Hello everyone ! This is my 1st post on DIY Solar Forum.
I am getting the solar hype (i bet y'all know how it feels like) on my little weekend house (15km away from my apartment - still prefer the apartment - house is smaller in interior space).
I got 4KW worth of solar panels, PIP 11KW max inverter (wanted most powerful single phase all-in-one inverter that i could get my hands on), and 16x EVE LF280K LiFePO4 cells (~ 14KW) , ofc accompanied by JK BMS - the
almost perfect BMS out there ( JK - B2A24S20P ).
I am completely off the grid as of now (Grid breaker is off - inverter was pulling 35W at night for no reason (priority - SBU) and rest from batt).
And now ofc comes the desire to monitor everything remotely.
I got a RPi 4 connected via USB with the inverter - with SolarAssistant installed on it - very nice for the inverter side of the data.
And since JK BMS is not supported yet by them (i am emailing back and forth trying to convince them to implement it - even pointed them to the python BLE library that wirelessly talks to it - we'll see if they finally do it).
For now i got an old android 5 tablet with remote software (AirDroid) and last version of JK-BMS that still works on
Android 5 ( 4.2.0 ) and it does the trick ... but only accessible from PC. I connect with anydesk to my PC when i am away - to see the airdroid window connected to the tablet ?.
Fiddly but it works ...
I'd love grabbing the raw data with the other RaspBerry pi (v3) i have laying around and put it in a grafana.
Ooooh i was curious about that! So u got it working? I never bought the RS485 module and have always just used BLE. I was the one who captured all the BLE packets for Jblance so I've been using it in production for more than a year now.
But recently I'm having BLE instability issues and was thinking about trying a wired solution instead, BLE appears to drop off when the BMS is hot, i was using all 200A output and it disconnected itself whilst the BMS is still running, when it cooled down BLE was back online again.
Holy Moly 200A ... i got to 8kw max - pulling 160A while testing everything and bms and wires got hot to the touch ( > 60 deg C ). I did not dare push it further.
Congrats for the packet capturing - i bow to you in the name of community.
Regarding the temperatures - i feel like the wires are what is causing it - 2 x 8 AWG is around ~ 20 mm2 of chinese silvery conductor with thin strands and insufficient for the rated 200A
I bought a second bms (just to mod it - FOR NOW) that i intend to use for 2nd battery bank in the autumn when i'll start heating with electricity.
I intend to de-solder original bms wires and solder 2 x 25mm2 ( 4 AWG) and i hope bms will stay cold - this will most likely fix your issue too
@lonertic
I will have to enlarge case holes and pcb cutoffs for it, but i think it will worth it ... i will replace the current BMS and find out.
If you wish i will post here as well with the results.
Then i will want to do the BLE monitoring one way or the other.
Sorry for the huge post i still feel like i barely scratched the surface about everything i went through (i managed to disbalance the cells but then i balanced them back without taking the pack apart)
I wish you all lots of sun and perfectly balanced cells !
Daniel.