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Hey Sid, on those balancers, what awg size wire do I need to attach to each cell module? That way I have the wires already on them before the they get here.
Size of the wire is up to you, though I will recommend something bigger than 16AWG...especially if you plan on having the balancers mounted several feet from the batteries. I personally used 10AWG wire (partly 'cause that's what I had, lol), and that's what I recommended Sean to use. Heavier wire has the advantage of lower voltage drop, which becomes quite important especially when millivolts are very important, and multiple amps are involved.
The balancers themselves have a soldering pad roughly 3/8" x 3/16" in size, the positive to the left of the main transistor, and the negative to the right of the main transistor. This is a surface-mount pad, not a through-hole connection (to prevent accidental short circuits to the heatsink).
I do have to remember that written descriptions are very handy for someone who is visually impaired...
The balancers (LCD version) are very small, only 1 inch wide, 1.5 inches tall, and 3/8" thick, each unit. Of course, they must be mounted to a SUBSTANTIAL heatsink in order to handle the full rated 5A balance current without tripping. Sean used 6 balancers apiece on a Power Jack large heatsink (10.5 inches wide, 3 inches tall, 1 inch thick), and they overheated very easily without a fan on them.
I will plan to order these as soon as I get enough other things off my plate, then it's going to be at least 2 weeks manufacture/shipping. Currently trying to bang out code for the GS inverters--first shipment should arrive in Michigan this week after many frustrating months of delays, and I have to have as many of the promised features ready as possible.
Sid you mentioned to me maybe a tweaked or updated version of your balancer?
Yes. That's what I need to order. Just need to over the design with a fine toothed comb, then order them.
Also planning to order 2 different kinds: one with LCD display, and the other with just an "active" LED. If I ever get past working on code for the GS inverters 😉
Obviously, the LCD unit will be the fancier one, with serial communications, allowing connecting an entire string together for a BMS readout, and automatic overheat restart.
Thanks Sid for describing the layout. Well at lest soldering the wire will not be a issue, though with that soldering point, if its not pure copper, I can spot weld a tab of nickel witha bulk connector to save the headache of soldering, I can do it, since I got a soldering gun with trigger to push out the solder to the tip, but geesh, if its a small spot, try doing it blind folded lol. I don't solder on batteries any more, I just spot weld a nickle strip and attach the wire to it with a bulk connecotr, works fine, then I take a hot glue gun and coat the cell with the wire in it to keep it from moving at all.
Not had any issue doing it that way while pulling over 100 amp at 12v , I have up to 5 10 awg wire running to the batttery.
Only having a issue with soldering the main on these stupid bms that come with no main wire, found out had to get a real thick 8 awg wire almost to fill in the hole then solder from behind to lock it in place.
Oh, hey sid, do they make nickel wire connector tab by chance? I got a 48v bms here that has these real neat small half inch tabs holding both main wires to it, I can not seem to find such a thing.
Oh, on that note. is there any instruction's on how to use the wifi? I still not seen the web site nor a pp. I hope its a wifi you connect to on yoru phone or pc and then you go through a setup wizard or something. sort of like my brother printers. Maybe make them connect to smart things?
I have to admit that the Genetry Solar inverters are probably the most unfriendly inverters on the market for visually impaired persons ;-). Most other inverters have knobs, buttons, switches (DIP or otherwise), etc. for the very few settings they have...while the GS inverter has a completely LCD-central setup for the bazillion settings provided. There are NO settings apart from what is on the LCD...unless you count the on/off of the RGB power button. Easiest for us would be if you could have a friend help set it up the first time...or tell us exactly how you need it set up, and we can set it up before shipping it to you.
The WiFi connection is set up by connecting your phone to the WiFi network generated...though getting to the WiFi setup page requires use of the LCD screen to enter that mode. Currently, the WiFi setup page does not contain any inverter configuration options, though I can potentially add that.
This may take a bit of software redesigning on our side...and I sure hope you have a friend you can call on to help you set it up and/or install updates while we work to make this inverter do what you need.
Yeah, I got somebody I can call to help set it up. I just want both of them to work together to power my house. I would ask what OS you running on the gs, but that might not be given out. If its linux, thenall linux can ouput speech,, heck had a mobo that had a talking bios. Too bad it don't have a usb port, plug in a usb drive, with the new firmware, hold down the power button for 10 seconds and it bep and then boots up with update 😛 Then I can edit the ini file and flash it to the inverter lol.
Either way, yeah when sean setups my two inverters, when he calls me, I can give him the info he needs, just if its not a feature, have the wifi enabled all the time. Was hopeing it be like Make Sky blue app, you can go and change any of the settings and upload to it, thats how I also do my bms's with the bluetooth.
Either way Keep up the great works Sid, I know I might be the odd ball of the bunch, and frankly there isn't going to be many blind folks like me fooling around with high voltage and building batteries and everything else in between.
GS Control board is an 8-bit MCU with no operating system whatsoever. GS WiFi board is a 32-bit CPU running an RTOS, but not Linux or anything like it--heck, the whole processor has to live on less than 2MB of memory ;-). I'm not quite up to the embedded Linux systems, maybe that's why the inverter "boots" in less than a second.
WiFi is enabled by default, but it needs to be connected to your local network with the help of a smartphone. I could conceivably add a feature where if you hold the rightmost button down for 10 seconds (there's 3 buttons under the LCD, "Up", "Down", "Enter"), the inverter will automatically enter WiFi Setup mode...you'll connect your phone to the WiFi hotspot that's generated, and then can configure it. Making an inverter setup page for configuring the inverter will take me a good week or so, but it's not impossible.
Once it's connected to the network, it is completely possible (but not easy!) to connect the inverter control to Amazon Alexa, Google Home or other devices. Ask the Internet device what the inverter load is, what the battery voltage is, what is it doing, etc., etc.
Heck yes, that would work perfect, is it physical's buttons or touch screen buttons? My pj has the lcd screen.
So you saying will take a few weeks, means I'll have to update it down the road once you imploment those features. I could live with that just as long as I can have both set as master and slave out of the box then once the update comes out, get somebody to come over and help me push the update to it for that, unless you get the setup part done before it gets shipped out.
It is physical buttons, identical to the PJ. The WiFi board started out as a replacement for the PJ LCD screen, and now I'm stuck in "compatableville" without completely redesigning it (which I don't feel like doing just yet.)
Yes, if I work on the code, the features might be available in a couple weeks, and yes, you would need someone to help you get the update for the features (after I get 'em done.)
We should most definitely be able to set the inverters up for you (and briefly test them on the bench!) before they ship.
Please note that if you ordered the 2 inverters several months apart, the first one will ship with the first batch (due at the warehouse this week), and the 2nd one will ship with the second batch (arriving hopefully by early April). Also...the 2nd one is a slightly newer design, with a few tweaks to the connectors and internal design. (They'll still work together perfectly fine.)
Hmmm. well when I text Sean he said I'm getting both together. I got a hunch he order a extra one cause I said I was going to order two, as soon as I got the money up for the second one, which I already place. Beats me, still waiting for a respons from him. I know he a busy man :P. And oh sean I looked up your water heater and they make a duct kit for it to vent outside, in the atic and what not, so you don't have to be a polar bear year round in the basement. . . *laughs*
If they're both together, then they're probably all the 1st run, which will be fine. All the more power to you!
-heck, the whole processor has to live on less than 2MB of memory ;-).
You must not have been around in the glory days of computing. When you soldered a socket onto a board and when done, inserted a chip in each socket. For a total of 48KB of RAM on the main board and a 16KB add on card so the CP/M could address 64KB of memory.
Hey, I started out on a pocket RadioShack TRS-80 handheld computer--saving programs on a cassette tape. Then to an Apple //e with the dual disk drive (and the 64kb expansion card). Never managed to get the 3.5" floppy drive working, and never bothered with the cheekily named Apple Sider (hard drive). After the //e went kaput (literally instantly--one moment it was working, then suddenly the monitor went blank as the computer died on the spot), my programming endeavours went to the Windoze systems.
Been through the Basic Stamp (2P40 to be specific), wore the memory out with so many write cycles, and found that it was a bit too slow. From there found a PIC16F872 amongst multiple boxes of stuff we'd gotten at a yardsale (longtime tinkerer passed away)...so yes, I am very much aware of "tiny" memory systems. Technically I'm a millennial...so by the time I got the aforementioned stuff to play with, it was 'hand-me-downs' from Grandpa.
Hey, if you want the complete source code to "Brick-Out" written by Bruce Tognazzini in 1981(?) for Applesoft Basic...umm...I have it ;-). Printed it out with an Apple ImageWriter about 18 years ago.
My comment about 2MB of memory was in reference to the question asking about whether I was using a Linux OS--nope, not enough memory for that.