Sid Battery Balancers.

2 hours ago, Sid Genetry Solar said:

In a nutshell that's a future project I have in mind: a central control system which is (practically) infinitely customizable, and allows connecting all the various aspects of a solar system together into one central screen (HTML or otherwise)...as well as "interwiring" various parts together (i.e. if batteries reach full charge, and there's plenty of sunshine--turn on an outlet for a water heater.  Or if batteries are too cold, shut the chargers off.)

But that's a long ways down the road.

Uhm, stupid idea, you don't need to build it, its already built, you just need to make the custom OS that ties it all in, but heck all you need is a raspberry pie and a 16gig micro sd card, and just ssh into it after connecting the required wires to the GPIO useing those jumper wires I got that comes on a ribbion with female to female pin connectors, if you got the pins already ont he balancer.  

I didn't even think about it till now since raspberry pies got bluetooth and wifi and can run as a headless device. and $35 bucks thats cheap to be able to remote to the balancers.

56 minutes ago, The Blind Wolf said:

after connecting the required wires to the GPIO useing those jumper wires I got that comes on a ribbion with female to female pin connectors, if you got the pins already ont he balancer.

No pins on the balancer I'm afraid.  Kinda hard for me to describe unless you have some in your hands...I think you'll be surprised how small they are (1 inch wide, 1.5 inches tall, 0.25 inches thick).  TX (transmit) is a solder pad that actually goes across the "mousebites" for the panelization process.  The 2 leads are TX (on the right lower mousebite) and battery negative.

so all have to do is solder two wire for the gpio? and dang those balancer are small then.  I would pay extra if I had at least six inch wires solder already on them.  geesh.

397 first-run balancers assembled and tested for everything except comm ("Should" work)...need to test that, and hopefully get them in the mail to Sean's on Monday.

EDIT: Unfortunately the pack of mica insulators that I ordered to go with the balancers...hasn't arrived yet.  Guess I'm assuming that most people have a huge stash of 'em...not sure what else to do.

1 hour ago, Sid Genetry Solar said:

Unfortunately the pack of mica insulators that I ordered to go with the balancers...hasn't arrived yet. 

My heatsinks have insulators on them already, so I can cut what I nrrd from that.  Unless a special type insulator is required?

nrrd?  how about need?

No special insulator...just to electrically insulate them, 'cause the TO-247's have metal backs, which are basically each battery cell positive.  Either have to use separate heatsinks or insulated balancers.

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Yeah, that's a bit of work.  Soldering on 397 LCDs with 12 leads each...then the transistor, then programming and testing each one.  But it should be worth it.

51 minutes ago, Sid Genetry Solar said:

Yeah, that's a bit of work.  Soldering on 397 LCDs with 12 leads each...then the transistor, then programming and testing each one.  But it should be worth it.

You're a workhorse!  Just doing 4 or 5 would leave me cross-eyed!  (Probably why my projects take so long to complete)

Looking like I might get balancers at about the time I've got the battery modules installed, which is perfect timing.  Excellent!

Thanks for the hard work, Sid!

I'd most likely have a headache from wearing the OptiVisor to do the work.

Let us know when they are shipped Sid so we can get an order in.

Well Sean now has them. Drums fingers on keyboard waiting for hem to hit the website.😜

Genetry website has changed.  The Parts page is gone.  No more powerjack parts.  Nothing was in stock anyway for many weeks. 

There is now a blank page for GS Balancers.  Nothing but the GS phone #, which normally gets you no response.  (To be fair, I haven't tried in some time.  Too frustrating waiting for a response that either doesn't happen or is not fulfilled.)  I just want to order 16 balancers.

How about just put an order button for balancers with a price and quantity select?  Too easy?

3 hours ago, dochubert said:

Genetry website has changed.  The Parts page is gone.  No more powerjack parts.  Nothing was in stock anyway for many weeks. 

There is now a blank page for GS Balancers.  Nothing but the GS phone #, which normally gets you no response.  (To be fair, I haven't tried in some time.  Too frustrating waiting for a response that either doesn't happen or is not fulfilled.)  I just want to order 16 balancers.

How about just put an order button for balancers with a price and quantity select?  Too easy?

 

Working on it.  Sean added a placeholder for me, now that I'm back home and have an unexpected hour or 2 today, I need to fill it in and make it workable.

And yes, the goal is to be able to just purchase the units and they arrive a few days later.

2 hours ago, Sid Genetry Solar said:

Working on it.  Sean added a placeholder for me

I jumped the gun!  My apologies.  Guess I'm just too used to disappointment.  Expected it again.

Got my order in. Anxious to get them too.

Oh, don't know if it was just me, or something with the website, but when the order completed, the website went to never never land (blank screen) instead of saying Order Complete or returning to home page. Got confirming email so know it went through.

Thanks again and sorry for complaining.