ZKE EBC-A05 Premature Charge Termination Anomaly Workaround

Last week I reported that I’d noticed an anomaly while running my new  ZKE EBC-AO5 through repeated tests using the cycle-test feature of its accompanying PC software. I’ve since identified the likely cause, along with a workaround, and I’m expecting a firmware fix soon from the manufacturer.

The problem can be seen in this chart.2015-2-12-10-14-45-EBC-A05

The charge phase is supposed to terminate when the current, shown in red, hits 0.12 A. Instead, it terminates at ~0.25A in the first cycle, and at ~0.5A in subsequent cycles.

I realized that the subsequent cycles were also terminating at about 90 minutes, which stood out, because I’d set a 90 minute timer for terminating the discharge phase if the voltage didn’t drop below a threshold first. A check of the raw data showed that the termination happened at ~88 minutes.

The device doesn’t allow a timer to be set during the charging phase, but I hypothesized that the timer from the previous discharge phase was somehow being utilized during the charging phase. I tried shortening and lengthening the discharge timer and found that, as I expected, it had a corresponding impact on the length of the charging cycle.

So, the workaround is to either omit the timer on the discharge phase, or set it to a duration larger than the time required to achieve a full charge for the cell under test. I’ve successfully run dozens of cycles now:

2015-2-19-11-2-0-EBC-A05

I also reported my findings to ZKE, using their published email address and received a reply thanking me for the report and letting me know that they would have an updated firmware by the end of the month.

One thought on “ZKE EBC-A05 Premature Charge Termination Anomaly Workaround”

  1. Hello.
    I’m considering buying one of those units. Did you get the new firmware?
    Thanks in advance!

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