The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning

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Bafang Programming Adapter: More Cable Colors

In the process of installing a Bafang BBS02 mid-drive motor on a friend’s diamond-frame bike, I discovered, once again, how little anybody cares about the colors inside cables:

Bafang Display Extension Cable - internal colors
Bafang Display Extension Cable – internal colors

The cheerful rainbow on the right is the stub end of the Bafang display extension cable I built into the previous adapter.

The new cable on the left seemed like it might match the canonical colors:

Bafang BBS02 display cable pinout
Bafang BBS02 display cable pinout

It comes heartbreakingly close:

Bafang Display Cable - extension colors
Bafang Display Cable – extension colors

Brown and Orange connect as the naive user might expect, which does reduce the likelihood of incinerating the motor controller / USB adapter / laptop by connecting the 48 V battery directly to the logic-level electronics.

However, White wasn’t on the original menu, Green is now TXD, and Black has become, comfortingly, GND.

Verily, it is written: Hell hath no fury like that of an unjustified assumption.

This socket connector has a watertight shell making it extremely difficult to mate and unmate with the pin connector on the bike. Watertightness being unnecessary, a little razor-knife action seems in order:

Bafang Display Extension Cable - shroud trimming
Bafang Display Extension Cable – shroud trimming

Visually, they’re both green-ish, but sometimes the Pixel camera accentuates any differences.

Comments

2 responses to “Bafang Programming Adapter: More Cable Colors”

  1. Bafang BBS02 Programming Adapter: CP2102 Version – The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning Avatar

    […] cable on the right goes to the motor controller through the display pigtail cable, sporting colors from a parallel […]

  2. Bafang BBS02: Assist Power Levels – The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning Avatar

    […] while generating the BLDC waveforms, but the values may not be available to the display at the end of the cable. If Bafang documented the commands & responses, we’d know for sure, but they […]