what i have? i actually tried contacting enduro by email and phone, and got nowhere... no returned calls, no answered emails

attached is a picture of my receiver that flashes the 4 blue lights when it decides not to work...

Our mover works well with our LiPOFe battery, but I did have an over voltage scenario once. Note - error on your mover sticker is over voltage - the over charge in brackets is a suggestion and not a diagnostic. Our over voltage was down to the solar controller. When the battery is full, it stops accepting charge (this is managed by the on board BMS in the battery). When the battery is full it effectively goes open circuit. If the sun in shining on the roof panel, the controller has no where to dump the energy so the output voltage will rise, in my case to over 15v. Normally, this will have no impact as nothing is in circuit.
However, when you first turn on the mover, if the sun is still shining, it may detect the solar panel output (at over 14.5v) as a failure condition.
In our case, all I did was turn on the inside lights and radio. This generates enough load to start the battery depleting at its normal 13.5ish volts, which in turn pulls down the output voltage on the solar controller. Turn off the mover, wait 10 seconds and turn it on again - all is good.

 

[ProfJohnL]

If the mover is detecting an overvoltage situation, then if you only needed to reduce the voltage by about 0.5V you could install a series diode like
one of these
A forward biased silicon diode will drop the supply voltage by about 500mV (0.5V) These units have a current capacity of 100A which should be strong enough to handle the current used by any mover.

It will have to be fitted carefully, and it will also raise the minimum voltage the mover needs to work by about 0.5V.

 

[GUMPY]

If the mover is detecting an overvoltage situation, then if you only needed to reduce the voltage by about 0.5V you could install a series diode like
one of these
A forward biased silicon diode will drop the supply voltage by about 500mV (0.5V) These units have a current capacity of 100A which should be strong enough to handle the current used by any mover.

It will have to be fitted carefully, and it will also raise the minimum voltage the mover needs to work by about 0.5V.

It will need to be fitted to a decent heatsink otherwise the rating is a lot lower🫣

 

[IanB1485]

so i need something that can reduce the voltage coming from the battery to the motor mover. i read about buck converters, but they are only for small amperage usage, and a motor mover is heavy amperage.

Not quite they can supply many hundreds of amps with the correct output transistors and inductor/capacitors , however one would cost hundreds of pounds build so probably be impractical to apply . the High current diode solution is a better solution . I would mount it on a large piece of thick aluminium or even a large heat sink .one such diode is Farnell part number 4349245, manufacturers part number IDWD60E65E7XKSA1 , it has a large voltage drop at 100a of 2V . Note silicon diodes don't like getting warm and their rated current drops as they warm up , which also cause the forward voltage drop to also which can lead to thermal runaway and in extreme cases failure .Adding a 50W 0.01 resistor in series will limit this thermal runaway , but will also need to be mounted on a good heat sink .

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