Valence XP Super Thread

make note that when I connected the 5 volts from my USB to the battery I had very inconsistent results and often would not connect. Using a single 18 650 to supply 4 volts to the battery worked great. Also I could use the USB power if I installed the terminating resistor.

Got my new adapter today (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B077ZM1PSG/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) and after going through the driver installation process it connected right up with no issues.
I have a couple questions- my apologies if the answers are in the battery manual- it's good to have this stuff in a forum for others to see and I'll go read the manual while waiting for a response.
1. Of my 8 cells, most were at 33% SOC, while one was at 99% and one was at 40%. Once I had active communication going another one came up to 99% quickly... is this just part of the balancing process? I assume they will all be the same once balancing is complete? They continue to balance as I type.
2. In the "Battery Info" tab all batteries show a red cell and "Communication Error". Can I assume this is because they have been in use for a couple weeks without a computer connection or BMS?
3. Did anyone else order the BMS from China via ebay that Travis posted? If so, how long did it take to arrive? Or are you still waiting?
Thanks for all the help and feedback.

mannytheseacow said:

Got my new adapter today (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B077ZM1PSG/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) and after going through the driver installation process it connected right up with no issues.
I have a couple questions- my apologies if the answers are in the battery manual- it's good to have this stuff in a forum for others to see and I'll go read the manual while waiting for a response.
1. Of my 8 cells, most were at 33% SOC, while one was at 99% and one was at 40%. Once I had active communication going another one came up to 99% quickly... is this just part of the balancing process? I assume they will all be the same once balancing is complete? They continue to balance as I type.
2. In the "Battery Info" tab all batteries show a red cell and "Communication Error". Can I assume this is because they have been in use for a couple weeks without a computer connection or BMS?
3. Did anyone else order the BMS from China via ebay that Travis posted? If so, how long did it take to arrive? Or are you still waiting?
Thanks for all the help and feedback.

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I ordered a couple of the China units now they're out of stock. the communication plus and minus on my Chinese units appear opposite of the one in your link. They didn't take long to get to Hawaii I think they were actually shipping from the USA.
You said 8 cell blocks or 8 batteries? I assume you mean 8 batteries. the manual talks all about when the state of charge will show 100%. As you're discharging the board inside the battery will not reduce the percentage unless it's tethered to a laptop or u BMS.
There are some parameters about when the state of charge will show 100. Basically when you're charging and the cells are all over 3.4 and amperage is under a certain number the state of charge will jump to 100 even if it was coming from 30%. Basically the state of charge resets and gets recalibrated when the board in the battery realizes that it actually IS full and very roughly balanced.
some of the batteries that were sold the first week I did not get a chance to balance myself. I have been finding that about three out of every 24 batteries need to stay in the balancing State 4 days after fully charged in order for a Cell Block to catch up. The bleed off resistors are quite small. Then after some discharge capacity testing and recharging they stay balanced. It seems like they must have been sitting a long time and some cell blocks had faster self discharge rates than others. The manual recommends balancing at least once a month.
sometimes during this first long balance charge I get impatient when I'm waiting for a cell block to catch up and I take the side cover off and charge it directly with 3.65 volts.
You said you have some red cells? Are you talking about in the top left in the voltages square where it says cell bank1, cell Bank 2, cell Bank 3, cell bank 4...? Red is bad. Pink is sort of okay but red normally means your voltage is over 4v on a cell and this could earn you a battery over-voltage strike in the Life Time counter.
Communication error? Mine always says in pink "communication error." actually when I first plug it in it says no error and then after only a couple of seconds when the boxes are updating continuously suddenly they'll blink just for a brief second as if it had a communication error and then they continue just fine. And that's when the communication error shows up in pink and it stays pink like that but keeps working fine. maybe there is a fancy way to stop it from happening like changing the bod rate or something but I'm not a computer whiz. I'm not worried about it. I've left my batteries connected to the laptop for over a week while charging and balancing and never had to restart the program or anything as long as I avoid installing other programs and stuff. It just kept on balancing and showing active battery info in all the boxes.
I've got my balancing location set up on grid. The first time I charge I'm using 3 amps and I'm only able to get up to around 14v safely without pushing one cell over-voltage and that's with balancing active. I have to let it stay at 14 volts for about 10 hours. Next I carefully watch each cell's voltage and so that no cell gets over 3.8 during the next steps. I push it up to 14.2v and finally the amperage falls down to about 0.25 amps and then I can slowly start raising the voltage over the next three days. Eventually I can get the voltage all the way up to 14.55 without any cell going over 3.65 volts and that's when I know they're finally truly balanced. I'm trying to hook up about 100 batteries at my house but I want them all balanced first and I'm still not finished. The Balancing resistors are tiny. You can put your finger right on them and they won't burn you. I think they can only bleed off about 0.25amps and so the first time these get balanced it's taking forever. If you take the side cover off you'll see the balancing connector looks like a standard hobby charger shape. I think if I were to purchase a bunch of 4 cell balancers like for the hobby crowd it would probably plug right in and have bleed off resistors that are capable of higher amperage but I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to be patient this first go-around because I don't want to purchase that many hobby balancers LOL.

mannytheseacow said:

Got my new adapter today (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B077ZM1PSG/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) and after going through the driver installation process it connected right up with no issues.
I have a couple questions- my apologies if the answers are in the battery manual- it's good to have this stuff in a forum for others to see and I'll go read the manual while waiting for a response.
1. Of my 8 cells, most were at 33% SOC, while one was at 99% and one was at 40%. Once I had active communication going another one came up to 99% quickly... is this just part of the balancing process? I assume they will all be the same once balancing is complete? They continue to balance as I type.
2. In the "Battery Info" tab all batteries show a red cell and "Communication Error". Can I assume this is because they have been in use for a couple weeks without a computer connection or BMS?
3. Did anyone else order the BMS from China via ebay that Travis posted? If so, how long did it take to arrive? Or are you still waiting?
Thanks for all the help and feedback.

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I assume you're in Hawaii if you want I could come over and give you some pointers on it. I've been staring at this Valence screen for 6 hours out of every day this month.

I do not have any red boxes on the Valence software, just the pink “communication error” box. Like you said, when I first reconnected this morning it didn’t show the error but then after a few minutes shows again. I’ll ignore it. Otherwise things seem fine.

The usb communication dongle that I linked does indeed have the labels reversed on their diagram. The voltage out seems reliable and I’ve not had any problems with it yet or been required to use another battery for communication power.

I ordered the U-bms from China or us... wherever it comes from. They said it shipped weeks ago. This virus is making my overall system install take for ever.
Thanks again for the help, Travis. After reading your follow-up and the battery manual I’m left with the impression that there’s no way to really get a live accurate reading of my battery bank’s overall charge state? I miss my old $20 MPPT on a couple marine batteries that just said “80%” charged or whatever it would be. Just a simple way to look at a screen and see what my overall levels are. My gut feeling is my bank of Valence is pretty much fully charged all the time and I’m not even touching their storage capacity with my small daily use. But it would be nice to be able to know for sure.

mannytheseacow said:

I ordered the U-bms from China or us... wherever it comes from. They said it shipped weeks ago. This virus is making my overall system install take for ever.
Thanks again for the help, Travis. After reading your follow-up and the battery manual I’m left with the impression that there’s no way to really get a live accurate reading of my battery bank’s overall charge state? I miss my old $20 MPPT on a couple marine batteries that just said “80%” charged or whatever it would be. Just a simple way to look at a screen and see what my overall levels are. My gut feeling is my bank of Valence is pretty much fully charged all the time and I’m not even touching their storage capacity with my small daily use. But it would be nice to be able to know for sure.

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If you leave the laptop on long enough eventually the cells will become balanced and when all the right parameters are met all of the batteries will read 100%. then if you leave the laptop on while you're discharging the percentages will accurately reduce as you drain the batteries. I'm really excited to hear how the China BMS does for you.

So if my laptop is connected all the time is that $600 u-bms doing anything?

mannytheseacow said:

So if my laptop is connected all the time is that $600 u-bms doing anything?

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The laptop is just for seeing what's going on, the BMS will actually trigger the relays/contactors to cut off the loads for under/over voltage and probably can be used to control when to turn on/off chargers.

mannytheseacow said:

So if my laptop is connected all the time is that $600 u-bms doing anything?

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Yes ... All of this info I have talked about in the first three posts & its in the manual. Having the laptop connected only enables the built in cell block balancers. The BMS does a lot more. It will turn on and off a high amperage relay to disconnect the battery Bank when there is over under voltage and over amperage conditions. It will also enable battery to battery balancing. The built-in boards have battery balancing bleed off resistors in addition to the cell block resistors. Because of the way the balancing boards operate The battery balancing is very important because the cell block bleed off resistors will not activate themselves because of a high-voltage condition. That's the job of the battery to battery bleed-off resistors. Most other brands will activate their bleed-off resistors all on their own in an over voltage situation. However the valence XP relies on the BMS

Hi Travis, great post and information! I am based im the Uk and looking to get a u27-12xp for my camper. I can only find black ones which only have a 130ah capacity. I wondered if you had any thoughts or opinions on the black ones? Are they mostly the same? Worth trying to get a green one? I cantnfind5a data sheet anywhere!

Mrdanielmh said:

Hi Travis, great post and information! I am based im the Uk and looking to get a u27-12xp for my camper. I can only find black ones which only have a 130ah capacity. I wondered if you had any thoughts or opinions on the black ones? Are they mostly the same? Worth trying to get a green one? I cantnfind5a data sheet anywhere!

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I don't have any experience with the black ones. The manual for the green ones does mention it's upgrades over the black ones. It says. "
3. U-CHARGE REVISION 2 CHANGES AND UPDATES
3.1. U-Charge Rev 2
U-Charge Battery Modules:
• Communication cable connectors are now Amp Superseal automotive grade connectors
• Electrical and software backwards compatibility
• Communication cables and electronics are now field replaceable.
• Event logging capability has been added to the Battery electronics
• Balance current has been increased, reducing balancing time
• The handle on the U27, U24, and UEV models is now replaceable and removable
• The indicator LED is now moved to be more accessible when hold down features are used in a
system
• Module serial numbers are reported to the BMS
• Tamper proof features on the enclosure
Battery Management System (BMS):
• Fully sealed case to protect connections
• All low voltage communication, signal, and control lines are made through Amp Superseal
automotive grade connectors
• Tamper proof features on the enclosure
Accessories:
• Over molded bus termination connectors available
• Inter-battery bus supply voltage booster for large strings, available
• Communication connector adaptor for backwards compatibility to Rev 1"

Perfect thank you!

Travis -- this is incredible work you've put together! Thanks to you and everyone before you putting all this research into the batteries! Great to have this in one spot!

WinnieVan said:

Travis -- this is incredible work you've put together! Thanks to you and everyone before you putting all this research into the batteries! Great to have this in one spot!

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It appears as though the balancing board is active and enabled and working anytime the battery is communicating with something. So to answer your question about some kind of slave device to turn on and off with the ignition I would say yes. That should be possible. The U-BMS that muller industries sales would do exactly that. It even has an input pin to come from the ignition switch. It's expensive though.
If you want a do-it-yourself project based off a inexpensive little computer I have a feeling that this percentage gauge will get the job done. Click on this link will take you to a thread where a guy is using a small screen to communicate with the battery and show the percentage of charge.
You could connect the power for this little computer device to the battery and connect the power for the screen to the ignition switch and also to a momentary override switch so that you could check the state of charge anytime by pushing a button. The thing you have to realize though is that whatever is communicating needs to continue to communicate at all times during discharge otherwise the battery will not count the power coming out of it. in other words the percentage of state of charge will not remain accurate and will not drop when you're using power unless communication is active.
maybe you're not concerned with the state of charge being accurate in that case this device could be on only when you're concerned about balancing and that would probably get the job done. another thing to note is the balancers are slow so after a full charge you should leave the communication on until balancing is complete. This could take many hours and I think this is the reason the manual says you must let the voltage relax naturally without drawing any power from the batteries after reaching full charge.

Let me know if you try it. These are only my educated guesses I haven't actually tried it.

WinnieVan said:

Travis -- this is incredible work you've put together! Thanks to you and everyone before you putting all this research into the batteries! Great to have this in one spot!

Click to expand...

Perhaps one of the cheapest $250 manufactured devices to enable balancing between cell blocks would be this one. however it will not balance module to module so it's only good for people running all parallel systems.

Doh -- I edited my post and lost the text since I was trying to put it in a different thread too....

I imagine doing this would basically ensure that my batteries are always balanced since I drive my RV a lot. Basically just a slave unit that connects to the batteries while the vehicle is on.

That in conjunction with a smart charger that provides over-voltage protection (Renogy DC-DC MPPT for me) and a Victron battery protect for 12v loads and a low voltage shutoff on the inverter for 120V loads would make these things pretty much fool proof -- at least for parallel connections. Obviously would love over current/temp/etc. protection if we end up getting that far -- but for my use -- I'm mostly doing parallel connections.

I should stock up on these batteries now -- I imagine the demand is going to skyrocket for these things if an open source and easy to build BMS becomes available!

Hope you find some time to keep working on it -- I'm good with computers but the code is hard for me to follow as I have absolutely zero experience with CANBUS. Happy to help where I can -- I'll peruse the code here shortly to see if I can understand what is going on logically.

Awesome work everyone -- this is what makes the internet so great.

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Yeah -- I've seen that VC1 BMS.. definitely a possibility. My charger only goes to 14.4V and honestly I don't cycle my batteries that often -- so I reckon I'd be fine just "manually" balancing them by plugging them into a computer every-so-often.. or I could just let it ride... I reckon it'd be fine!!

It seems there is an abundance of high voltage U-bms's available. I have six of them. With a lot of help and some Bitcoin I have successfully reconfigured one for not just high voltage but super high voltage 550v. LOL and I'm using it now. I'm utilizing the pre-charge contactor as well. I think it can be reconfigured for a low voltage setup that's what I'll try next. 48v

I’ve had my laptop connected about a month now nonstop and two of my batteries won’t balance. They both have one cell bank that won’t go above 3.3v. I’m guessing this is why the batteries were retired. Has anyone else experienced this?

Also, if anyone else is tired of having their computer reserved for battery monitoring- I found a small Nextbook on eBay for $20 running windows 7 and it makes a really cheap/effective way to run the valence software 24/7.

mannytheseacow said:

I’ve had my laptop connected about a month now nonstop and two of my batteries won’t balance. They both have one cell bank that won’t go above 3.3v. I’m guessing this is why the batteries were retired. Has anyone else experienced this?

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just being connected won't activate the balancing. You also have to bring the voltage up until you see some of the cells start balancing. The cell voltage indicator will be highlighted in blue when the balance resistor is active for that cell block. Normally between 13.8 and 14.6 volts is when you'll first start getting cells that need balanced. At any rate as long as you're above 14 volts the balancing should be initiated for sure and it might take five days holding it there. You can also take the side cover off if you get impatient and inject voltage directly to that sell block to catch it up. Once it's caught up it should remain in balance as long as you do a monthly balance. If it doesn't then there is a problem. Balancing every month won't take 5 days each time. Probably just a couple hours.

Travis said:

just being connected won't activate the balancing. You also have to bring the voltage up until you see some of the cells start balancing. The cell voltage indicator will be highlighted in blue when the balance resistor is active for that cell block. Normally between 13.8 and 14.6 volts is when you'll first start getting cells that need balanced. At any rate as long as you're above 14 volts the balancing should be initiated for sure and it might take five days holding it there. You can also take the side cover off if you get impatient and inject voltage directly to that sell block to catch it up. Once it's caught up it should remain in balance as long as you do a monthly balance. If it doesn't then there is a problem. Balancing every month won't take 5 days each time. Probably just a couple hours.

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Hmm, I’m not sure I agree. The valence software has been communicating this whole time and indicates that balancing is active. I’ve watched the other 6 batteries balance out and seem to be working just fine but the other two are stuck on one individual cell bank. The batteries themselves stay at 13.8 - 14.1 v.

mannytheseacow said:

Hmm, I’m not sure I agree. The valence software has been communicating this whole time and indicates that balancing is active. I’ve watched the other 6 batteries balance out and seem to be working just fine but the other two are stuck on one individual cell bank. The batteries themselves stay at 13.8 - 14.1 v.

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Yep you've described exactly what I've experienced except I've taken it one step further and let it balance for a very long time. You should read back I've gone into detail about it. It seems like two out of every 50 batteries need a lengthy balance. If you got them from me feel free to bring them over and I'll balance them for you or replace them if I can't.

Great job with this thread Travis and everyone else chiming in with knowledge! I swear I have looked this thread and all other XP threads I could find and I don't think I have come across a definitive response to several folks asking similar questions regarding the BMS. An answer to my question below would be greatly appreciated.
I will be installing among other ancillary parts/pieces the following on my 1990 Class C Ford Econoline Camper/Truck
1. Renegy 300W Premium kit (40A MPPT charge controller)
2. 2000 W Pure Sine Wave Inverter
3. (1) XP 27 138AH battery------hopefully upgrading to 2 and maybe 3 batteries down the road

If I am connecting only a single battery now and in parallel down the road for a maximum of 3 but most likely 2, do I really need to have a BMS or a laptop with XP7 or can I allow my Charge Controller or a cheaper external battery monitor do what the BMS is intended for? Everything I think I've understood is that the BMS is only needed if hooking up in Series or for a large number of batteries?

A thorough reply so I can understand would be greatly appreciated as I am a neophyte to solar/batteries for the most part.

Thanks in advance for any and all responses and thanks for creating this forum Will!! You da man!