Congrats on the DIY battery adventure. I'm currently top balancing 32 cells to assemble my two battery banks. When it comes to sourcing battery cells, I found over the past several years that most of the old China sources that seemed trustworthy, or are mentioned in product teardowns of good batteries, now have US inventory vs. praying the boat comes in.
I went with new cells from an existing US DIY battery company, there are many. I'm building a system that needs to last a long time and didn't want to risk saving a buck or two coming from China and have mismatched or questionable cells. I'm not saying throw money away, but if you know how much your product is selling for elsewhere, you can make a decision whether or not to spend a little extra for value like US stock, free shipping, free hardware (fasteners, busbars, spacers, etc.). Since 2021 my experience would be that prices have come down significantly in the past two years.
Over 2 years I've been reading, following, and watching videos from content creators that resonated with me. I have a friend that's a couple years ahead of me in DIY and we talk lessons learned often. I've had large FLA systems in the past (12V, 24V, 48V). You comment there's too much data to know the good stuff. My advice (yeah, another opinion... lol), is that at some point you'll develop a sense of what's BS and what catches your attention as fact because others have shared the same. During this time you may find that all of the different sources of information will have some content that is repeated from different sources, and is based on testing and reviews. That's the good stuff there because you'll have learned enough to recognize when experienced/reputable people are sharing valid information. That's when I felt enabled and knew enough to be dangerous to my checkbook. At some point we all have to take the leap... Imperfect action is still progress!
I've always paid attention to what type of equipment is used for the application, then the brand. I'm migrating from standalone toroidal transformer inverter/chargers to a "hybrid" system that has full bluetooth, WiFi access etc. and not all BMS do that. I also developed a feel for the good, bad, and ugly of BMS land by reading and participating in forums like this one. I even have a couple friends that went cheap and had problems. It taught me to get what worked for my scenario AND seemed to work for others in the same scenario. I'd say JK is on the higher end of configuration customization, but also has a reputation of reliability when running outside a closed loop system (my scenario). Do people report problems? I've never met a human that didn't have some kind of gripe at one time or another.... It does take some technical knowledge to understand and feel confident the settings. BMS at this level aren't really "plug and play." I really liked OverKill Solar and their custom control app, but their next generation high power 48V product is still in development. I also looked into REC remote contactor BMS systems but I didn't see the value in my situation because they can be five times the money. Along those lines, marine applications taught me a TON because they can't fail when your sailboat is in the middle of the ocean.
I guess I'm trying to emphasize that you're probably close to finding and knowing what the good stuff is, maybe start pulling the strings of what you're trying to accomplish, what it's needs are, and see what's attached to "the good stuff" information. The brands and models will expose themselves. When something clicks, you'll say yeah that's the one.
Yes, I talk too much!
