Parts Picker?

[nictrix]

Hi all, as I search for parts for a build, I'm building out spreadsheets for each part with the manufacturers, searching this forum (reviews), etc... this reminds me of when I started building computers in the 90s. Is there any part picker software out there, something similar to this website's features: https://pcpartpicker.com/ ?

The ability to pick parts then find parts that are compatible would be a great time-saver, including having pricing all at once.

 

[svetz]

Not to my very limited knowledge. Usually people have a hard enough time just researching the parts to narrow down the ones they want that will work for their specific install. Once they have that, searching out the prices for those parts is probably considered the easy part.

 

[RickP]

I haven’t seen anything closer than some of Will’s solar projects. It’s really tough to keep up with parts and availability in solar gear. Web sites and suppliers also come and go like comets, so you’re left with recommending what can be reliably found... and still dead links and the like occur.

There are good assessment tools that point you in the right direction, as far as your needs based on your intended or current use. But even those don’t point you to specific solutions. Perhaps this would be a good future DIY community project idea!

 

[UncleTodo]

OMG, partspicker solar edition would be awesome!
There isn't, well I haven't found, any one definitive guide to setting up solar.
After looking into a small system for my van off and on over the last several months, I stumbled on Will's DCC50S video and joined, and now joining makes me feel right back at square one again with all I didn't know.

 

[nictrix]

Thanks for the replies, seems to be a need for this type of service, even after going to the Noah's Ark - links on it are already out of date (not the author's fault at all), it appears to take a lot of effort and maintenance to watch this market.

I think starting at batteries would make the most sense? Do LifePo4 first, from all manufacturers; whether they are resellers or not. It would be interesting to store this data and watch historically what stays around, what is renamed/re-branded, etc.. This would help make better decisions. What I really like to take from Noah's Ark is storing/hashing the images, descriptions on each product's page and begin comparing them to each other.

I have a list of attributes for LifePo4, a spreadsheet for many of them on Alibaba; maybe I'll take a shot at this.

 

[nictrix]

Took a quick pass at this, it's a mostly functioning application - with some mocks, but those are easy to make functional.

 

[vanyouhandleit]

@nictrix looks cool; do you have something on GitHub for this?

 

[Hedges]

There are some tools for specific portions of the design.

I previously used SMA's tool to design PV strings feeding grid-tie inverters. It supported all their inverters and what was probably all PV panels known to mankind at the time. It included temperature adjustments for your location, made sure max/min voltage and wattage of the array was compatible with the inverter.

This appears to be a more recent incarnation:

SUNNY DESIGN for quick and comfortable design of PV systems

Sunny Design ☀ makes designing PV systems very convenient. ► Simply open it in your web browser or on your tablet and enter all the required information.

www.sma-america.com

 

[nictrix]

@nictrix looks cool; do you have something on GitHub for this?

@vanyouhandleit Unfortunately, I cannot put it on public Github, as I used a boilerplate system to get it up and running, but I have done some more work on it and will send an update soon.

@Hedges - thanks for the link, I tried it out - they really do have every PV panel manufacturer you can think of; however the battery products seem to be specific to their products only. Great software to design with though!

 

[nictrix]

In between the holidays, I was able to get something running:

https://solarpartspicker.com/

The purpose is to add batteries from sellers, track their prices, and keep them up-to-date through a community effort and some automation. The hope is to add enough filtering and data to easily make decisions on batteries without searching for them in many locations. More of a long term goal would be to add on solar panels, wiring, etc... to piece together an entire system, with some compatibility/recommendations.

This is brand new, please throw some constructive criticism my way, especially on the battery specs - what's not needed, what's missing, what needs to change.

 

[Dzl]

I really like the cleanness and intuitiveness of the site, it looks really good, and its a good idea.
Below are my initial thoughts and concerns, take them with a grain of salt, I have not had time to think them through.

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I like this project, it could help a lot of people, but it will be a lot of work if it is too broad, and there are some issues with the market that will make apples / apples comparisons somewhat difficult. It may be better to start off with a more limited scope (e.g. batteries not raw cells, or US stock (assuming thats where you are located) only or something along those lines) and see how it scales.

For the last 6 months or so I have just been trying to catalogue the raw cell manufacturers and keep track of the 5 or so most popular (on this forum) BMS manufacturers and have found even that to be a lot to keep up with (of course it wasn't crowd sourced). The main problems are it is a very opaque market with a lot of misinformation and misrepresentation and it is a technical subject but a lot of things have not been standardized so it takes a lot of digging and comparing.

Some of the barriers / issues I see with your project (assuming scope is not scaled back):

1. Variations in cell quality / cell grade with no easy heuristic to determine this easily.
2. Another is that there are many many resellers and rebrands are ubiquitous and often masquerade as manufacturers which will be hard to keep up with, so you will have to make a decision on whether to focus on actual manufacturers and legit brands or also include resellers/rebrands and deal with the fragmentation that comes with that.
3. Consider removing cycle life unless or until you find a way to standardize it. Cycle life is not really a variable that can be easily compared between manufacturers. There are two major issues, it is not standardized between manufacturers and it is not easily verifiable for years. Cycle life testing is extrapolated from cycle life testing, the conditions for this testing vary from manufacturer to manufacturer, sometimes substantially. In my opinion it is not a very useful (and potentially very misleading) metric. Some manufacturers are more rigorous than others, some are more conservative than others. It is not a parameter that can be easily communicated with a single number. The situation gets even worse if you start looking at what rebrands and resellers sometimes claim.
4. Shipping. Shipping is a substantial portion of the total cost when buying from China. I see you have at least one listing that does not consider shipping cost. Getting accurate total cost on alibaba usually requires messaging the seller and asking for a quote. And without total cost including shipping, tariffs, etc, the price comparison is not meaningful as these additional costs can come close to doubling overall cost.
5. As a reality check / cautionary note on the open crowdsourced concept, bear in mind that we as a community have a very shallow and often overly optimistic average depth of knowledge about this market and about what we are purchasing. Some folks here have a great amount of knowledge, and many more folks have a moderate amount of knowledge, but most people are for the most part repeating what they have heard others say which is often inaccurate. To put this into perspective, I just looked at the top dozen or so threads for the EVE cells, they have over 300,000 views, but the datasheet for these cells has been downloaded only 451 times (and no joke, I probably account for >25% of those ) . Some sort of mechanism of corroboration or verification or attaching sources might be worthwhile
6. Use datasheets for spec's whenever possible, generally they are the best and most reliable place to look for accurate, specific info. But pay attention to the details

Use datasheets for spec's whenever possible, generally they are the best and most reliable place to look for accurate, specific info. But pay attention to the details. Actually it might be a good idea to require or at least allow spec sheets to be attached to each entry.

Before going all in on this (and I do really like the idea and want it to be successful), I think that it would be constructive to really consider scope, as well as to brainstorm on what parameters are most meaningful to compare between manufacturers.

 

[nictrix]

Thank you @Dzl - you are describing the exact issues I've been fighting myself on as I wrote it. For example, the choice between using ready to go batteries vs raw cells is not one I made yet, your feedback should help determine this (it could be as easy as having a checkbox splitting the two apart)

I agree datasheets are a must, it's why I added them as an option to upload and view, I've also seen some forum threads on specific questions to ask manufacturers - I've written those questions down to try and standardize on the approach of having an equal amount of information for each record.

1. Cell quality/cell grade comparisons will have to come from reviews, unfortunately. Possibly we ask for verified buyers of the cells and follow up with them down the road on results.
2. Your right, the scope needs to get smaller, raw cell manufacturers should be given their own section. However, we should link* raw cell manufacturers to the batteries. In regards to resellers of those raw cells, we have to take what the market dishes out; potentially make note of it as being a retailer/ reseller / rebrand vs. direct from the manufacturer
3. I've taken note of the cycle issue - definitely is missing from some, and wrong on other sellers. Unnecessary to compare with at this time.
4. Noted on the shipping - this will be an on-going struggle to keep those up to date, some automation will help. I also added an option in the quotes section to add a quote document for verification.

Taking note of removing cycle from comparisons, I can add in additional parameters for comparisons, any thoughts on which would be good items to compare on that left side menu filter? I have a listing below but can add on others. (I find maximum charge/pulse/continuous to be difficult to get also)

company, brand, origin, certification, chemistry, weight, width, length, height, terminal_type, color, battery_type, warranty, internal_impedance, maximum_continuous_charge, maximum_pulse_discharge, maximum_charge, charge_voltage, discharge_voltage, minimum_charging_temperature, maximum_charging_temperature, minimum_discharging_temperature, maximum_discharging_temperature

 

[Dzl]

Taking note of removing cycle from comparisons, I can add in additional parameters for comparisons, any thoughts on which would be good items to compare on that left side menu filter? I have a listing below but can add on others. (I find maximum charge/pulse/continuous to be difficult to get also)

company, brand, origin, certification, chemistry, weight, width, length, height, terminal_type, color, battery_type, warranty, internal_impedance, maximum_continuous_charge, maximum_pulse_discharge, maximum_charge, charge_voltage, discharge_voltage, minimum_charging_temperature, maximum_charging_temperature, minimum_discharging_temperature, maximum_discharging_temperature

This list looks very good

Add recommended charge and discharge as parameters.
These are useful parameters as they indicate what a manufacturer recommends, and what will maximize cycle life as well as other benefits. Most or all datasheets state this. Newbies have a tendency to focus on max continuous (which is useful to know) and overlook recommended charge/discharge rates.

A note on pulse_discharge,
many manufacturers will specify short pulse and long pulse durations (which are not standardized durations from what I can tell--I just checked two datasheets Ganfeng: short=60s long=120s, CALB SE: short=30s long=180s)

I had written some other feedback, but decided to hold off for now and ponder a bit first.

 

[nictrix]

Haven't been able to get back to this since holiday. It's up and running, but I need a driving force of people wanting to use it or to help each other out. Other than additional features to be added, I wonder what other very quick wins/features could be helpful to convince them to use it? Maybe it's not useful, or I just need to find a way to increase the data on it...