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[MostlyBonkers]

This is a kickoff. Please post any suggestions you may have as to how we approach this. 

Introduction

The Diginow Super Charger is in the final stages of testing. I asked Electric Cowboy if he had thought about reaching out to the community to help with the documentation. He likes the idea and a couple of us have already raised a hand to offer help.

Objectives

Provide product documentation that Diginow can provide with the new charger.

Save EC, Terry and anyone else involved with the project some of the time they might spend doing the documentation themselves. This will either help them bring the product to market quicker, or allow them to spend more time applying some final polish to the product. Or just give them a break!

Plan

When EC has had some time to recover from his crash, he said he'd share a document out via Google docs or a similar service. That might include an outline.

I suggested it might help save time if someone could take some video with commentary which we could then transcribe into a document. Photos could be helpful too.

This is open source and any contributions from the community are given gratis with no expectation of reward, other than the satisfaction of helping the community.

Is that alright for starters?

[ctrlburn]

Very good to me. I've got so little foundation I can certainly add information bridging the User up to the Technical Speak.

[BrianTRice@gmail.com]

Here's the product page until we have further structure to work from (also for visitors to reference):

http://diginow.it/super-charger-for-zero-motorcycle.php

[ElectricZen]

I'd be happy to help as well!

Sent from my Nexus 9 using Tapatalk

[Electric Cowboy]

So one thing that probably needs to be documented is that if you ride at like 85 mph all day and supercharge immediately after getting off the freeway while riding like that after a hundred miles or so your battery might say it needs a min to cool down. I did 130 miles today that way, and Terry has found the same. Riding over 80mph and supercharging multiple times will warm your battery up as the day goes on.

Should pose no issues for people who actually do the speed limit though.

I had done 100 miles in 2.5 to 3 hours only charging to Super Charging to 50% and then running the battery to 0% as fast as possible today, over and over.

[MostlyBonkers]

Ok, that's something I can have a go at.

I've registered with GitHub as yours truly. Once I've got my head around how it works, I'll start a document. I think we may end up with multiple documents that can be stitched together at the end. Or just left separate. That should be clearer further down the line.

GitHub is for code projects, but hopefully it'll work for this project too. If anyone has experience of other document sharing systems that may work better, please shout out. Dropbox might work, for example.

I suggest any new material is left unformatted. Let's generate the content first and leave the formatting to the end. Just use a font and size that you feel comfortable with. Headings, numbering and suchlike can be managed with styles in a master document later.

[Erasmo]

Google docs also works good imho.

I don't know if the charger it self logs data but I guess that would also be interesting to send back.

[Patrick Truchon]

EC, what do you think of using a wiki instead?  It would allow people to join the project very easily, and it pretty much takes care of the formating (to Bonkers' point).

I personally really like DokuWiki (which is free and open source) and have had it  running on my own machine for about a decade.  All you'd have to do is install it on your server (dead easy), let us register and do the rest of the work.  Another advantage is that the documentation would be available for viewers straight from your website, and the content would be hosted on your own server where you have complete control. 

I'd be very happy to help with the install/configuration if you need to.

[MostlyBonkers]

+1 for what Patrick said.

[MostlyBonkers]

I've managed to write some general guidelines. I'm posting below so others can comment.

Diginow Supercharger General Guidelines

This section should help you get the most enjoyment out of using your Supercharger. It covers some common questions about charging and battery usage. It also gives some guidance on what you can expect when using your Supercharger.

Is fast charging bad for my battery?

The short answer is no, it isn't.

The battery manufacturer does extensive testing to ensure the maximum life cycle of their cells. This includes specifying a maximum sustained charging rate of 1C and the Supercharger doesn't exceed this. 1C simply means a rate of charge that would provide enough energy to charge the cells fully in one hour. In reality, the rate of charge drops as a full charge is approached. Therefore it will take more than an hour to fully charge a cell as it won't be charged at this rate all the time. The Zero's Battery Management System (BMS) looks after the cells by monitoring temperature and State of Charge (SoC) closely. It adjusts charging rates accordingly to ensure the cells are never under stress beyond the manufacturer's guidelines.

As you may already be aware, Zero's battery packs are engineered for a very long service life. You can expect at least 200,000 miles (300,000 km) from them before capacity drops to 80% of the original. Most riders will be lucky to put even half that distance on their bikes. Zero made sure that battery life isn't something their customers need to worry about.

Is it safe to leave the Supercharger plugged in all the time?

Yes. Zero recommends leaving the bike plugged in all the time when using the on-board charger and the same recommendation comes when using the Supercharger.  This ensures you always have a full charge and the cells have an opportunity to balance themselves regularly. 

Do I still need the on-board charger now I have the Supercharger?

You may wish to remove the on-board charger to save some weight once you've got used to the Supercharger. That's fine, but we recommend the work is done by a trained technician.

Are there any considerations when using the Supercharger intensively?

The Supercharger itself has fans and its own thermal management system so it can be used all day long, if you have the need to charge multiple bikes for example.  However, the Zero's battery pack doesn't have any form of active cooling.  Under normal use this is never a problem.  Two scenarios where it might become an issue are constant high speed cruising and track days. Zero's were designed for neither.

Continuous high drain on the battery makes the cells warm and fast charging creates heat too.  If you are spending the day doing fast runs and fast charging, the battery may heat up to the point where the BMS safety systems kick in. This will mean either a reduction in power output by the battery or a reduction in the rate of charge.  This condition has only been reached through severe testing. Sustained speeds of 85mph aren't very comfortable without a good fairing. Zero's are more at home in mixed riding conditions. If you're touring, you may want to plan around this.  It's only towards the end of a long day's ride that you may encounter any overheating.

Should I always empty the battery before charging?

Absolutely not. Lithium ion batteries don't suffer from memory problems like older battery technologies. In fact they come under more stress at very low states of charge. You may also find the battery won't charge as quickly when it is almost empty. Always charge the batteries when there is an opportunity to do so.

What is the best charging regime to use to cover the most miles in a day?

Fast charging when the state of charge is between 20-90% will give you the fastest charge rates. Around 93% SoC the charging rate is reduced as the cells top off. That's fine if you're having a long lunch, but if you're keen to keep going then don't wait until 100%. Providing you have access to the right power supply you'll be back on the road in under an hour.

[Killroy]

Send me a DigiNow charger and I would be happy to 3D CADD, draft the detailed drawings, assembly drawings and BOM and review the mechanical design as a engineer. 

I'm a Sr. Mechanical Engineer. Want to see a resume?

[MostlyBonkers]

I would expect they've already got a computerized model Kilroy. You might be able to convert that into some technical documents and a user manual for them. I reckon that if you did that then they'd be very happy to send you a charger in return for your efforts.

From my little experience of offering to help, I have to say there's a wide reality gap between wanting to help and actually doing anything. It might be different if you're not very busy at work and can use some of those hours to help. It might also make a difference if there's the offer of remuneration of some kind. Otherwise, even with the best will in the world, it's work and other commitments and the need to have some downtime gets in the way. Then you find yourself in a position where you've offered to help and aren't delivering anything.

I ended up writing the piece above on my phone, sat on the sofa while my son was watching telly. As he is now as it happens!

My writing might not be what they're after either. I'm sure there is some more work to do on it somewhere down the line.

I admire those that manage to give up significant chunks of their life to help others for nothing other than the appreciation of the community. There are a number of them on here.

To be honest, this idea of mine to see if the community can help with the documentation may not be such a good one. It seemed appealing at the time but it might end up creating problems and hold-ups. I would love to be proved wrong though!

[stunthamster]

Hi Guys;

I'm a technical writer by trade (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Michael-Duffy/e/B00JIAQQ8I/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1). Let me know if and how I can lend a hand.

Cheers;

Mike

[MostlyBonkers]

Nice one Mike!

I've been hearing quite a bit about Dev Ops recently. I heard someone saying that it's going to put a lot of folks in IT out of work eventually. I might just buy a copy of your book as it could help me in my role as a DBA, until it all goes up into the cloud that is!

I digress. I know Brandon (Electric Cowboy) certainly liked the idea of getting some help with documentation. Who wouldn't?!? ;-)

With the Supercharger almost ready to ship, I don't know whether they've managed to put something together themselves or not. It must be hard for them.

Have you got any suggestions around how documentation tasks could be managed perhaps? Is there a collaboration tool, like Google Docs or GitHub that you would recommend? If you can spare some time, have you got an outline of a user manual that you could share with us? Would you be willing to create a list of sections that would need to be included?

Those are just a few of my thoughts. We could really do with an update and a steer from Brandon on this when he can catch a break from trying to get the first units out.

Thanks for the offer Mike. With you, Brian and Patrick, I'd say that's a very good start. I hope I haven't missed anyone!

Actually, while I think of it, if anyone could provide a few comments on the general guidelines I had a stab at, that would help. Don't hold back, if you think I missed the mark or whatever, please just say so. If it isn't right or suitable I'd rather someone call it out as such. That way I can have another go at it, or someone else can and the project moves on.

[stunthamster]

I think the whole 'DevOps is going to eat the world' thing is overblown - it's a new name for an old technique. One of the cool things I've seen is more DBA presence in the dev teams, that makes some huge difference!

In terms of documentation, I tend to use GitHub and Markdown to produce documents. That makes it nice and easy to produce  different versions of the document (PDF, Word etc); it also makes tracking changes trivially easy!

In terms of example documents, I've probably not got much relevant to hand. I've not had much to do in the consumer space, so I'm fairly certain others can come up with a better TOC than me, but if it needs words etc I can help out.

Just don't ask me to test it, I've still not got my bike back!