Some Heltec Active Balancers you may not have seen before... useful or gimmick?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ก.ย. 2024
- I have several #Heltec #active #Balancers on my workbench, some old friends, some new ones we have not tested yet. To be clear here, there is nothing new and there is no breakthrough in balance technology. Unfortunately, not....But all balancers work very well and help keeping these large capacity cells under control.
However, all balancers are 'special' and not what we usually would use or even have seen before.
Heltec capacitive active balancer with increased start and stop voltage:
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Heltec 10A transformer based active balancer:
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Heltec 5A 10A active balancer with display/Bluetooth:
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Palo 32700 LiFePO4 batteries, perfect for your smaller projects:
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Adjustable Power supply, 60V 5A:
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NEEY Active Balancer 4th gen:
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Voltage Detection Controller A30-U1:
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Massive 15% discount for the Gobelpower Standard Edition battery (pick and choose your battery!):
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HELTEC 10A Active Balancer. Great for large capacity batteries. But is it really?
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Automatic Active Balancer - The Evolution in Balancing. But...
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On the 5A flying capacitor active balancer, you can easily change the balance start voltage by replacing the voltage detector chip located at the bottom right of the PC board. It is a XC61C family chip made by Torex Semiconductors. The stock part is a 2.7V version and has an SMD code 'C733'.
You may replace it with a 3.3V version (SMD code 'D333)'. The 8S, 16S and other versions of the active balancer are all the same. The 'D333' has a 3.3V detect voltage, and 3.465V release voltage, which is 5% (hysteresis) higher than the detect voltage. So, the release voltage is the actual balance start voltage, and the detect voltage is the balance stop voltage. Other detect voltage versions (3.0V, 3.1V, 3.2V, 3.4V) are also available.
Great info, thanks for sharing.
hey andy a question for you.
which BMS do you recommend right now if i have to make 48v battery bank with a option of paralleling for future expansion?
The JK BMS (old style). We will soon have a solution here on the channel where we can parallel these old BMS and have them communicating to an inverter or Victron OS.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia thanks Andy!!
I would not trust cheap electrolytic caps on expensive cells. Most of the time they just wear out from electrolyte dry out which just reduces their capacitance and makes them non-effective, but they can short out due to internal ESR heating that can damage cells. The cheap electrolytics are not designed for high ripple current that occurs in this application.
So, you would recommend the transformer based balancers for longevity reasons?
If I had to design a balancer, I'd do an isolated DC-DC power supply that takes pack power to directly charge the lowest-voltage cell. Then the charging/relief current can be anything you want regardless of cell-to-cell voltage differences.
Interesting approach. Build one, I'll test it...
Fun experiment. If you keep this up you may need to get them to start paying for your research 🔬
haha,yes. He is welcome to test more of our Heltec products
I don't know if Heltec makes them, but there are cheap balancers that are also inductive but they are small and use a small chained inductor system, not a transformer though. They're smaller and lighter and they were cheaper at the time than the flying capacitor balancers since I hadn't found that Heltec even existed back then. I'd like to see how they stack up against the capacitor and transformer designs. Advantage for you (not for me) is they seem to need a minimum voltage difference to activate so on the flat part of the curve, they aren't able to activate and so go to sleep.
I still prefer the basic Enerkey/Heltec active balancers. I can set my inverter Aux control contact to turn on/off at preset voltages through a simple relay and tie into the balancer's run feature.
everything i search for a review of ,i always find it here....just found the video now
I find the stop voltage of 3,3V to be too high. Why not set it to pretty much the same as the start voltage? Anything else will make the top balance worse if the battery is not drained fast after the charge.
I am having trouble finding the balance start voltage and delta that Heltec 10a 8s active balancer uses. I visited Heltec site and no help.
no mate you are wrong i see balancing as useless it is only good to turn things of
and that is good, i like to ask what do they have with 50 volt they all using it for what?
now what do i use as balancer for 500 volt.?
Why do you need a balancer you know the speed from electricity it will balance it self
only not with a bad cell that stops even a tesla.
you can peal a banana and eath it but you can use also a knife to cut slices
that bms is the knife you do not need it just take care the cells are good connected.
Good stuff! It appears Heltec is making some good progress with the capacitive balancers.
Yeah, I will get some of these 16s balancers maybe...
Heya this is the 1st upload sins i sub scribed lol. don't know about these balancers the battery shoould be good any way
Thank you soo much for a answer to a question tha distress me since 3 years!
Freindli wishes from the Mountains:)
Yeah, there is a certain amount of gimmick to these, could be handy for certain situations.
E.g when you have a BMS without app, bluetooth or any other monitoring capabilities. (my first BMS has indeed nothing of such)
Exactly. I now actually have two projects where I could use the 12V display😊
Unglaublich, immer wenn du ein Video machen möchtest macht der Nachbar krach. Aber Video kann man ohne störung genießen. 😄😄
The noise wasn't for too long. The birds were louder that day...
"As you understand, some have some advance and disadvantages".
No not really. I love the materials. But I do not get how there is no 1 product to rule them all.
These things are so relatively simple.
Why the sloppiness with the manuals, the doubtful specs, dipswitches, bugs and glitches on the software side.
Just make a BMS with a USB port. That detects all other BMSes on the RS232 ports and shows them as if it where one device.
And ofcourse have a built in active BMS.
It's made in China. They produce fast, to sell fast!
The quality is ... well, OK'isch but far away from optimal. Software is their real problem.
Awesome product update. Thank you for sharing and for the aliexpress link.
Would be a great addition to seplos BMS V3
You can try the V3 without active balancer first and see if it can handle your cells.
But yes, any of these active balancer will work with the V3.
Just bought the standalone cell voltage display some weeks ago to retest a „stupid & cheap“ 12v BMS LiFePO4 battery, because i was curious how cell balance developed after 150 days of usage in our garden shed to reload all the garden tool batteries we use (and running the pool pump - but the pool was not installed in rainy cold Germany this summer).
I actually have a need for such a 12V display as well. First, I was doubting the practical need for such a display but now I have two projects where I actually could use it😄
I think that adding a simple cell/pack voltage monitor is the single most important feature that could be added to a dumb LiFeP04 series setup. So much can be learnt about the health of the pack by looking at those cell voltages as they approach 3.6v and by using a variable voltage charger and monitoring cell voltage, passive balancer can find a sweet spot to operate in for long periods of time to the pack in balance. Do they make these displays for 8S and 16S or would you just add more displays?
How about, which battery or cell will make the largest and longest explosion and fire? So we know which ones are safest?
And what kind of continment vessel, like a double wrapped fibreglass fire blanket, best contains the fireworks?
You've got a lot of KERBOOM! stored that garage. Or at least, a lot of toxic smoke.😢
I have used the Chins 12v100Ah battery with interal bt bms and heater, and find they recommend two softwares. One appears flaky. The other appears to let you see the conservative bms settings, but not change them at all.
Is this a Chins shortcoming? Their service writes excellent English, but appears to have the comprehension skills of a gnat.
Bms should be combined with these
If a big difference in voltages is detected switch to balancer
Did i just hear you say welcome to the off set garage? :-P nice pun.
I definitely, 100%, never said that. IMPOSSIBLE! 😁
@@OffGridGarageAustralia 😀
Thanks for this video. I was curious if I missed a video on the JK balancers I just noticed on the Hankzor store. I assume they work the same as the JK balancers built into their bms products, just without the bms protections. A JK balancer added to non JK BMS might solve some issues with those other bms's.
The JK balancer is a stand-alone device. It does not integrate or communicate with the BMS but can be programmed similar to the NEEY.
Has the standalone JK active balancer version been updated? My version of 2yrs ago has the "old fashioned" on/off at around 2.7V and the only way of limiting balancing in the flat part of the curve is increasing deltaV, so is very much like the early Neey balancers. An add on standalone balancer can useful to install on an OEM system to add Bluetooth monitoring.
Thanks, I had just seen the "JK Balancer 2S 3S 4S 2A" pop up as a new product arrival and it got me curious about them. JK has of course had other versions out for some time now.
this is the theme i found more exciting ,, bought some active balancers but didnt test em cause not made cables with extra connectors to monitor what they exhactly do... NEED for sure some balancing before let system auto on charger
Does anyone have experience with the Seplos active balancer? There is no documentation and the threshold values on the site seem to be very different from what I often hear Andy explain? Or I don't understand how to connect that thing. The active balancer could balance with 3x 2A and has a relais per channel.
This balancer comes with Mason 280 boxes and the BMS v3 so that combination would (or would) be nice...
Does anyone (or maybe you Andy) know more?
The Seplos active balancer is a stand-alone device. It does not connect to any other Seplos devices in a way that they control the balancer. Seplos told me, this balancer can be used with any hardware.
It seems, it is an always-on balancer, BUT they have hard-set a 50mV voltage delta, so it will only balance if the voltage difference across all cells is above that.
That also means, that the overall balancing success will never be better than 50mV, regardless how high you charge the battery.
Jep, I got response from Seplos: I wondered if the dry contact on the BMS v3 could be set/programmed to your own specification, they replied
"When the active balancer is connected to BMS via dry contactor, it will be automatically trigged when the voltage difference is over 50mV. No other setting or switch on BMS studio. There is a switch on the front panel of MASON case to turn on or off the active balancer."
It seems to be a kind of 'sometimes-you-may-need-this' option and than enable the balancer by hand. They suggest to let the passive balancer keep the pack in control and only when needed activate this thing.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia
@@bartkerver4884Makes no sense to me to use these contactors for another active balancer if the BMS already have one.
I clearly asked for custom programmable option for these relays because all our requirements are very different🤷♂
Any suggestions on how i can add a switch to a standard (model without built in 3.4V auto start) 4s balancer? Thanks
Yes, I have shown this here:
Manual switch installation: th-cam.com/video/ZplbAAqnrjo/w-d-xo.html
Auto switch installation: th-cam.com/video/kEeD-oM4QnY/w-d-xo.html
@@OffGridGarageAustralia Thank you - I didn't phrase my question very well. My active balancer doesn't have the solder pads on the PCB that yours has. So how would I install a switch if there isn't a connection on the PCB? Thank you.
I would assume you just disconnect the negative of the balancer and it would turn off. But I'm not sure about this, so please don't destroy your balancer if trying.
I bought another muller energy 250a bms and this time one of the caps on thr heltec bms active balancer exploded after two weeks of use. What is it with these muller energy. You gave such a great review and now i question the quality
I had no issues with their BMS, battery or equipment. I also have never heard about an exploding cap on a balancer. Are you sure you have connected everything as it should be? Get back to them and I'm sure they will sort it out.
@@OffGridGarageAustraliaEverything was connected perfectly. Proper tongue specs, fuses, 4/0 gauge wires, it only had a 4 amp draw. Nothing more. Input from mppt at 3.55 x 4. Just one of the caps popped off randomly. The BMS didn't even shutdown. Heltec bms are junk btw. I did a lot research. People say those active BMS balancers fail quite often.
@@stevenlouis1024 Never heard about such an incident before. These balancers are running for years in some installations. You may have just had an outlier with yours.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia heltec active balancers are having bad reviews. I found 4 where those caps have blown. I also found where it gives out bad voltage readings. Some even had quit working without notice while others had blown or melted pcb boards. not from misconfigurations. It waa hard to find it as they are smashing the search engine with SEO results
Good to see they answer yout questions, I was in the middle of asking some questions and they blocked me, very strange
Through the chat on AliExpress?
@@OffGridGarageAustralia yep, went back and fourth several times, went back the next day to see if I had any new responses and I was blocked
That is very rude!
@OffGridGarageAustralia thats what I thought, all I was trying to find out is what models were available and the specs, wanted something for 16S, guess I will just keep using my neey, would be nice to be able to afford the giant neey but the small one works for me
Hello friend, I'm from Brazil, São Paulo. Answer me a question that may be common to many. What is the considerable amount of imbalance between the batteries we do not charge? How much difference do I need to use a balancer? May God keep on blessing you.
It depends on the battery chemistry you are using, my friend.
With LiFePO4 you cannot balance under 3.45V due to the very flat charge curve.
i like very much the audio experience with the birds
It's spring time down here. Little baby birds everywhere. They can get very loud sometimes.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia it sounds beautiful
Ill stick to the JK build in balancer.
Have one neey as well, just for fun.
Noticed that neey now also has a 8amp and 10amp version
Yeah, absolutely, the JK with its internal balancer works great.
Some cold weather testing would be interesting. I know you are lucky enough to not worry about freezing temps but many viewers do. Maybe a capacity test of frozen cells and low temp cutoff testing of various BMS units
That is very difficult for me. I have done some low temp cut off tests with BMS and an ice cold SPAT.
But what are we going to test when I freeze the cells?
8:45 Hmm.. NOT good.
In case one cell goes bad, it will not balance the pack and we could see cell 1@ 3.3v and cell 4 @ 4v then burn
There is still the BMS preventing that...
The balancer is only there to balance, not to protect.
Have you heard if there is going to be an updated 4s JK BMS soon since they recently released the updated 8s+ version?
No, haven't heard about a new 4s version. If you mean the new inverter BMS from JK, I doubt, this will come as a 4s version.
The planeing continues.
Yeah, he started again...😑
🐸🐸🐸🐸
TZTZT....
😎
Gutten tag Andy, I have just got a whole bunch of medical cells (reclaimed), I have found when charging them up to 3.6V and then leaving them, they go down to 3,3V and stay there. Should they not remain at 3.6V? Just weird, they all have gone down to around 3.3?V Just wondering what your thoughts are there......
I think that is fairly normal to settle back to 3.3v after leaving for awhile.
Thanks for the confirm. 👍
They will definitely go down to 3.3V resting voltage after the charger has been removed. That is perfectly normal and not a sign of damage. Every battery does that when the surface charge in the cells disappears.
BTW, since your last 2 ~ 3 videos have you changed your microphone?
No, same camera and mic. Nothing has changed.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia Thanks! I guess I will need to check my sound-setup then, at times you sound (voice) is "distant" as if the microphone is pointing away from you. Not that you are than not understandable or such, we do not even hear the planner etc, it is just noticeable, that's all.
Not a big issue, nothing that a S.P.A.T could not fix.😉
@@InspectorGadget2014 Hmmm, can you tell me at what time of the video you had these issues?
Great start with the conjecturing & emotional discourse!
Thank you. I need to mix it up a bit, right?!😁
@@OffGridGarageAustralia Have you come across the 48V forklift bulb method of precharging capacitor's Andy? I have used the carpenters pensil & cement resistor but found "seeing the light" far more enthralling; eBay - Glühlampe 48V 40W Ba15d 25x48mm (seller legantec24). Coupled with BA15d Lamp holder on bracket, Prewired - CB-25 (seller pcarena-bristol).
@@patricklyons7683What are you trying to precharge with a 48V light bulb? I use 12V light bulbs and they work great for inverters or single cells.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia It removes the active spark caused by attaching positive to items like wanptek charger or inverters. Before switching them on you place 48v bulb in between positive connections & momentarily it lights up showing capacitor has stored charge; equalising the voltage between devices sir.
🤔
You didn’t print out a stand !
Argh... next time😄
🐸🐸🐸
Thanks Andy
Thank you.
Soooooooooooooooooooooooooooo many commercials WTH!
TH-cam changed it beginning of November.
Yes, there are! On all the TH-cam channels, not just here.
It gives us creators a fair income for the volunteer and free work and content we provide.
How about the Heltec 16S?
What Heltec 16s?
@@OffGridGarageAustralia exactly! Is there one?
@@jimpowell9205 yes, linked in the description.
How about lead batteries? LFP are expensive and cannot be recycled. Lead are cheaper and they can resell when they are too old because the lead is easily recycled into new batteries. In static applications like a house, we do not care too much about weight; we care much more about fire, and lithium can catch fire.
All your claims are not true, my friend.
Like# 2 - I got the notification!
4. place buddy!
4th comment? When I hit like it went from 1 to 2. Maybe there was a 4 way tie for 2nd 🤷
With each of my batteries costing $5+k each and I need 7 more… I think I have to consider a “Home Base” battery? I’m sure building 100kWatt/hr will be a fraction of the cost over the Big Battery Rhinos. The additional 98kWatt/hrs of Rhinos will be $35k 🙄
Hello❤
You did it again🥇
Hi
🥉
FIRST
close, buddy 🥈
@@OffGridGarageAustralia I'll take #2 👍👍👍