Your mains showing flat topped says there is a lot of local load on the substation of plain non PFC SMPS units, which always flatten off the mains as they draw a pulse of high current at the mains peak. Not transformer saturating (you would hear the boom) but wiring having a peak current of 20kA at the transformer secondary at peak of mains cycle. Would be interesting to put a Rogowski current transformer probe at the transformer secondary phase lines, and neutral, and a scope to see the current peaks on each phase, and the big current pulse on neutral as well, corresponding to each phase reaching peak voltage. Shows why the later revisions of cable standards for 3 phase supplies changed from the neutral conductor being reduced size and made it now equal size to the phase, with only PE being a reduced diameter.
The flat top appearance to your AC waveform is because of all the SMPS loads on the grid which draw power at the peak, pulling the voltage down. There are a lot of non-PFC devices on the DNO low voltage network and they cause a disproportionate distortion to the mains voltage.
Thanks for a teardown testing. Its always good to see the build quality. So much better than other reviews who simply read off the spec sheet and don't give any useful information that we can't find without buying. The Vtoman Jump series all use dc5521 inputs for ac mains and solar charging and seems fine.
I suspect the hold-until-flashing either enables or disables some sort of automatic shutdown where it would turn off a lightly-loaded output after a while, assuming that the load has gone idle. If you're trying to solar-power some raspi project or whatever, the low-load disconnect will kill it, for instance, so you have to disable it. I suspect the hold-all-until-flashing enables a boost mode, where the output is no longer sinusoidal but it can deliver more wattage to resistive loads, typically intended for kettles. This seems to be a common feature in these things, which is always hidden behind silly UI dances.
Notice the connector P4 @24:27 it looks to read b8 b7 b6 b5 - presumably another connector has b1 b2 b3 b4 - so this would be an 8 cells series pack - lifepo battery has voltage of 3.2volts fully charged per cell so 8 in series is around 25.8 volts. The vtoman600 is has 4 series cells and so is internally only around 13 volts - it makes sense they goto the 8 series cells for the 1000 model because the current for the inverter would otherwise be over 80 amps.
The lack of balancing resistors _might_ be due to this using capacitor active balancing, which would be what those green electrolytics by one of the BMS balance lead connectors would be for if so. These work by charging the cap/caps from the highest cell in the pack and discharging it/them into the lowest cell. More efficient than dumping the high cells into resistors.
Thanks for the video, helped my find the fuse on the solar that blew. was easiest to to put an inline 15a fuse soldered to the blown one to resolve dc charging issue
Saw a review on here for the same product saying that there appeared to be a glitch with the ups switchover taking about four seconds if the battery was at 100% SOC but was pretty much instant with lower battery levels. Is this something you have noticed in testing? If so do you have any idea why this is the case? Cheers
One things I'd be interested to know is what's the idle power usage from the mains when in UPS mode, battery is charged and no-load. (i.e. to know how much load using it as a UPS is adding)
The 1500W version appears to have been pulled from their website and is unavailable via most resellers. (The completely different “Jump” one is available but not this one with the sturdy carry handles.)
Wonder if inputting a 110VAC input would result in the input reconfiguring to be a voltage doubler, undocumented feature. Enough relays in the right places to do so in the mains input side.
@11:30 could the waveform from mains look like that because the transformer in the variac is saturating at the peaks. Just read about this in silicon chip magazine today and considered it explains why when I measure mains voltage with a scope I always get flats and maybe because I use a transform cause I am too scared to connect direct to 240A/C holding the buttons in for three seconds - does that stop the unit from timing out with low or no load. as others have suggested
I've seen this flat topped mains waveform in many places around the UK, I'm not sure of the reason for it, but don't think it's Mike's variac. Saturation happens at the zero crossings of voltage anyway, not the peaks.
@@connerlabs That flat topping is common in much of the world and is due to non power factor corrected switching loads where the internal DC buss is fed by a rectifier and capacitor. Such loads have a high surge current from the capacitor charging as soon as the instantaneous AC supply potential exceeds that of the capacitor.
I had a 1500w unit with pretty similar casing, it showed up discharged to the point it would not take charge. Manufacturer refused to share date of manufacturing but the local vendor did confirm their entire stock had the same issue. Does your manual say you need to charge the unit within 7 days of receiving it and every 6 months or the warranty will be void?
No, and as shown in the vid, off-mode draw is negligible so I'd expect good shelf-life. Maybe yours was a different variant that had high standby drain
So if your plugging in a uk plug with molded strain releaf, you're going to have to prop the unit on something. sockets are too low to the botton of the unit.
Yes. It's been designed for non UK and UK is an afterthought. Thus the low and too tightly packed AC output positioning. They should make the AC outputs IEC and provide country specific adapters (assuming that meets regulations). That's what consumer level APC UPS devices do.
@@Reprint001 IECs may not comply with regs for UK domestic use due to lack of shuttering - not sure. I know things like the old Bulgin plugs used on old guitar amps are not legal
I've seen that car jumpstart adapter thing with a battery bank that advertised itself as being able to jump a car once or twice in a pinch. I imagine it has a supercap or something in it that can just dump a whole load of current at once. Unfortunately never got to use it because the battery bank was DOA.
I opened one, on my case it was just 3 fairly large lithium cells, maybe lipo. So jumpstarting can probably be done a few times and should be kept to short bursts.
Some parts of it look very nicely done, eg the filtering stage o power board. But some parts look a bit like traditional chinese mess. I would like to see the cleaned up version. Overall its one of the better ones.
Should be able to charge fine from a 16V Tesla, but add a Anderson connector on the car end too. Wire it in parallel with one of the power plugs or totally replace the power plug. The power jacks in the Tesla aren't really good for 10 Amps continuous.
Nice unit actually, and as well as functioning quite well and easy to use I like the strong handles, the cubbyhole on the top for leads. Mike mentioned UK plugs are the best……yup dead on there Mike….😀
the odd name is for trademarking. trademarks allow selling directly on amazon and a dumb name makes the process of aquiring it extremely fast and easy.
Is it just me, or does anyone else find it really irritating that manufacturers (including Vtoman) call these things "solar generators"? Thank you for avoiding that term!
@@jampam-jf8mtSure, but what's the ratio of solar charging time (in days, taking into account changing brightness through day and night) to inverter continuous running time at 70% of rated load? I would imagine it's something like 3 days : 30 minutes or similarly bad, especially in the UK. The solar panel is more of a battery maintenance trickle charger than a full battery charger, let alone a generator
Got a solid question. I’ve a number lithium jump packs. All decent. 3 out the 5 the connector leads died. I tired replace them and they beep red and don’t work. Bought another last night same manufacturer and even that. Same same. Wondering how I can source replacement connector leads. The manufacturer is Chinese. DB power. All Amazon lithium jump packs in good order with no working connectors
@@mikeselectricstuff I found that out the hard way 🤨 The one I've currently got has got a specific EC5 connector which I've never seen anywhere apart from this manufacturer as they said they asked a company for a n alteration of the EC5 plug and they did so I now can't use my cigarette socket. I've talked to them and they don't sell the jump leads by themselves and I can't find that plug anywhere so I'm ducked.
@@TheManLab7good and well made commercial grade jump packs are hilariously expensive. I was very lucky to get my hands on one pretty cheap because I needed it for a job and the customer basically paid for it. I broke the clamps once because I forgot the pack and closed the bonnet. Got new ones the next day through my car spare parts guy. I am not sure about the company which made it. I think it is Hawker or Hoppecke. It costs about 1000 Euro, though.
@@TheManLab7you could get some separate bullet connectors on wires, and forego the connector entirely. It's more dangerous but entirely bypasses any incompatible connector housing.
What's the charging time from mains for 0-80%? The website says 'in a cup of coffee time', but never says the actual time (probably because it's misleading). I'd guess real world is 50 minutes to 80%? It says 0-100% in 70 minutes (do you have that as well?).
Do you find it funny how these sketchy chinese mains voltage battery banks like these are better than mainstream consumer UPS units? In cost and capacity and they have a proper sine inverter.
@@peteglass3496it's definitely an advert. It's not your typical commercial but he wouldn't be dissembling this thing had he not received a free unit. He does make it clear that the manufacturer supplied the device to be reviewed and tore down, for which is all you can ask.
Enjoy no longer being a consumer of actually well made content by a dude that knows his stuff well, and presents it in a way that far outclasses pretty much all of the rest of youtube. Enjoy being less smart than you have been before. Hooray. I hope you're pleased with yourself.
Product on Amazon UK : amzn.to/3UfnC67
Vtoman UK site : uk.vtoman.com/
A great teardown and test Mike. So much more useful than the "look... shiny" type of reviews so often associated with these devices.
Product reviews, with teardowns. Are correct product reviews.
Thank you for showing this.
Your mains showing flat topped says there is a lot of local load on the substation of plain non PFC SMPS units, which always flatten off the mains as they draw a pulse of high current at the mains peak. Not transformer saturating (you would hear the boom) but wiring having a peak current of 20kA at the transformer secondary at peak of mains cycle. Would be interesting to put a Rogowski current transformer probe at the transformer secondary phase lines, and neutral, and a scope to see the current peaks on each phase, and the big current pulse on neutral as well, corresponding to each phase reaching peak voltage. Shows why the later revisions of cable standards for 3 phase supplies changed from the neutral conductor being reduced size and made it now equal size to the phase, with only PE being a reduced diameter.
That's interesting, thank you for sharing.
The flat top appearance to your AC waveform is because of all the SMPS loads on the grid which draw power at the peak, pulling the voltage down. There are a lot of non-PFC devices on the DNO low voltage network and they cause a disproportionate distortion to the mains voltage.
Thanks for a teardown testing. Its always good to see the build quality. So much better than other reviews who simply read off the spec sheet and don't give any useful information that we can't find without buying.
The Vtoman Jump series all use dc5521 inputs for ac mains and solar charging and seems fine.
I suspect the hold-until-flashing either enables or disables some sort of automatic shutdown where it would turn off a lightly-loaded output after a while, assuming that the load has gone idle. If you're trying to solar-power some raspi project or whatever, the low-load disconnect will kill it, for instance, so you have to disable it.
I suspect the hold-all-until-flashing enables a boost mode, where the output is no longer sinusoidal but it can deliver more wattage to resistive loads, typically intended for kettles. This seems to be a common feature in these things, which is always hidden behind silly UI dances.
Notice the connector P4 @24:27 it looks to read b8 b7 b6 b5 - presumably another connector has b1 b2 b3 b4 - so this would be an 8 cells series pack - lifepo battery has voltage of 3.2volts fully charged per cell so 8 in series is around 25.8 volts.
The vtoman600 is has 4 series cells and so is internally only around 13 volts - it makes sense they goto the 8 series cells for the 1000 model because the current for the inverter would otherwise be over 80 amps.
The lack of balancing resistors _might_ be due to this using capacitor active balancing, which would be what those green electrolytics by one of the BMS balance lead connectors would be for if so. These work by charging the cap/caps from the highest cell in the pack and discharging it/them into the lowest cell. More efficient than dumping the high cells into resistors.
Thanks for the video, helped my find the fuse on the solar that blew. was easiest to to put an inline 15a fuse soldered to the blown one to resolve dc charging issue
Saw a review on here for the same product saying that there appeared to be a glitch with the ups switchover taking about four seconds if the battery was at 100% SOC but was pretty much instant with lower battery levels. Is this something you have noticed in testing? If so do you have any idea why this is the case? Cheers
This specific brand? Good catch anyhow!
@@AnnaVannieuwenhuyse yeh same product but maybe the higher capacity version
One things I'd be interested to know is what's the idle power usage from the mains when in UPS mode, battery is charged and no-load. (i.e. to know how much load using it as a UPS is adding)
About 1 watt
The 1500W version appears to have been pulled from their website and is unavailable via most resellers. (The completely different “Jump” one is available but not this one with the sturdy carry handles.)
Flashspeed 1500 is still on Amazon UK and Vtoman UK (Latter way cheaper)
@@mikeselectricstuff verrrry interesting... I wonder if they had a problem with the US 120V larger unit...? shrug...
Wonder if inputting a 110VAC input would result in the input reconfiguring to be a voltage doubler, undocumented feature. Enough relays in the right places to do so in the mains input side.
No, it drops out at about 160V
If you start at ~120v does it stay in low voltage cutout?
@11:30 could the waveform from mains look like that because the transformer in the variac is saturating at the peaks. Just read about this in silicon chip magazine today and considered it explains why when I measure mains voltage with a scope I always get flats and maybe because I use a transform cause I am too scared to connect direct to 240A/C
holding the buttons in for three seconds - does that stop the unit from timing out with low or no load. as others have suggested
Good point, didn't think to check that
I've seen this flat topped mains waveform in many places around the UK, I'm not sure of the reason for it, but don't think it's Mike's variac. Saturation happens at the zero crossings of voltage anyway, not the peaks.
@@connerlabs That flat topping is common in much of the world and is due to non power factor corrected switching loads where the internal DC buss is fed by a rectifier and capacitor. Such loads have a high surge current from the capacitor charging as soon as the instantaneous AC supply potential exceeds that of the capacitor.
I had a 1500w unit with pretty similar casing, it showed up discharged to the point it would not take charge. Manufacturer refused to share date of manufacturing but the local vendor did confirm their entire stock had the same issue. Does your manual say you need to charge the unit within 7 days of receiving it and every 6 months or the warranty will be void?
No, and as shown in the vid, off-mode draw is negligible so I'd expect good shelf-life. Maybe yours was a different variant that had high standby drain
I'd love to know about those unpopulated MPPT and AC pads on the main board.
So if your plugging in a uk plug with molded strain releaf, you're going to have to prop the unit on something. sockets are too low to the botton of the unit.
Yes. It's been designed for non UK and UK is an afterthought. Thus the low and too tightly packed AC output positioning. They should make the AC outputs IEC and provide country specific adapters (assuming that meets regulations). That's what consumer level APC UPS devices do.
@@Reprint001 IECs may not comply with regs for UK domestic use due to lack of shuttering - not sure. I know things like the old Bulgin plugs used on old guitar amps are not legal
There is enough space for most UK moulded plugs
@@mikeselectricstufflooks like there's plenty of room but it will be with a bend upwards after pointing down. 😅
I've seen that car jumpstart adapter thing with a battery bank that advertised itself as being able to jump a car once or twice in a pinch. I imagine it has a supercap or something in it that can just dump a whole load of current at once. Unfortunately never got to use it because the battery bank was DOA.
I opened one, on my case it was just 3 fairly large lithium cells, maybe lipo. So jumpstarting can probably be done a few times and should be kept to short bursts.
they use high current lipo cells, the same as used for model aircraft. they can deliver bursts of well over 1.5kW for several seconds.
Some parts of it look very nicely done, eg the filtering stage o power board. But some parts look a bit like traditional chinese mess. I would like to see the cleaned up version. Overall its one of the better ones.
1:45... You could extend the length of those short cables with a set of standard booster cables.
Nice tear down Mike! Can you tell me what thermal camera dongle you use at 6:28 ?
Infiray P2 Pro
Should be able to charge fine from a 16V Tesla, but add a Anderson connector on the car end too. Wire it in parallel with one of the power plugs or totally replace the power plug. The power jacks in the Tesla aren't really good for 10 Amps continuous.
Nice unit actually, and as well as functioning quite well and easy to use I like the strong handles, the cubbyhole on the top for leads.
Mike mentioned UK plugs are the best……yup dead on there Mike….😀
$10 says it was supposed to read as Atoman, but they were either being cheeky or dumb and changed it to a V.
the odd name is for trademarking. trademarks allow selling directly on amazon and a dumb name makes the process of aquiring it extremely fast and easy.
Is it just me, or does anyone else find it really irritating that manufacturers (including Vtoman) call these things "solar generators"? Thank you for avoiding that term!
They can generate electricity from a solar source
@@jampam-jf8mtSure, but what's the ratio of solar charging time (in days, taking into account changing brightness through day and night) to inverter continuous running time at 70% of rated load? I would imagine it's something like 3 days : 30 minutes or similarly bad, especially in the UK. The solar panel is more of a battery maintenance trickle charger than a full battery charger, let alone a generator
They are solar generators . My 1500 can be zero to full in 5 hours.
4:37 if it is charging it will blink
I wanted to see the cells to see if they are just china no name. They b scary.
Got a solid question. I’ve a number lithium jump packs. All decent. 3 out the 5 the connector leads died. I tired replace them and they beep red and don’t work. Bought another last night same manufacturer and even that. Same same. Wondering how I can source replacement connector leads. The manufacturer is Chinese. DB power. All Amazon lithium jump packs in good order with no working connectors
There are some generic ones on Aliexpress but a lot of manufacturers use different connectors
@@mikeselectricstuff I found that out the hard way 🤨 The one I've currently got has got a specific EC5 connector which I've never seen anywhere apart from this manufacturer as they said they asked a company for a n alteration of the EC5 plug and they did so I now can't use my cigarette socket.
I've talked to them and they don't sell the jump leads by themselves and I can't find that plug anywhere so I'm ducked.
@@TheManLab7good and well made commercial grade jump packs are hilariously expensive. I was very lucky to get my hands on one pretty cheap because I needed it for a job and the customer basically paid for it. I broke the clamps once because I forgot the pack and closed the bonnet. Got new ones the next day through my car spare parts guy. I am not sure about the company which made it. I think it is Hawker or Hoppecke.
It costs about 1000 Euro, though.
@@TheManLab7you could get some separate bullet connectors on wires, and forego the connector entirely. It's more dangerous but entirely bypasses any incompatible connector housing.
modify them to use XT90 connectors
What's the charging time from mains for 0-80%?
The website says 'in a cup of coffee time', but never says the actual time (probably because it's misleading).
I'd guess real world is 50 minutes to 80%? It says 0-100% in 70 minutes (do you have that as well?).
The pack is approx 30Ah and he measured the charging current at 24A, so 0-80% will take at least 60 minutes. No way does it hit 100% in 70 minutes.
Nice!
As a UPS it's not a bad idea.
Just buy a laptop. It has 5 hours already, built in.
@@NeungViewthat's hardly the same as a UPS
@@NeungView laptop can't power a fridge
@@voltare2amstereonot going to run a fridge long on an UPS either.
If it can output 1000W you should always test the surge power output with stuff like a microwave or some big inductive loads.
I saw the circular saw alrighy, but could be bigger still.
I did test with the 1600W heat gun
@@rkan2 Mathias did a nice test like that, killing his kill a watt
@@sparqqling Ye, good to test them by plugging them in to big loads as that's what ppl will do anyway :D
Do you find it funny how these sketchy chinese mains voltage battery banks like these are better than mainstream consumer UPS units? In cost and capacity and they have a proper sine inverter.
Ooh!
Scam artits
that thing looks homemade inside, wouldnt trust it handling it and throwing it around like you would do with portable units
they all look like that
unsubscribed from this ad channel
😁
Don't let the doorknob hit your anus on the way out, unless you're into that sort of thing.
Don't think you can get further from an ad in one of mike's reviews without falling off the edge of the planet!
@@peteglass3496it's definitely an advert. It's not your typical commercial but he wouldn't be dissembling this thing had he not received a free unit. He does make it clear that the manufacturer supplied the device to be reviewed and tore down, for which is all you can ask.
Enjoy no longer being a consumer of actually well made content by a dude that knows his stuff well, and presents it in a way that far outclasses pretty much all of the rest of youtube. Enjoy being less smart than you have been before. Hooray. I hope you're pleased with yourself.