Regen braking

[Garm@n]

Okay, it was a nice day, rain held off,  I took my mp3 for a speed test.  Bit of a failure, gps screen not visible due to bright sunlight.  What I did notice is how hard the rear brake grabs when I apply it.  I made a comparison with the front brake, like night and day.  I feel this hard braking is the regenerative braking, but I am not sure, can anyone confirm this is what I am encountering?  I don't have a usb cable to turn off this feature and test.  I'm thinking this current setting for regen braking  feels very dangerous as I feel my body aggressively propelling forward, also during slick or loose gravel road conditions would be a problem.  Thanks

[OzGeeksGarage]

All I can suggest is get the USB cable and play with it, my regen braking was set pretty low as a factory default probably because it was a front wheel, but I've cranked it up to 100% because being a trike it has a lot more weight over the front during breaking, I have read reports here of overbraking causing lockup on front wheels.

[Garm@n]

Thanks OZ.  Man, that seems like a huge waste of money to change the value of the regen brake setting,    and I'm not even sure if that's the problem.  Also the other problem I see is I am a Mac user, and it looks as if this only works for windoze computers.  Anyone around TO  beaches want to plug their computer to my hub   So Oz your certain that what I am going through is the regen braking system?  Thanks

[MAGICPIE3FOCUSPOWER]

Yup mine was also set to regenerative braking at factory default setting.
But I had a rear wheel motor...

[Garm@n]

do you remember what it was set to? and did the wheel brake too hard.  If 50% setting is deafult, do you think this is too high for smaller wheels?

[MAGICPIE3FOCUSPOWER]

Nope I can't remember, because I have disabled it.
Braking at rear is not powerfull....so I didn't noticed a lot

Also I don't like this brake feature it can destroy your bike dropouts...
Or you have to install strong torque arms.

[Garm@n]

I wonder if I remove the pads on my rear wheel would help.  I don't think the default is not set properly,  As I cant find users complaing the same as I am.  I personally am not ready to buy a cable now and later pay for a battery and naile for shipping twice, especially to just disable the braking system.  Do you if anyone has created their own  (DIY) usb cable for the mp3?

[Bikemad]

Even at 50% the regen will be very strong with your 16" wheel because the braking effect from regen will be ~63% stronger than a standard 26" wheel turning at the same wheel speed. As your 16" wheel needs to spin ~63% faster than a 26" wheel to achieve the same road speed, this will increases the comparative regen braking force even more. 

If you loosen the adjuster on the rear brake cable so that the lever has to pull closer to the handlebar before the pads actually clamp against the disc, you should be able to use regen without applying the mechanical disc brake simply by partially pulling the lever, but you will probably find that the regen is still far too much for typical continuous braking. Pulsing the brake on and off is the only way you can control the excessive regen effect without a USB cable.

Unplugging the brake switches would turn off regen completely, but this would also prevent the motor power from being cut off during braking, which is not something I would recommend for both safety and legal reasons.

Alan
 

[GM Canada]

I wonder if I remove the pads on my rear wheel would help. 

I would not unhook any regular mechanical brakes. If your battery kicks out you will have no brakes at all.

Gary

[OzGeeksGarage]

From memory my 20" front wheel was set to something like 15-25% regen braking, possibly they set the default setting lower to compensate for smaller wheels and front or back. I only have to feather my front brake lever to activate the regen brakes and hardly use it hard enough for the front disk brake to activate at all. My rear brake lever isn't connected to the regen system as being a trike, it is a dual cable lever for both rear brakes with a parking brake lock, I'll eventually fit a sensor somehow.

[Garm@n]

I noticed 1 cable does the regen braking and the other is a kill switch, true?  If true  I can swap the cabling  I would move the rear brake line with the kill switch and the front break has the regen cabling or is it better to leave the regen braking disconnected.  I would like to test this but I am away from my bike.
BTW if there is 1 kill switch, is this not dangerous without back up

[Bikemad]

As both brake switches are connected to the controller by a single signal wire, operating either brake will instantly cut the power going to the motor and engage the regenerative braking, so swapping the brake switch cables over will not make any difference.

Alan
 

[Garm@n]

When I arrived home I wanted to confirm the kill switch.  It is only on 1 brake lever, not certain if regen braking is 1 or both levers, need testing.  So your sayig the kill switch should be on both brake levers?  should I be concerned as to why this is?

[OzGeeksGarage]

I can't say about any others but on the Smart Pie both brake switches work only one wire to the controller, activating either does the same thing, it cuts the throttle and starts the regen braking at whatever level the motor is programmed to. I've traced all the wires myself, I'll copy it onto a spread sheet & post it one day as I had to trace every wire because I didn't use the standard wiring loom.

[Garm@n]

Since it seemed odd that the motor cutoff is only working with 1 brake lever, I did another test. I took cable 1 and plugged to slot 4 and cable 4 into slot 1, then back to 1-1 and 4-4, only the right lever brake cuts off the motor.  Am I right to assume the left cable on the lever is faulty or the port that plugs into it?