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I would prefer a battery be a battery. If I want regulated output, I'll buy a product that does that. I imagine the folks that want regulated output probably want some connectors other than raw battery terminals. Now you're starting to talk about an "electric generator", which is an integrated...

I see. Thinking back to when I did mine I trusted the on-off switch on the Victron. So initial hookup for testing (and final) went like this: Cover off, power switch off. confirm switch. Nothing connected to Victron Hook up DC +, Using a 20Ω resistor, hook up DC - by hand (holding resistor in...

Bulk Is for faster charging. On any reasonable charger, "Bulk" really shouldn't be "constant voltage NO MATTER HOW MUCH current". It's really "current no higher than X with a voltage no higher than Y". This is usually called constant current (CC) X should be no more than the max charging amps...

Agree, it's not perfect. I bought that Perko compact you suggested in the pre-charge thread, but for the setup I have, I thought it was too big to fit in the space.

Yup, just to recap. 1) 250W AC heater. <- Make sure you inverter can handle this load. 2) To calculate "how much battery" you need to calculate two things, capacity and continuous current. Capacity 250W x 8hrs = 2000Wh. Divide by 70% (0.7) to account for inverter inefficiency and so you don't...

Trust the volt meter, not the lights. You didn't say what make and model your batteries are so we can't know what "the lights" mean. That sounds like some simple display on your batteries, which is going to be way less trustworthy than a reasonable multimeter.

Are you looking for a pre-built solution or are you looking for advice on how to build your own? If you want to build your own (please be careful, inverters have high voltage components!) here are some ideas. You'll probably need an MCU (like an Arduino) or maybe a Rapsberry Pi. This would...

I wish inverter companies would stop recommending this paired wired thing. IMO, substituting a pair of wires is asking for trouble. If one of the pair (on + or -) has a problem (loose crimp, bad connection at one end, etc) the other wire in the pair will have to handle the (at worst case) full...

If you want simple, I think you either have to have a parallel "trickle" circuit as @DThames says (either on all the time or on a switch) I've heard that some products use an NTC Thermistor From Wikipedia: I don't think anything else will work in series. If the parallel going to be automatic...

If you're looking to setup your own, or buy one, what you're looking for is often called "solar electric generator". It's a solar panel, solar charger, a battery, and an inverter I'm building a GoalZero-like portable power box (no Solar) and one of the planned uses is plugging in my HAM gear...

What gnubie said. Victron's gear is REALLY configurable. I bought one of their inverter/charger combo units and it lets me control charge current, various points in the charge program, and the minimum discharge level for the inverter side.

Any 6S LiPo Charger will go to 25.3V, some a little higher. But there are several 8S chargers available, all those would have cover at least up to 33.6V A few: Revolectrix PowerLab 8, FMA GT8 ISDT T8 (1000W for $100!) iCharger X8, 208B, 3010B <--- This is last one is 10S lipo or 12S LFE Or...

You're wiring the batteries in parallel, so you shouldn't need to balance across them, but I would put a fuse between the two batteries just in case one has a problem.

I'll confuse the issue a little bit :-) As Justin pointed out to me when we were going back and forth on a kit order he helped me with, the Victron 24/3000 is only $129.20 more than the 24/2000. The 3000VA is heavier, but only a bit larger. If you think you might want to go above 2000VA, it's a...

It feels like like you might be happy with a DIY "portable power station" or "solar generator" (use the forum search to find examples, Will has some recommendations too) except you don't really need the portable part. The basic components you're going to be shopping for are: * Solar panels * A...

Back about 12-13 years ago, I built a car PC with a touch screen LCD in place of the car stereo head unit and the PC in the trunk. For the PSU, the term that we used back then was DC-DC ATX PSU. If you search DC-DC ATX now, you'll get a few hits. It looks like mini-box.com and pico-box.com are...

You should look at a quality programmable charger from the R/C hobby. Most of the recent ones either have a LiFePo4 profile or can be programmed to do LiFePo4. Nearly all of the high quality ones are DC-DC chargers, so you'll need a AC->DC PSU. Lots of folks like MeanWell as a PSU brand. I have...

As I understand things, if you have multiple cells, what you need some of these things - low/high voltage disconnect, per cell - low/high current disconnect (maybe just overall, not per cell) Ideally, you would also get: - low temp disconnect on charging - cell balancing a BMS does all, but as...

Following up with what I ended up doing: I stayed with the existing gear in my OP (separate converter/charger, inverter, Arduino inside the converter/charger). I really wanted voltage monitoring to give a rough estimate of remaining battery, so I added some more modules to sense the DC power...

@Justin Laureltec Can you confirm? Can someone use an external BMS with the MultiPlus Compact and then the Lithium virtual assistant?

I was just looking for Arduino-based Kill-A-Watt clones, assuming I'd need something like that to do better logging, but then I remembered this thread. @SCClockDr : It looks like that DROK will store values even when powered off? If so, I'm just going to build one of these like you spec'd!

If you're looking to save costs, it is helpful to know how much power use. Things like lights are easy, if they're on, they're likely using the watts they say on the label, other equipment is harder. A residential refrigerator typically runs the compressor for a while, then is mostly dormant...

There is a community of Kill-A-Watt user modifications, but I've never looked at them in detail. Here's one that I've seen come up several times in the past: https://lowpowerlab.com/2012/12/28/wattmote-moteino-based-wireless-killawatt/

A few notes: From an efficiency standpoint, number 2 is the worst. The RockPals is converting DC (battery) to AC (thru the inverter) and then you would be converting back to DC. Why 13.8V vs 12V? Convention. Devices that are intended to run from a car's 12V electrical system have to handle a...

Not sure if this is the right forum, but "DIY PowerWalll" didn't seem right ever. Moderators, please move this if needed, or let me know and I'll repost somewhere else. I'm thinking about building a 24V 100Ah LFE pack for a "Goal Zero"-like portable power station. I would like at least 4kWh of...

Thanks for the reply @Craig. As I have more questions about this project, which sub-forum is the right one to use? It's sorta like a DIY Powerwall, but without the need to tying into the house panel or anything but the occasionally AC socket to charge.

From what I understand, this isn't the case on more modern cars. The electronics in the car muck with the alternator output, making it higher (>14V) to recharge the battery, but then back off if there is very little electrical load (no headlights, radio, etc) in order to save fuel.

I'm building a portable power box with LFE cells. It's sort of like a PowerWall, but not tied into the grid or the house permanently. It'll charge from a standard AC plug, stay charged most of the time and then I'll use it during blackouts, camping, etc. I'm sizing it for about 3-4kWh of usable...

Ya, that's a thing I've thought about. It's not as trivial as I'd like. I've got two groups of devices - Things that take DC-in (via wall warts): ISP gateway, router - Things that have multi-rail AC/DC: NAS and POE switch. The first group is pretty easy. Just provide DC-DC converters for the...

Ya, each mfg seems to have their own idea of configurability. I was surprised my VW eGolf had the following: - Set immediate charge level (go to X% as soon as you plug in) - Set recurring schedule for "be charged to X% (typically 90% or 100%, but could be something X) by 6AM M-F. I could have...