Swytch battery alternatives?

[OlderFolder]

I've got a Swytch Mk 1 that I've been using very happily on my town bike but the battery life is now not so good, probably after I left it sitting for a year with no charge, oops.

I've just bought a cheap ex-demo gravel bike that I want to head out into the wilds on, but with assistance for the hills. So I'm going to transfer the Swytch to it, but I was wondering if there is an easily swappable 3rd party battery solution that I can use? Preferably one that fits in a waterbottle holder, or a bolt-on larger battery pack?

The connectors on the Swytch look standard enough but I really don't know where to start regards compatibility.

Thanks in advance.

 

[peterjd]

I've got a Swytch Mk 1 that I've been using very happily on my town bike but the battery life is now not so good, probably after I left it sitting for a year with no charge, oops.

I've just bought a cheap ex-demo gravel bike that I want to head out into the wilds on, but with assistance for the hills. So I'm going to transfer the Swytch to it, but I was wondering if there is an easily swappable 3rd party battery solution that I can use? Preferably one that fits in a waterbottle holder, or a bolt-on larger battery pack?

The connectors on the Swytch look standard enough but I really don't know where to start regards compatibility.

Thanks in advance.

Hi, I've had a separate battery on my Swytch Mk 1 for some time now without any problem. The latest uses a Yose generic water bottle style battery with a short extension cable (I used heavy duty hifi speaker cable) and appropriate plugs either end - the Yose comes with a plug and pigtail connectors for the battery - you would need to get one for the Swytch power pack end (unless you had a dead original battery for which you could cut off the plug). I soldered my own lead for it carefully checking that I had the polarity (ie + and -) correct both ends. Note a simple adaption like this won't supply a separate 5v external supply for phones etc. Peter

 

[OlderFolder]

Thanks, that looks really interesting (and a lot more affordable than I was reckoning)
Do you think there may be a ready made cable/connector solution I can utilise that won't require soldering? That's the bit I'm probably going to get wrong here!

 

[peterjd]

You might want to look on the Swytch Bike Chat forum (a Facebook one independent of Swytch itself). There have been several posts offering second or extender battery setups. They might do a custom cable for you. By the way the original battery had an internal 30amp car type fuse (green in my case) wired into its main '36V' output leads. This would presumably provide some protection against say a catastrophic battery short which could lead to a fire. I've assumed the Yose battery for example has its own protection circuit (but I haven't, for obvious reasons, tested it). There is also in my original battery case a small separate circuit board which gives the 5v supply available on the 1st generation Swytch battery pack. Good luck. Peter

PS Dismantling the existing power pack can be inherently dangerous (shorting Lithium cells which still have charge in them can lead to fires). Not recommended unless you know what you are doing and can handle an accident ie appropriate location and protection.

 

[OlderFolder]

Thanks Peter, that forum has been very interesting