<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Ted the Led:
hey Stingmon, how many amp hours in your (edit) 'trike' batteries? - and what does the machine draw? (maybe we should have both a 'lights on' and 'lights off' amps number<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
For main power, it uses a pair of 31Ah gel-cell lead acid batteries in series (+24V).
The lights have their own completely independent battery, a 17Ah gell-cell mounted in between the two chair's batteries.
Like the wheelchair batteries, my lighting battery also has its own on-board charger, so I just park near an outlet and plug it in.
There is absolutely no difference in usable range whether I burn every light or run in "stealth" mode.
The reason I isolated the lighting wasn't originally to conserve battery power; but to help keep the chair's electronics isolated from radio noise. The immunity level of 20V/M as stipulated by the FDA for motorized wheelchairs therefore remains intact - and so does my warranty.
As for getting measurements of what the chair itself draws, that might be a bit difficult without actually cutting into a wire someplace and wrecking my warranty.
Current would also vary depending on terrain.
Loading on the especially steep hills in the Seattle area is probably on the order of 30-50 amps; while just going all-out on flat ground most likely uses around 5 to 6 amps average.
My old P.O.S. chair has a 55 amp controller, and a 35 amp pop-up breaker (which never went off during any time I used the chair).
This newer model chair has a 70 amp controller, and no user-resettable breaker (it's probably an auto-reset job on the controller board now).
I've also not had any circuit overload problems with the newer chair. But I see
other brands of chairs & scooters where the breaker will pop after going just a few hundred feet up a mild hill that my chair has no trouble with.
Now, the LED lighting package by itself (as currently in use) probably uses about 1A to 1.5A total; though I've never actually gotten a meter in there.