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[Richard230]

My BMW key fob needs a good brand-name battery to work well. I  bought a bunch of cheap Chinese Hi Power-brand batteries and they pooped out after a couple of months. However an American name-brand battery (a CR2032, if I recall correctly) will power the fob for about three years and the keyless system always picks up the signal even from several feet away from the bike.

[PWM]

My '21 Ribelle sports factory original firmware and FOB behaves as follows.

Run Mode...after bike is on, no alerts given if FOB left behind...range is never an issue to start bike.

Charge Mode...to intervene say to effect charge rate, FOB needs to be really close to steering head before bike recognizes and unlocks.

[chisquare]

My '21 Ribelle sports factory original firmware and FOB behaves as follows.

Run Mode...after bike is on, no alerts given if FOB left behind...range is never an issue to start bike.

Charge Mode...to intervene say to effect charge rate, FOB needs to be really close to steering head before bike recognizes and unlocks.

My keyless SS9+ RS EMCE 2021 shows the exact same behavior including the strangely reduced sensitivity in charge mode.

[Demoni]

I confirm the range of the keyless system is reduced when the bike is charging. I believe this is due to electric noise (EMF) generated by the charging process.
We normally store the key fobs in the seat lock when they are in the shop. With the fob in that location the bike will not recognize it when it is being charged (both AC and DC). But the bike will recognize the fob in the same position when the bike is not charging.

[chisquare]

Good point with the EMF interference while charging. Should this explanation hold, a new firmware would have a hard time improving the behavior of the keyless system.

[BigPoppa]

Did the update do anything useful for the bike? Would you have been better off without it?


-Don-  Auburn, CA

No noticeable improvements. I would have been better off not having the latest update done.

[BigPoppa]

My BMW key fob needs a good brand-name battery to work well. I  bought a bunch of cheap Chinese Hi Power-brand batteries and they pooped out after a couple of months. However an American name-brand battery (a CR2032, if I recall correctly) will power the fob for about three years and the keyless system always picks up the signal even from several feet away from the bike.

I’ve tried a few brands and there is no improvement in the keyless system’s ability to pick up the signal at all. Again, this is only after the .041 update. Prior to this, I had no issues which is why I still firmly believe it’s a firmware issue.

[DonTom]

I’ve tried a few brands and there is no improvement in the keyless system’s ability to pick up the signal at all. Again, this is only after the .041 update. Prior to this, I had no issues which is why I still firmly believe it’s a firmware issue.

I always check the battery voltage before installing batteries in FOBs and such. I find several weak new ones from various brands.


-Don-

[Specter]

Taking the battery down to zero percent is kind of asking for trouble.  A real quick slip and it's undercharged and now dendrites are forming and you are causing great grief in your battery pack.

There is no real NEED to do it.  Balancing happens on the top end of the battery.  You do NOT need to discharge it to balance it, the balancing happens at the upper end.  Ideally a balancing cell should be active ALL THE TIME.  When working properly, they would draw milliamps when idle and keep the battery cell voltages within 50 mv of each other on a very tight equalization.  it's essentially a wheatstone bridge, and as soon as one of the cells dips a bit, the bridge unbalances and current trickles to the low from the highers to balance them all.  Typically a 5 amp current can flow with a beefier balancer.  It does its thing and turns off, run the bike hard for a few minutes, minimal inbalance, the balancer trickles it back to balance, shuts off.  it should be for the most part, an out of site out of mind device.

Pushing batteries to zero and 100 is not good to be honest. it stresses them.  going to 80 percent charge would be the 'center' range, so from 10 percfent to 90 percent of capacity. is where you run them at for the better longevity stats.  If you ran it even 70 you'd get probably double your cycles again out of the battery.

Also you have to remember with lithium.  A cycle is a FULL CYCLE .      NiCd  NiMh,   you run it down 30 percent and back up, that's a cycle,  down 50 percent back up, thats a cycle.    down 70 percent recharge, thats a cycle.  down 5 percent up to top.  THAT is a cycle.

With Lithium tech now,  you run it down 30 percent and back up. that'd 30 percent of a cycle.  down 50 percent and back up, thats an additional 50 percent for 80 total percent cycle now.  now down 70 and back up, thats now 1.5 cycles total now... instead of 3.  It's a much better chemistry in many ways here.

Hope this is not clear as mud...   If anyone cares, Ivce been doing solar / batteries since 1986, way back before it became cool and was just nerdy,so have a small idea what I am talking about.

Aaron

[DonTom]

Taking the battery down to zero percent is kind of asking for trouble.  A real quick slip and it's undercharged and now dendrites are forming and you are causing great grief in your battery pack.

There is no real NEED to do it.  Balancing happens on the top end of the battery.  You do NOT need to discharge it to balance it, the balancing happens at the upper end.  Ideally a balancing cell should be active ALL THE TIME.  When working properly, they would draw milliamps when idle and keep the battery cell voltages within 50 mv of each other on a very tight equalization.  it's essentially a wheatstone bridge, and as soon as one of the cells dips a bit, the bridge unbalances and current trickles to the low from the highers to balance them all.  Typically a 5 amp current can flow with a beefier balancer.  It does its thing and turns off, run the bike hard for a few minutes, minimal inbalance, the balancer trickles it back to balance, shuts off.  it should be for the most part, an out of site out of mind device.

Pushing batteries to zero and 100 is not good to be honest. it stresses them.  going to 80 percent charge would be the 'center' range, so from 10 percfent to 90 percent of capacity. is where you run them at for the better longevity stats.  If you ran it even 70 you'd get probably double your cycles again out of the battery.

Also you have to remember with lithium.  A cycle is a FULL CYCLE .      NiCd  NiMh,   you run it down 30 percent and back up, that's a cycle,  down 50 percent back up, thats a cycle.    down 70 percent recharge, thats a cycle.  down 5 percent up to top.  THAT is a cycle.

With Lithium tech now,  you run it down 30 percent and back up. that'd 30 percent of a cycle.  down 50 percent and back up, thats an additional 50 percent for 80 total percent cycle now.  now down 70 and back up, thats now 1.5 cycles total now... instead of 3.  It's a much better chemistry in many ways here.

Hope this is not clear as mud...   If anyone cares, Ivce been doing solar / batteries since 1986, way back before it became cool and was just nerdy,so have a small idea what I am talking about.

Aaron

AFAIK, the only reason to discharge it and charge to full is to calibrate the SOC%. I used to charge far too often, and I often got that message.


I don't get range anxiety as much as I used to, and I now always try to charge back up when in the red or low yellow when possible. Since I have been doing such, I have not seen that message again. 


Notice in just about any laptop computer manual, they say to do the same thing, discharge until the battery is dead and then fully charge to calibrate your time left or the SOC %.   Other than that, it has nothing to do with the battery life, balancing, etc.


It's probably not really necessary to get to the limp mode, I don't like that idea either. Just get it low enough that you're sure you can get to home (or wherever) to get a full charge.  But it probably will calibrate a little better to get down to 0 SOC.


SOC calibration is a lot more useful than the range left shown. Best to not ever even look at that!


-Don-  Reno, NV

[Hans2183]

From my understanding the older models would prompt you to do so. Haven't seen that myself since I never owned one.

On my 2021 21,5 kWh model I've never been prompted to do so. I've seen other messages but never to ride it empty. So I don't think it's still needed. Otherwise the prompt would still be there.

Apart from that I believe it's a good idea to do it once just to get a feel of what happens with the bike in that state.