Recent content by ed209

I needed the battery for a trip, so was forced to do things quickly which was great for bypassing perfectionism. Shifted the battery to the right Added a slot-in wooden spacer to hold the cells in place Added protective sleeving to the BMS balance wires Added squishy rubber strips between the...

I’M BACK! The hardest part about projects is picking them up again after a long break. The second hardest part is cutting holes in new equipment. Due to vehicle changes I no longer have to fit the Renogy unit inside the box. Everything will run off a single Anderson 120 plug built into the...

My take on the 400w Solaria panel install, on a 144” wheelbase van. Thanks again @blutow for sharing! I’m using a cheap knockoff version of the diyvan brackets, which were about ~$100 for three sets.

@blutow How is your panel holding up? And what did you use for the center support block? Thanks for sharing your work. I just picked one up, and going to install “soonish”

Chiming in on alternator charging: I saw a video where a user added the smart alternator wires with a standard alternator, because it would then cut out solar charging and allow full 50 amp charging from the alternator. As far as solar input voltage, what’s the best way to reduce incoming...

Spec I found online is 1.96 kg, or 4.32 lbs.

Awesome! I like the way you did your bus bars, lots of flexibility. I’m in the middle of moving so my project is on hold for a while :(

Everyone: LiFePO4 batteries have a very flat voltage curve Me: Yep, sounds good. My batteries are pretty close to full so I'll just top balance with this dinky charger instead of wasting time reassembling the pack. 6 days later.... finally starting to get near 3.5 volts. Adding an open...

They make battery disconnect switches that are pretty compact and enclosed. If you use it a lot that might be a more durable option. Search for "mini battery cutoff switch"

You're welcome -- it's also to keep me motivated between project time (day jobs are such a drag :)) The batteries are gorgeous but they aren't as easy to work with as prismatics, where the leads are on the same side. I'll have more details of my box in a few weeks as I start the fitment...

@Baserati How did it end up working? I have a similar situation where I want to feed a 12v cigarette port through a constant current voltage booster to an MPPT controller. I'm building a battery that has alternator and solar charging. In my vehicle I have alternator charging set up. When I...

Fun fact: my charger's time and mAh readings top out at 65535 (2^16 including 0) Time gets stuck at 92:15 which is 1000 minutes (rollover) + 92 minutes + 15 seconds = 65535 seconds

Top balancing cells with my little hobby charger. I can't get it to push more than 3 amps so this is going to take a while (I forgot to fully charge it while assembled). Since it's an actual charger and not a power supply, I do feel comfortable letting it run all night unattended... famous...

Good luck with that. Hopefully it’s just their BMS setup and not the cells themselves, since they specifically mention not discharging them low.

FYI: https://media.gm.com/media/us/en/gm/home.detail.html/content/Pages/news/us/en/2021/aug/0820-bolt.html All Bolts are up for recall.