Levo Gen 3 Charge Limit doesn't work anymore

torabora851

torabora851

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It worked from the beginning, but now it just ignores the setting and charges 100% every time. Firstly I thought that this is like "However, on every 10th charge your bike will charge to the full 100%" but 4 times in a row it charges to 100%.
 
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By recommendation from Spesh support, I did a factory reset. No luck, it still ignores the charge limit setting. Will try to disable it, make a full charge and then enable it.

I wonder how the battery knows about the setting? Is there some internal memory?
 
I think there is a Coulomb counter in the battery.

For the SL batteries (Levo, Creo, Vado,...), 15 minutes of charge = 10% of charge.

So when I have to charge my battery, I calculate the time, and cut it after that time.

For example 45 minutes for 30% of charge.

That's easy, you can use a small timer if you fear to forget to cut it off :)

Have a Nice Day.

Thierry
 
Hey, @Crockej have you tried to do a factory reset? Press the + and - buttons for 45s and wait until the TCU will restart twice and you will see the "factory reset" screen. It didn't work for me.

Would be nice if you test this, so we can push the Spesh to address the problem.
 
Got this sequence from the spesh support, which fixed the issue for me:
  1. Perform factory reset.
  2. Deplete the battery to below 80%
  3. Toggle on charge limit
  4. Force close the Mission Control app
  5. Open the app and enter the tune screen to check the settings
  6. Then charge the bike and see what happens and report back to us please.
 
torabora851 said:
Got this sequence from the spesh support, which fixed the issue for me:
  1. Perform factory reset.
  2. Deplete the battery to below 80%
  3. Toggle on charge limit
  4. Force close the Mission Control app
  5. Open the app and enter the tune screen to check the settings
  6. Then charge the bike and see what happens and report back to us please.
Click to expand...

My Levo is a 2019 with the standard (blue LED) TCU. After I had the battery firmware updated I had about 8-9 charges (from around 55%) up to the charge limit of about 81% with no problem...the limit cutout worked every time. On about the 10th partial charge, the charger kept going to 100% so I let it finish charging so the charger turned itself off (green). I think you have to let the charger finish so it can balance/recalibrate all the cells in the battery.

Just in case I was going to have the same problem as you, I followed steps 1-6 above exactly and the next charge (from 62%) finished properly at 81%.

What confuses me is that Specialized say the charger will go to 100% every 10 charge cycles. This doesn't appear to be the same "Charge Cycles" that MC reports. Because I only do partial charges each time, my Charge Cycles number changed from 46 to 48 throughout the last 10 or so partial charges I have done. So I suspect that what happens is the battery firmware counts each time you charge the battery (whether full or partial), ignores the total Charge Cycles number shown in MC and forces a 100% charge every 10 charging events. I'm going to keep a careful log of all charges I do for the next couple of months to see if this is what really occurs. Also, I'm going to see if the next 100% charge event is followed by a 80% charge event automatically without having to do any resets, or charge limit toggling.

I'll be complaining loudly to Specialized Australia if there are problems with this battery firmware. The LBS I brought the bike from in 2019 charged me $50 to update the battery (and TCU) firmware in February, since you can't do your own battery update with MC.
 
I started having the same problem. Doing the toggle and Force Stop process. Will see what happens.

[Update] Finished a ride at 40% charge. Charge Limit toggle was ON. Put it on the charger. I could tell it was going over 80% so I stopped the charge. Checked Mission Control. Charge Level was 95% but Charge Limit toggle was OFF !! What? I toggled it back ON. Will see what happens after ride tomorrow.
[Update] Nope, no luck.
 
Last edited:
My charge limit has now stopped working so before I follow the troubleshooting steps outlined above, can anyone tell me if by doing a factory reset on the TCU, do you have to pair the bike again? Is any other data lost?
 
6950rpm said:
My charge limit has now stopped working so before I follow the troubleshooting steps outlined above, can anyone tell me if by doing a factory reset on the TCU, do you have to pair the bike again? Is any other data lost?
Click to expand...
I watched this video from Specialized University () and it says 20 seconds will retain your settings for TCU 2. I also read in the Levo manual that 45 seconds will erase everything but I could not find the 20 second reset mentioned in the manual. So, what to believe?
 
6950rpm said:
My charge limit has now stopped working so before I follow the troubleshooting steps outlined above, can anyone tell me if by doing a factory reset on the TCU, do you have to pair the bike again? Is any other data lost?
Click to expand...
I did a standard reset (hold + & - down for 20 seconds) and now the charge limit is working again.
 
Same problem here. I did try to reset the TCU / deplete battery below 80%/ force quit MC but it was not working. Battery shows 100% this morning. Will give another try over the weekend
Hopefully bug will be fixed in next firmware release.
 
Same problem here. I did try to reset the TCU / deplete battery below 80%/ force quit MC but it was not working. Battery shows 100% this morning. Will give another try over the weekend
Hopefully bug will be fixed in next firmware release
 
It finally started working for me. Just need to follow the steps exactly as above:
Power on bike. Connect to MC. Do the 20sec TCU reset. Wait for MC to reconnect. Toggle the Charge Setting in MC. Force Stop MC App. Restart MC and check that Charge Setting is still enabled. Power off bike. Charge.
 
LevoBiker said:
It finally started working for me. Just need to follow the steps exactly as above:
Power on bike. Connect to MC. Do the 20sec TCU reset. Wait for MC to reconnect. Toggle the Charge Setting in MC. Force Stop MC App. Restart MC and check that Charge Setting is still enabled. Power off bike. Charge.
Click to expand...
It started to work as well. I followed your steps at the letter and battery load displayed 81% after loading.
Really hope Spe will fix this ;)
 
torabora851 said:
The issue is back. Hopefully Specialized will fix it soon, i don't like to do hardware reset every 10 charge.
Click to expand...
The issue came back for me. I checked the app and charge limit was showing as off. I turned charge limit back on again, turned bike off then on again and reconnected the app and charge limit was showing as enabled. Turned bike off again and plugged in and it charged to 80%. I didn't need to do a hardware reset.
 
6950rpm said:
The issue came back for me. I checked the app and charge limit was showing as off. I turned charge limit back on again, turned bike off then on again and reconnected the app and charge limit was showing as enabled. Turned bike off again and plugged in and it charged to 80%. I didn't need to do a hardware reset.
Click to expand...
Nah, the charge limit is on, and still 100% charge.
 
On the 10th cycle, it successfully charged to 100%. I was happy. The next time it charged, it went to 100% instead of 80%. Yea, some bug in the function they need to deal with.
 
Seems like reset procedure didn’t work this time. Once again the battery charged to 100%. I’m tired of dealing with this.
 
That's why I charge mine 80% manually.

I know that 20% of charge is about 1/2h., so I just have to make some simple calculations.

Thierry
 
ThierryGTLTS said:
That's why I charge mine 80% manually.

I know that 20% of charge is about 1/2h., so I just have to make some simple calculations.

Thierry
Click to expand...
I use my watch timer. It's more like 20% per hr and it picks up a little past 80%.
 
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Chicane said:
I use my watch timer. It's more like 20% per hr and it picks up a little past 80%.
Click to expand...
I use this with my eBikes for charge time limiting. Has an app. Let's you set timers, schedules etc.. Set it for four hours for 80% roughly on a Levo 700wh.

Geeni Outdoor Duo Wi-Fi Smart...
 
LevoBiker said:
Seems like reset procedure didn’t work this time. Once again the battery charged to 100%. I’m tired of dealing with this.
Click to expand...
Yep, same here for my Gen2 Levo. After the first factory reset I got another 9 limited charges before it went back to 100%. Factory resets no longer work.

I've contacted Specialized Support and they're aware of this problem, saying they expect an update 'soon' that will fix this permanently. What 'soon' means is anybody's guess. Specialized are at the mercy of Brose in Switzerland for the TCU and Motor hardware and firmware, but I'm not sure about the battery.

Does anyone know who the battery and firmware designer is?
 
BushLevo said:
Yep, same here for my Gen2 Levo. After the first factory reset I got another 9 limited charges before it went back to 100%. Factory resets no longer work.

I've contacted Specialized Support and they're aware of this problem, saying they expect an update 'soon' that will fix this permanently. What 'soon' means is anybody's guess. Specialized are at the mercy of Brose in Switzerland for the TCU and Motor hardware and firmware, but I'm not sure about the battery.

Does anyone know who the battery and firmware designer is?
Click to expand...
Are you sure?!

Levo SL motor is not a Brose one, but the App is the same.

So it's probably developped by Specialized.
 
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