How do I get my Drifter to learn a new battery?

If you have installed a new battery, or you have reset your Drifter, the Drifter will need to learn your battery in order to operate correctly.

1. Press and hold the Home and Backlight buttons for at least 5 seconds to enter setup mode.
2. Press the Home button until the Battery Capacity parameter is displayed.
3. View the Battery Capacity parameter. It should be set to the manufacturer’s rated capacity for that battery, e.g. 100 Ah.
4. Disconnect all power to the Drifter for 5 seconds and then reconnect. This allows the Drifter to reset all counters for the new battery capacity, allowing it to learn the battery faster.
5. Charge the battery until the State of Charge reads 100%, then further charge the battery for 24 hours.
6. Remove the 240V power to stop charging the battery.
7. Switch on loads (such as lights, TV etc) until the battery is being discharged at 10% – 20% capacity rate (e.g., if you have a 100Ah battery, adjust the loads until you have a current rate between 10A and 20A. If you have a 200Ah battery, have a current rate between 20A and 40A).

Note: When discharged at a 10% rate, the discharge time will be approximately 10 hours. When discharging at a 20% rate, the discharge time will be approximately 5 hours.

8. Keep discharging the battery until the voltage reaches 10.5V.

Note: If you are using the Drifter with a Setec power supply, this will not damage the battery. These power supplies have a low voltage disconnect which protects the battery from discharging to a damaging level. With these products, the flat battery state will be indicated by the battery current dropping to zero and there being no power.

If you are using a power supply without a low voltage cut-out, you must monitor the battery voltage and when it reaches 10.5V, turn off the loads.

When the loads are turned off, or when the low-voltage disconnect has been activated, the battery voltage will increase slightly. This is normal.

9. Repeat steps 4-7 once or twice more.
10. The battery capacity learning process is now complete.

This process allows the Drifter to figure out what full and empty is and calculate the actual capacity of the battery fitted. If for any reason step 8 is not performed, steps 1 to 6 MUST be done to get a reasonable state of charge reading.