What's inside! .. ?: Razor E300 Scooter

[eccerr0r]

Re: What's inside! .. ?: Razor E300 Scooter

Tried test riding it on my driveway. First tried kicking it down the slight incline of my driveway, okay, at least I could maintain balance. Then I tried kicking it up the incline with the motor on. I can't seem to keep my hand rotating the throttle so the motor keeps shutting off. But when it is on, it does try to pull me up, so that's a good sign. Surprised these lead acid batteries left for dead still got at least a little life left in them.

Unfortunately I put in a bit too much water... may have to take the batteries out during the winter, else keep them well charged...

[eccerr0r]

Re: What's inside! .. ?: Razor E300 Scooter

Oddly enough there aren't many fat people here interested in a stand up scooter (I don't have the optional seat...)

Maybe I could squeeze a bunch of old lead acid batteries on the deck. Fortunately the scooter has a fairly large deck so I should still have enough space to step on the deck, just worried it may slide off. And if I could stand on it, then maybe I'll slide off with the even higher center of gravity...

[stj]

Re: What's inside! .. ?: Razor E300 Scooter

ask a fat person to help?

[Curious.George]

Re: What's inside! .. ?: Razor E300 Scooter

Then the next thing is I wonder how I can (safely) get 100kg (220lb) onto the scooter. I don't think I could wear/carry that much weight on myself and ride the scooter at the same time...

Put a cinder block on the scooter; step onto the block.

[eccerr0r]

Re: What's inside! .. ?: Razor E300 Scooter

Then the next thing is I wonder how I can (safely) get 100kg (220lb) onto the scooter. I don't think I could wear/carry that much weight on myself and ride the scooter at the same time...

[eccerr0r]

Re: What's inside! .. ?: Razor E300 Scooter

it may be an intentional restriction for legal reasons.

electric start is an electric vehicle,
but if you have to kick off then it's classed as electric assisted.

hmm... as far as I can tell, the E100 requires a kickoff. The E300 supposedly does not.

So I suspect the batteries are not quite strong enough to go full bore, though they've been somewhat rejuvenated from worthless 3V packs...

[eccerr0r]

Re: What's inside! .. ?: Razor E300 Scooter

What the heck. Seems like older E300s had a battery gauge, and the newer ones omitted them. Weird.

Plus it's a 4-wire throttle cable, of which is connected to an on-off switch - like the older ones. What's really weird is that the intermediate versions have 5-wire throttle cables.

I wonder if the battery information is still coded in the wire somehow and just simply not displayed due to the lack of LED hardware...

[Curious.George]

Re: What's inside! .. ?: Razor E300 Scooter

Yeah, need to somehow jury rig a way to monitor battery voltage while standing/riding it. Especially dangerous as the rider should be looking ahead and not down at the meter...

There is a crude (full/low) battery gauge on the throttle. Though I can't recall the trip point for "low" (if it winks while trying to get moving, it would suggest the batter is drooping significantly)

Still seeing 7 amperes peak while trying to get it going from a dead stop, staying around 5 amps. Current draw is only 3 amps or so when the tire is lifted from the ground.

It's only a 250W motor so you won't see more than ~10A.

Note that you should double-check all of the wiring connections as I've found scooters with large losses in the "ties".

[stj]

Re: What's inside! .. ?: Razor E300 Scooter

it may be an intentional restriction for legal reasons.

electric start is an electric vehicle,
but if you have to kick off then it's classed as electric assisted.

[eccerr0r]

Re: What's inside! .. ?: Razor E300 Scooter

Seems people have been simply increasing voltage to bump up the torque/speed as the webpages listed above. But if it's an electromagnetic stator, it will be trouble trying to get power output from it as there's only one pair of wires on the motor.

Apparently the controller does try to limit current, if I try to hold back the scooter it will grudgingly go, but if it gets a little movement, it seems to really want to go. Not sure if this is expected behavior however.

Unfortunately I'm not versed in scooter riding so it'll be a while before I can figure out how fast it goes and whether it's up to spec or not. Probably will need to use a GPS or time out a mile or something, then perhaps I can use that data and count wheel rotations to have its own speedometer. Alas kicking a 50 pound piece of steel and lead down the road for a mile (worst case) will not be fun if the batteries run out before the testing completes.

[stj]

Re: What's inside! .. ?: Razor E300 Scooter

brushed is too bad.
if it was multi-phase you could use predictive vector-drive to push the torque through the roof.

[eccerr0r]

Re: What's inside! .. ?: Razor E300 Scooter

It's a brushed DC motor. Whether it has a PM or electromagnetic stator I don't know...

[stj]

Re: What's inside! .. ?: Razor E300 Scooter

what type of motor is in these things then?
3phase?
brushed?
are they fixed magnet type or with outer aux coils?

[eccerr0r]

Re: What's inside! .. ?: Razor E300 Scooter

Hmm... proper words used to move one of these "skateboard with a steering stick" scooters appears to be "kicking" them from a "kick scooter," though this electric one isn't going to be pleasant due to its weight from the steel frame... Don't care if you're a soccer player or whatnot, kicking 50+ pounds is not going to make it go very far.

However due to the ratcheting chain drive, "kicking" is still very possible, though it would be nice if it could be locked to the chain and hence have the ability to charge the battery. Because of the ~2:1 gear ratio, yes "kicking" the scooter with the chain bearings, motor bearings, and passing over magnetic regions (even worse if it's generating electricity), yeah it would not be pleasant if that needs to be overcome along with the weight. Still if the battery's low and after you "kick" it up a hill, that other side of the hill would be nice to get bit of that energy back...

Incidentally, despite the virtually useless for emergency C/10 charger, I wonder if one should carry it with them when using electric scooters. As an aside it seems the one I'm working on, there's a residual charge current at about 200mA after the pack is full, which is lower than C/20 which should be "okay" for SLA but probably not healthy for them long term...

[eccerr0r]

Re: What's inside! .. ?: Razor E300 Scooter

Yeah, need to somehow jury rig a way to monitor battery voltage while standing/riding it. Especially dangerous as the rider should be looking ahead and not down at the meter...

Still seeing 7 amperes peak while trying to get it going from a dead stop, staying around 5 amps. Current draw is only 3 amps or so when the tire is lifted from the ground.

At least the batteries still could be used for something other than the scooter, not completely useless yet.

[petehall347]

Re: What's inside! .. ?: Razor E300 Scooter

you could check battery voltage whilst setting off to see where it drops to .

[eccerr0r]

Re: What's inside! .. ?: Razor E300 Scooter

Hmmm maybe expectations here...

It seems to struggle to move with me standing on it, though it does move slowly. Maybe we're not supposed to make these skateboard with a stick scooters start from dead stops and just use good old foot power to start it going, then only use the motor for steady state? Then again the owners manual seems to indicate it should be able to start from a dead stop...

I'm surprised it seems to be a lot easier to balance upon than a regular bicycle, most likely due to its wider wheels. At least it's sort of possible to somewhat stay upright on it while still (though better to still have a foot on the ground) unlike bicycles where you need to be moving to keep the inverted pendulum upright...

Need to get with the times I suppose... ?

[eccerr0r]

Re: What's inside! .. ?: Razor E300 Scooter

Excellent! I forgot I had a 0-20A ammeter that I was using with my solar experiments that maxes out at about 6A. So this ammeter is better suited for the scooter.

Again the scooter does try to get away from me when turning it on so that's a good sign, though unsure what it will do with my weight on it. Anyway I did see it drawing 5A when the tire is lifted off the ground. I also see it drawing about that much if I jammed the scooter so that it wouldn't move (should this be possible in a properly working battery system?). Perhaps it is trying to ensure that it doesn't waste energy/burn up motor if it's stuck, but then there's also that circuit breaker that would be redundant. Maybe just to lessen the chance of the scooter running away without the person on it. Uh, no idea.

Needs a test drive soon, though wonder how far I can go and not have to walk home with it. So much for bottom of the barrel, there's no battery state monitoring at all.

[eccerr0r]

Re: What's inside! .. ?: Razor E300 Scooter

Awesome! Got the batteries to charge enough to run the motor at nearly full speed when lifted off the ground! Need to check OCV and ESR again but at least the scooter does somewhat try to get away from me when operating the throttle. Whether the batteries are still good enough to carry someone around is another story, and I'm curious what the current current draw is -- originally it probably was around 10 amperes steady state, which would mathematically make sense for a ⅓ HP motor. (also I wonder how much more current it draws/mechanical power it creates while accelerating, or is this ⅓ HP rating was meant only during acceleration and not during cruising.)

At least this scooter seems to be quite sturdy, though unfortunately at a cost of weight. Pretty much all steel design though still "light" enough to be a victim of lift and go. I do wonder about the hackaday page overvolting the motor - whether or not the motor actually will overheat being driven more than ⅓ HP, though it would be nice to have more reserve power versus additional speed.

That and having a different charging system, looking at how the circuitry is wired, unfortunately 10 hour charge time is indeed the limit of how the wiring is done. Might have to figure a way to charge them directly to reduce charge times - charge at C/3 instead of C/10, though not sure what impact faster charge rate has on lead acid.

[Curious.George]

Re: What's inside! .. ?: Razor E300 Scooter

While this doesn't handle the lift and go theft, I wonder if faking a dead battery is sufficient as a deterrence. Say it has a bluetooth or nfc module and looks for your phone. If not present, drive at 1mi/hr and conk out in 10 feet.

A would-be thief who THINKS would realize that having the scooter WITHOUT THE CHARGER makes the theft meaningless; the only value would be if a NONTHINKING "customer" could be found to take it off his hands.

I refurbished a heavy duty, extra wide electric wheelchair some years ago. TWO people could sit side-by-side on this one! (intended for very FAT users!).

One evening, it was left in an unprotected area. Someone cut the chain link fence and drove it off the property (batteries were installed and charged).

The only "loss" was the materials required to repair the fence; the chair had been donated so didn't represent any out-of-pocket costs. Nevertheless, I wasn't happy that my time had been wasted!

OTOH, the thief would find -- in a day or two -- that the batteries would need a charge. And, he'd NOT have a proper charger to do this. So, now he'd have a very large, bulky, HEAVY (several hundred pounds) chair that he'd have to figure out how to discard! No, you're NOT going to lift it onto the back of your pickup truck! And, as the batteries are flat, you'll have to PUSH it to <wherever>...

Anyone THINKING about stealing a scooter would find themselves in a similar situation; once the batteries go flat, you've got a piece of trash on your hands!