Hey Andy, I am watching you for about 1 year and a half. You have by far the most comprehensive channel on TH-cam. You are doing for EVERIBODY a HUGE service. I am really impressed.
Hi Andy. About a week or so ago I posted a question about why no one makes a BMS which charges each CELL individually (but all at the same time in parallel) rather than charge across the entire PACK in series. This new method of individual CELL charging would stop charging any cell that exceeds the upper limit and as soon as that cell falls below the upper limit resume charging that cell. This would eliminate any need for either active or passive balancing. Since active balancing currently requires discharging a high voltage cell into a capacitor and then charging a lower voltage cell from the same capacitor it is absolutely possible to build a BMS which only charges each cell individually with no balancing circuitry neither active nor passive. I decided to try to make such a BMS myself and in the process, I have learned a few things about how difficult and costly that could be. There would need to be a circuit to take the large "48" volt input from the charger and break it down into smaller voltage paths, one for each cell. This would add additional cost and complexity to manufacture due to the additional circuitry. This explains why chargers currently charge across the entire pack rather than each cell individually, it is simply cheaper and slightly more efficient. HOWEVA, I decided to try to understand the balancing process more precisely and so decided to build my own BMS using an Arduino to control the process. Since my career was in programming, I do have the LOGIC background to know how to write the code for such an endeavor but have had to learn a new programming language to code the Arduino. I also needed some time to acquire the hardware necessary to build a small prototype. Also, since the chargers today are built for the larger voltage across the entire pack method, I will initially use that method rather than charging each cell individually. Perhaps in the future I will try individual cell charging. During the learning process, I discovered that one needs to sample an individual cell's voltage multiple times and then average the readings out to get a more accurate (truer) voltage since the Analogue to Digital Converters (ADC) in the Arduino chip detects a slightly different voltage each time a cell is sampled. Sometimes it is slightly higher (in millivolts) and sometimes it is slightly lower. This brings into question how accurate the ADC samplers are in current BMSs. I have learned that the programming required to create a BMS is in essence very simple and can easily implement both active and passive balancing at the same time. The program simply loops through a series of steps. Step one: ALL the CELLS in a PACK are sampled to determine the highest and lowest voltage cells. Step 2: Charging of the entire Pack is stopped if any cell has a voltage which exceeds an upper SAFETY limit. Step 3: When one or more CELL(s) are above a BALANCING limit and one or more CELL(s) are below the balancing limit, active balancing is invoked to transfer some of excessive voltage from the highest cell to the lowest cell. Step four: If there is a Cell above the limit but no cells below the limit passive balancing is invoked to drain some voltage from the offending cell. CURRENT BMS design usually doesn't utilize BOTH active and passive balancing choosing instead to use only one of the two methods. When utilizing active balancing alone a BMS usually only attempts to balance when the difference between high and low cells exceeds a certain limit and there is one or more cells below the individual cell limit otherwise it would continuously be transferring voltage and draining the entire pack. A BMS using passive balancing alone wastes some of the stored electrons thereby requiring more time to fully charge a pack. Since all the CELLS are connected in series across the pack, only one cell can be connected to the capacitor or draining resister at any one time. In either active or passive balancing, the number of volts transferred depends on BOTH the capacity of the hardware to handle the amperage as well as the time allowed to complete the transfer process. The BMSs you are currently testing may have the HARDWARE capacity to handle the higher amps but have not provided the required time via the SOFTWARE to actually complete the transfer. For the purists, the term amperage is used to define the number of electrons flowing across a circuit being the equivalent to a charge of one coulomb (6.241 x 1018 electrons) per second. In this discussion, I am using the term AMPS simply to represent the number of electrons being transferred. Obviously, this is still in the theoretical, learning, testing, and developmental state and nowhere fully developed enough to say whether or not it can be further developed.,
It would be nice if you could have a learn mode, which would most likely learning that certain cells are always the guilty party, and then it could give priority to those cells. Keep up the good work, and keep us informed. I am very interested in what you learn.
Good approach, but I think in the long run it would be better to combine BMS and inverter. In the way of a "Cascaded H-bridge Multilevel inverter". This would have only advantages, except for the increased hardware requirements. But this is already being researched (BM3).
Interesting concept and I like Aaron’s learn mode idea too. It sounds quite do-able, I guess the expense here is in individual cell, high amp, low volt charging gear, but it makes sense if u individually charge each cell to a specific voltage with a set tail current cut off, the dodgy cells will get there quicker perhaps but then u could prevent any further charging to individual cells as they reach their peek absorbtion while the other cells in the pack can carry on charging at peak rate till they all catch up and stop when they reach their set peaks, this would allow for a much more efficient/quicker charging cycle & probably many benefits particularly to solar users/harvesters. I like ur idea, please keep us informed of how u go with it. Cheers
Thank you Andy. These Chinese products are being rolled out without being fully tested. They actually let the consumers do the testing and wait for problems to come up. Then they apply fixes. In the meantime they have made money from those who dont know and dont COMPLAIN!
Hi Andy, I have watched your excelemt vedios for a while now I am fascinated by the balance circus. Would it be possible to replace busbars with shunts then have watt/ capacity used to obtain a real ballance between cells.
Yep, the products are definitely not ready for publishing. DALY reached out to me and want me to test them for them. Off camera. I declined and said if they are not confident about their products, don't sell them.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia My Ant BMS won't turn on, and I am looking for a 200A(?) BMS for a 48V Lithium Ion for a 3000W inverter. Which BMS do you recommend?
Hi friend. I test a daly in new 16s calb 280 ah lifepo4 new pack. Not top balance. I had about 70 mV of differences . I set start balance up then 3.40 mV for cell and i charge at 54.7 v . Daly balance the cells with 20 mV differential. Is very low cost balancer for me is a good solution. With resistive balance of bms i complete the operation and finally i have 0.003 balance in a new pack . Very good. Your channel is the best. Thank you.
In the last month I saw my Daly BMS app showing the Active Balancing function, I tried to use but it hasn't work; but Andy give the answer if is good or not to buy or not to buy it.
MY REVIEW OF THE DALY SMART, 1A, 16S ACTIVE BALANCER. before installing the new Daly, my bank had become seriously out of balance, about 0.250 mV when fully charged, sometimes nudging 275 mV. So I installed the Daly. At first it did not seem to do much -- 1 amp current was flowing through the balancing wires, as it should, yet the imbalance remained high. This continued for several days and I began to wonder if the 1 amp balance current was inadequate for 16 280ah cells. But after 5 days of normal solar system operation, it finally balanced. As I type the delta is 19 mV, with the cells charged to an average of 3.487V. So it works. No, it is not the ultimate active balancer, but for $39 USD, it is the best value, and I can recommend it.
I tested the 16s active balancer and had to play with the configuration until it worked well. A not mentioned design issue is a heat problem. The temp sensor is onboard, when cover is removed passive cooling works.
Ah, I was just realising that as well. Mine got already up to 48°C doing its job. But then removing the cover seems to be a workaround for an arising problem.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia Thank you for confirming! I first thought it us due to the heat here in Europe but now it's definitely cool and still had a high temp alert. Without cover and a safety layer of plastik 70 everything is ok. Cheers!
use JK-BMS all in... nice test, thanks. I didn't understand why daly is used so often? Well, I haven't been following the topic for so long, but JK-BMS has everything, 200A should be enough for everyone at 48V.
But JK BMS is expensive. I can get one of these 8s balancers for 30 US dollars. My battery already has a BMS with passive balancing that isn't quite enough to keep it in line and I need some stronger balancing current which is where this one comes in. I'm just looking for the cheapest strong enough balancer that won't cause imbalancing by continuing to balance at all voltage levels.
I knew there was a comments section somewhere as I had previously seen it. then couldn't find it - the secret? Keep on scrolling past all the other video icons/thumbnails. And because I enjoy your videos, info, voice, sense of humour I have joined up. Tells me it starts the day after my 76 birthday! Anyhoo. I have a Daly Smart 250 with BT dongle and I think I may have solved my balance problem Live ion the road in 15" poptop. 540W solar, Renogy DCC50sMPPT, BMS as above. to 400Ahr 4S bank My charger from Ian Goh ( FPV Solar) is set to 14V when on Genset , (will reset to 13,6 if long term on mains) Daly set to Bal open 3.4V, open diff 20mV while charging Cell diff can get over 25mV Balance works starts to work as soon as I turn off charging and slowly gets down to 5mv even 2mV so I think that is reasonable? HOWEVER, following other of your info I have on the way a 4th Gen Neeeeeeyyy active balancer, Why? because it's there and lust to be sure to be sure I look forward with anticipation to seeing the results Cheers
I don’t understand why these can’t just trigger based on voltage delta - if it goes above defined threshold, start balancing until it gets below threshold. For LFP, most of the curve is super flat so no balancing should be done. But at the low and high end balancing would help increase longevity of cells if they’re kept balanced. On high end it helps avoid a cell peek to high (causing hi voltage damage), in the low end it will help avoid cell going to low (protecting cell as well). Since with LFP both low and high end are very steep, it should be easy to just use voltage delta to trigger. If delta is not huge I don’t mind some imbalance. Finally, when it is in the low/high end it should be great to have 5 or even 10amp since in those areas the curve is steep so a cell that is much lower or higher needs a lot of “support” to stay close to the other cells - especially when charging pack with >20 amp.
You would have to have some perfect cells and a strong balancer to keep up at the top and the bottom of the range . High voltage balancing only is the way , at least with the current cells and balancers available . Andy has demonstrated trying to bottom balance a long time ago , you can have one or the other but not both without near perfect cell capacity.
@@onthelake9554 I agree, bottom balancing and top balancing on the same set is a bad idea. What if you know your battery is low so you hang out near empty for a really long time trying to conserve power, the bottom balancing is at work for hours and hours through the night and then all at once you charge them up in the day, you charge them so quickly that the balancer can't keep up and you end up with an overvoltage cell because all night the night before it was working against itself.
Yes, you won't do both, bottom and top balancing with a battery pack. We have seen in the many tests, that bottom balancing with an Active Balancer will only give you 2-3Ah at best. If you have a 280Ah pack and are reliant on these 2-3Ah, there is something wrong with your system design. Either get second battery or a larger one if you need more storage. Top balancing seems to work fine with an active balancer once we leave the flat part of the curve, so 3.45V and above works great. Holt the pack there for 30min to give the balancer time to do its job and then fall back to float and a lower voltage.
Since a perfect battery doesn’t need balancing after the initial top balance, the first goal should be to make your battery as good as it can be and then set the BMS to do the minimum possible needed to keep it balanced. If you have a 1p battery and one cell has 5% less capacity than the highest, as long as you charge to 90% and shutoff at 10%, you will never really need to keep filling that one cell at the bottom and bleeding it at the top. Just let the balancer deal with the different self discharge rates during each full charge. I have a 20s6p LiFePO4 battery which i tested each cell (which seems to have been pulled from 20 different reject piles) and matched as good as possible. Originally it was going to be 5p but I went with 6p to give me the capacity of 5p even when used at 10-90%. I use the ANT BMS which only has 100ma passive balance (I wish it had 500ma active), but the key is in the settings it allows you to choose from to maintain balance. Since i want the battery to last long and im using my AGM charger which has float, i set the OVP @ 3.5v/cell and release at 3.49v. This blocks the charge for a few seconds, allowing the charger to drop down to float, then opens the port again. The ANT allows two types of balancing. The one i use is BALANCE LIMIT which jist bleeds anything over a specific value. I have mine set @ 3.44v which corresponds to the float voltage. So if i leave it plugged it it will fully balance. If I unplug early it will just bleed off a bit from the cells that don’t have much self discharge. The ANT also has autobalance which can be started manually, or triggered when both CELL DIFFERENTIAL and BALANCE VOLTAGE conditions are met. Then it will balance until cell differential drops below the value in the setting, which I set to 0.001v. I can also manually start autobalance and it will run once until all cells within 0.001v. As you mentioned you should not be balancing when oh the flat part of the curve because it just throws it way out of balance when its time to top balance it. The only thing i wish the ANT had was active balancing that would bleed any cell over the set value (3.44v in my case) and feed it to the lowest cell(s). But only because it would get it all balanced at the top in 1/10 of the time, and save a tiny bit of electricity. But as far at bottom balancing its just best to either match the cells better or buy bigger cells and use a smaller percentage of them rather than charging and discharging the same brick each cycle. Some manufacturers of commercial equipment do use very high amp active balancing to allow something with a bad cell (in a 2p+ pack) to keep going even if one cell shorts and disconnects. Then it sends a trouble call to the company and they go fix the bad battery at the next convenience. But for home use its generally overkill.
Another good video. Really wish I hadn’t bought all my stuff while watching Will Prowse. His love of Daly caused me to buy two 250A models. No problems so far, but haven’t put my side into production yet either.
The BMSes are not too bad except from the balancing part. If you add one of these capacitive active balancers for maintenance purposes and activate it from time to time, it will be OK. I have one 250A Daly in use for while in one of my 12V batteries and beat the crap out of it with the Peter inverter and my electric chainsaw. Not problem with this BMS so far.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia so if somebody has a Daly BMS and they also want to buy the Daly active balancer I see in the app you can see both but can you see both at the same time? Does your phone then connect to two different Bluetooth devices simultaneously? One at a time? Or does the active balancer communicate through a cable to the regular balancer and then get forwarded through the Bluetooth to your app in your phone?
@@SiriusSolar they both communicate through Bluetooth. That is a very good question if the app allows two connections at the same time. I would say you will see only one device at a time. I'll test this as well...
@@OffGridGarageAustralia Good to know, Thx. As a direct result of your efforts I have decided to get 2 of the 5A Heltec balancers, 1 for each of my pack. Appreciate all the effort you put into these videos.
I was just having your seplos 280 video playing in the background putting some batteries on charge. When you said "Chinese chewing gum" I lost it. My dogs were staring at me and I couldn't stop laughing 🤣😂🤣
Thanks Andy, great test, JK BMS complete with excellent 2A balancing for the win, again! SO GLAD I didn’t ever buy a DALY as I nearly did 6 months ago.
Did you get your JK back yet? Yeah, Daly is still a big brand but the products are not ready for prime time. Unless you need a BMS for 500A, Daly is pretty much the only brand who makes one in this size (except the relay BMS out there).
@@OffGridGarageAustralia Yes thanks Andy, received my replacement 4s-8s (12v) JK BMS back, and postage refund. The only SLOW part of the process was postage from this end. Their replacement, once they received my faulty one, was very quick. I have no complaints about their customer service (though I have not yet had time to test the replacement.)
@@OffGridGarageAustralia looks more they manufacture 24s and then cut the rires for 4s making more cheaper the production because in the video the PCB looked to be populated
I wonder whether the cell volt high protect setting could be referring to what you want this balancer to do which is begin balancing when one cell is high... or whether this setting could be used in this way
I noticed that during your testing you calculated the PACK cut-off voltage as a multiple of the highest cell voltage that you desired. One thing I was wondering about is when the current BMSs stop the charging process they are using the total PACK voltage to determine when to pause charging rather than the highest CELL voltage. I believe that they should be using the highest individual CELL voltage because a single cell might rise WELL above the desired cell level cut-off voltage while one or more of the remaining cells are far enough below voltage to keep the total pack voltage below the pack level cut-off voltage while the bad cell becomes dangerously high. This problem could arise if a pack hasn't been charged for some time such as having been sitting around before being sold and used for the first time. David Poz just posted a video which had a new pack not delivering the posted amp hours until after it had been charged for the first time. I wonder if one or more cells in that pack could have exceeded the desired CELL level voltage while waiting for the entire pack to reach full voltage on the first charge. When one builds their own pack and top balances each cell before assembly there shouldn't be a problem with one cell being MUCH higher than any other on the first charge. The reason for current BMSs having a wait time to resume charging is to allow any high cells to get below the cutoff point. During this wait time while charging is paused, cell balancing should be allowed to continue otherwise the high cells would never be brought down to a safe level and the battery pack would never achieve it's full potential amp hours. I seem to remember that during your testing one or more of the BMS's you tested stopped balancing when the charging process was paused.
Yes, that is correct. Some BMSes have both settings for a single cell OVP and a pack OVP. Whatever comes first will trigger the disconnect. The JK-BMS has only the cell voltage protection. And this makes totally sense. As you said, if you have a runner, the BMS will catch that by measuring the single cell voltages. The overall pack voltage could still be below the threshold and trigger point. There is always a trigger and recovery setting for these features (Heltec does not have that and the recovery cannot be set by the user). If the BMS only has charge balance though, it won't do any balancing if the BMS has cut off the battery. JBD, DALY, Overkill are some of them which are really bad with this design. The BMS will only balance during charging. With these, the battery will only sit there and wait for this single cell to naturally come down in voltage before the BMS connects the battery again. That's a shit design.
Hi Andy@@OffGridGarageAustralia - Same as the NEEY? I don’t know. The photos of the JK active equalizer boards looks the same as a Heltec active equalizer… they both have 1 & 2 amp options. The JK active balancer board looks different from the latest 4th NEEY active balancer board. The latest NEEY has a 4 amp balancer.
No the Neey and JK active balancer (standalone) are different. The JK active balancer relies on delta V setting to turn on/off balancing. The JK active balancer has no setting to turn off below 3.4V .
it's good that you dismantled this bms, how many are its dimensions, length, width, height when disassembled? I want to buy this!!! but I don't know if it will fit inside my e-bike battery?
Don't know, I didn't measure the PSB. There is a link on my website to the product with dimensions, but that's the outer dimensions only. off-grid-garage.com/battery-management-systems-bms/
one more question please!!! turning on and off the active smart balancer daly can only be done with the help of bluetooth? Can I physically make a turn-off button if it is placed inside the box?
I recently learned that some BMS do not balance until they have been initiated by the charger and then they will continue to balance when you turn the charger off. Your small Daly (non smart balancer) probably needs the charger to initiate it .
Hmm, never heard about that before. What would be the difference if a charger is connected? It's not a BMS, just a balancer. It should work in either situation.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia GREAT video Andy, thank you for your awesome contributions to the hobby! I'm a big fan of yours! I was wondering if you've had a chance to see if Daly has updated either of their 2 active balancers, so that it works the way you stated in your video? Also, I already have the Daly 4S BMS w/ bluetooth. Do you know if their basic active balancer (one w/out bluetooth) would work with the Daly app, OR will I still need the model w/ bluetooth if I want to see it working in their one app? In other words, can the cheaper balancer work with their one single app?
@@heytae I haven't revisited the DALY active balancers since. I have however, newer models of them here. The basic active balancer has no bluetooth and therefore won't work with the app.
Maybe the Daly is looking for the lowest cell to trigger the smart balancing or maybe "Avg Cell V." In your video the "Avg Cell V." was exactly at 3.30v and I was wanting it to change to 3.31v and then you canceled the test! Thanks for the work you do, it still seems like Daly has a firmware problem exactly like the firmware problem in their smart BMS balancing too. Such a shame.
I hope this is not the case , it would be even worse design . 3 cells at 2.5 and the 4th one could be cooked before it came on ., even more so on 16s .
@@OffGridGarageAustralia Sure go ahead and run some more tests. Also, what do you think about active balancers charging the low cell "if" the pack is below freezing temperature. Do you think you can test if any active balancer can trigger on and off based on temp?
@@uhjyuff2095 the balancer should only work if the battery is full, not all the time. So it's highly unlikely that the battery is fully charged and needs balancing and the cells are also freezing cold.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia so you think the small active balancing is fine in all temps? I feel users want the bms to be automatic and just work according to the cell manufactures requirements. I hope the JK or neey bms knows to not charge a cell below freezing level because that would be something I want!
Would it be possible to put an active balancer such as this NEEY or a JK inside the Seplos to handle the balancing? Allowing you to close the lid on it, set and forget and not worry about the balancing while still having the LCD of the Seplos BMS for info and communication with the Victron Multiplus? Edit: You just answered my question at 19:15 😁
Actually Seplos should have woken up in the first place and design a several Ampere balancer rather than the 150mA or so they have built in. Seplos what is wrong with you!?!
If you need a BMS, which communicates with Victron Venus OS, then Seplos is not the only one, for example JK BMS with R485 interface can be connected to the Venus OS. You just need install a driver into your Venus OS device.
I ordered the 8s 1a smart active balancer. My 8s pack (6P8S - 48, 100ah CALB cells assembled in a 24v, 600ah battery bank) is getting out of balance and DALY BMS cannot keep up. However, once I top balanced with a desk charger SLOWLY to 3.4-3.5v across the bank, the voltages are closer and usable capacity is greater. Before, with the variances, I would see 27.2v but as soon as load was added, the cells that were at 3.5 and some as low as 3.3, I really only had 90% usable and it steadily dropped so I had even less than 90%. Hoping to see improved balancing with the 1A smart active balancer. DALY now has 5a active balancer. I may buy that later. I have DALY 500amp bms (250amp charging).
Hello Andy and thanks for this test. I purchase a Daly active balancer 8S 1A and received it those days. I'm surprised because on the aliexpress website the picture of the product I ordered does not look like the one I received and the one I received looks like the one you tested 1 year ago (bugged). Did you know if Daly produces a new version of this 1A smart active balancer. I suspect the unit I received is an old one bugged.
You can parallel active balancers IF you keep separate sense lines for each balancer. That can be quite a rat's nest of wires. Sharing a common single set of sense lines will cause interference in voltage sensing between balancers due to async operation between balancers. Balancers momentarily stop pushing balance current during cell voltage measurements to avoid having voltage drop on sense wires.
exactly true. I have seen the app when the balancer is on and the voltage of the cells changes probably from the voltage drop and current when the balancer is pulling current. then it will stop and go back to normal accurate reading.
Hello Regarding voltage measurements. Have you thought about the accuracy of your instrument? As you have it, you have approx. 5% deviation. You must use an instrument with at least 6 digits and 0.5% deviation. Or even better with 0.1% deviation. Greetings
I also purchased a Daly Smart Balance 2 weeks ago. As soon as it arrives, I'll check, if it behaves the same. I should also design a BMS and Balancer... Seems, that there is nothing really good on the market 😫
@@OffGridGarageAustralia Currently in Germany, there is a run on Mini-PVs up to 600W inverter power and 600-900W PV-Peak-Power. Many people ask, if they can somewhere get one ideally with some battery storage. If some ready-to-use low-cost, low-power (200W AC inverter, 1000W MPPT-Charger) on-grid hybrid inverter, integrating MPPT charger, BMS and balancer for a 12V battery would exist, it would be sold out in hours...
hello your Smart active balancer i noticed it is for 16s battery banks but it also works on your 4S battery bank ?? or am I wrong to see and is it a Smart 4S active balancer? I hope you answer me in the meantime thank you. Angel
Found your question, sorry, just far too many comments to look at in a timely matter... So, the balancer works with 4s and it seems they have just cut off the remaining balance cables from a 16s balancer. It seemed to have all the connections and should also work from 4s-16s batteries.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia Thank you so much for the answer and sorry if I asked you the question in the other video you posted but unfortunately I needed to have an urgent answer. I finally decided to buy the other active balancer Where you posted a video and saw that you were really excited about it. it was the balancer of the NEEY. I ordered that because I saw that in your tests it is really very efficient unlike this one from DALY. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR AVAILABILITY 😉☺️☀️🔋
Hello and great thanks for tour TH-cam Channel. Sorry for m'y english i'am french. Atcually a have a 16s 105ah lifepo4 batterie pack for my 4600w Solar installation. Actually pu bms is a 100a Daly and a have adds a heltec active balance that i manually start when a imbalance is to high (0.14v at 55.5v and charge at 35amps). I want to upgrade my battery. Please what would you recommand again, neey active balancer or change a Daly bms for to a jk bms ? Knowing that in the future i would Mike add cells to make a 16s2p battery. Thanks in advance
You can see that the active balancer has a CPU, and many transistors on the outputs. I would wager it monitors incomming power on each cell and PWM modulates the output of each cell at the same time by switching the transistors.
Hey Andy, What about testing the PowMr HA02 balancer that is intended to balance 12v batteries in series. I have been using one for the last few days and I think it works pretty well.
@@mfgxl What I am talking about and using it when one puts multiple 12v Lifepo4 batteries in series. I have 4 in series and there fore using 48v. One unit is enough for that as each set of wires can handle 12v+.
I would be interested to see Andy do some testing on these units too, as I have one I was going to use as you have, but have not used it myself as yet. So u have 4 x 12v lifepo4 batteries (with BMS’s) in series and this seems to be working ok for you, ur 4 batteries are ok to put in series I take it? I had an issue doing this myself once, the batteries I had were not supposed to be in series or parallel, they seemed to be working ok for awhile but did have a bit of an overvolt situation for a short time and it blew most of the bms’s, I pulled the packs apart and have made 2 x 24v 200A batteries with JK BMS’s since and they are working great now, also the batteries were made up of 28 cylindrical cell (15A cells) & the JK brought the strings into equalisation fairly fast that were somewhat out of whack otherwise.
@@evil17 i do not know if my batteries are qualified for serial connection but I have done so a 16aug22 for 48v and they are still alive 03sep22. Previously I used 2s3p 24v setup. I have some (6) unknown brand 12v LIFEPO4 that I picked on ebay auction at a reasonable price (average about A$330 each supposedly 135ah) that I initially used in a 24v setup charged from solar through an Esmart3. They where used to power a 1000w 22-65v limited grid tie inverter through the load part on the Esmart3. It worked but didn't get too much from the batteries as when the voltage gets close to 24v the inverter output is only 2-300w. I there fore decided to try 48v. I didn't do any balancing of the batteries at all and of cause had one turning off too early on discharging (not always the same one). It then had to be restarted the next morning as the Esmart3 didn't start charging because it didn't know the battery voltage. I also had problems with charging switching off. Two days ago 31aug22 I then installed a PowMr HA02 equalizer and immediately I saw a difference. I was then able to set my Esmart3 to 11.8v battery low, bulk charge 14.5v and o v 15.0v. None of the batteries have turned off since (3 days and 3 nights). Unfortunately I have only been able to get up to 6.6kw (not enough sun) from my solar panels so far but it looks good. The problem for Lifepo4 batteries in series I would think is that the BMS can't take very high voltage. If say in a 48v system one turns off either for over voltage, under voltage or excess current it would be able to get 36v over it if connected directly to a load. If an external control system could be designed to prevent over voltage on any single battery in a serial connection there should be no problem connecting any number of Lifepo4 batteries in series I would think. I should be able to design such a circuit my self as I am an electronic design engineer but I haven't designed anything really for many years. I got my education before micro processors existed. My education only proofs that I could learn and that I am trying to do from every body else now.. The 1000w inverter has worked ok for a few years but my Esmart3's are giving a few problems. I have 4 x 40 amps and 2 by 60 amps. The 60 amps are new and are ok now but the 40 amps have little problems all of them now. I believe I have fixed one of them (The load FET blown) and I am looking at the rest now.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia awesome, thank you. Although not perfectly ideal that all the cells have to reach the set point at least we know that they normally do all go above 3.35 when they're approaching full even when balance is pretty far off. I think 3.3 might be a little low but 3.35 would be perfect.
I only WISH I could have my bms settings on my pixel 4a android! The JK bms seems like a good alternative to Overkill Solar's, if they can't fix their app in a few weeks or so.
I bought a small 1A Daly active balancer, it does not work, the LED is on all the time, but the app does not see it and does not balance it. Please tell me how to fix it?
Excelente video. Una pregunta... el ECUALIZADOR queda con un indicador led interno encendido cuando esta conectado? Aunque no este en proceso de balanceo? Es un indicador muy tenue !
I wonder if we could find a way to use active balancers with a solid state relay that makes balancer come on with charge from charge controller? Seems like it would work that way its not balancing during discharge ya know?? I mean maybe im wrong cause my balancers arw not here yet and ive not owned one yet so im kimda guessing but some say only balance at a high state of charge and only with charge
It does work over a 10 amp charge rate. The charging stops when one cell goes over the limit you set. You will never get the battery charged at higher than 10 amps. Over 10 amps and it goes on and off as that same cells go over the limit as soon as the charging try to start again. So it never goes anywhere. That is why I will install a QUCC 10 amp active balancer.
I am going to try the Qucc 10 amp active balancer. I have a commenter that built a 16 cell 280 amp 48 v battery just like mine that said it worked for him and the Daly just was not up to snuff.. It took me just under an hour to see that Daly Smart 1A BAL was not ever going to work. Makes me wonder if the BMS has fatal flaws as well.@@OffGridGarageAustralia
Hi there and thanks very much for sharing this with us. Just wanted to ask how your Daly smart active balance work as I bought one from Amazon (16S 12V) and I contacted to 4S 12 V Lifepo4 battery. It doesn’t work at all . Connection diagram is like this . Black negative and the next 3 cores to batteries and the fourth red core to + battery positive. Could you please help me with this? Thank you in advance.
It probably needs a higher voltage on the last red one, but that's just a guess, not a recommendation. Please refer to the wiring diagram of the balancer.
@@catalinbelibou5812 if you have a 16s balancer I think it will work with 4s if you connect unconnected red wires together with your 4s positive wire. then in the app change the cell count to 4s. I have only tried this with 3s and 4s with a 4s balancer so unsure about the 16s so be careful and try at your own risk as I don't work for Daly.
@@uhjyuff2095 thanks for trying to help out, I did that and still doesn’t help to balance the cells. Sent it back already. Thank you once again and really appreciate.
Another interesting video, thank you. While the Daly balancers were a little underwhelming, it's still great to see new products! I jokingly said that they must have gotten wind of the 250A JBD BMS with external 5A active balancer that I'm developing and have beaten me to the punch.
Thanks Ruben. DALY is not there yet and they actually moved a step backwards with these active balancers. We already have better options on the market.
@@mrtechie6810 Go with the 200A JK-BMS, the B2A20S20P. In the next video, I will show why this is the best BMS on the market. I mean, I've shown this before, but this time, I'll make it the really best best one😉 off-grid-garage.com/battery-management-systems-bms/
Mister Andy, what would you do/suggest for the packs that go out of balance on the way down, and the bms turns off use when the first runaway cell reaches 2.5 and leave the rest of them at 3.190? ;d i have "top balanced" them a few times without using them till they got maxed and relaxed, but it seems there is always one that is more giving than what is best for the group I've have yet to get another bms than 3 different dalys that I have. Best Regards Off-Grid Apartment ;P
Thank you for the informative video. I need a balancer for my 4's 2p 12 volt 147ah lipo4 bank. Do you think the Daly 1amp balancer with Bluetooth connectivity would be a good choice for an active balancer.
Hello. Which active balancer is the best, of non-smart ones? Have tested the 100 balancer, not working. Have now bought Daly but it seems to be the same type. Need a simple cheap one for 6S. Many thanks for the help. Regards Lennart
i think the all 4 cells been over is ok as this is leaving the bms to do its job and only when the battery nears full does the cell balance start this way it is not running all the time throwing cells out of balance like you have shown befor
You say it's Daly's 1st attempt at an intelligent balancer but they are one of the longest-going BMS manufacturers in the DIY market and very late to the party in my view. They should have been one of the 1st and have perfection by now. Thanks for all your testing, good to know what sh*t NOT to purchase 🤣
They are an established manufacturer with a long tradition and lots of experience. Why they develop and release such products is beyond my understanding 🤷♂️
Is it feasible to establish a Bluetooth (or other) connection between the DALY Active Balancing and Victron GX devices (Cerebo and VRM), or is it exclusively achievable through the DALY BMS?
With the need to have all cells reach a threshold, I would set a minimum value for all cells to reach (ex. if expecting 3.3v to trigger, set to 3.2v). I hope they have the updated firmware in the version I receive...).
hello my name is Angelo I wanted to ask you the smart Active balance for how many Cells was it originally? because I saw you cut the cables and it worked on your four Lifepo4 cells. but was it originally for 16 cells?
Hi, Wonderful Videos, I'm waiting for my 3 each of Daly 8S 24V Smart BMS's, Smart Active Balancers, 5 Amp Parallel Module .. Ill be paralleling 3 x 200AH Lifepo4 8S systems for a total of 600 Amps capacity. I noticed you had an app with Daly BMS Wire Diagrams, or a web sire, would you mind sharing how to get that? Have been unable to find much documentation at all to be honest
Stopping active balance when one cell gets below the threshold is a good thing. If you got a drain cell and you start to balance when getting bellow threshold you kill your whole battery pack instead of just one cell.
Hi mister Andy! Im Lucian, from Romania. I need your help , please!! I buy a 16s daly active balancer , and he comes without bluethooth. The seller say,on this model 16s no needs BT. Is that true? Best regards!! Sorry if a disturb you
I ordered the smart version, with BT, but they say that the 16S model does not have the version with BT mode, only the 14s. In the meantime, I tried with a BT module from another Daly bms and I saw that it works, I can use this one for the balancer. But thank you very much for the answer. I want to congratulate you for everything you do, keep it up, you are the best. I have been following you for some time and I want to say that your knowledge and all the tests you do have been very useful to me.
As Riaan said: You would not need a balancer between battery packs. Parallel battery packs balance themselves without any electronics. I discussed this with Daly and explained, there is no limiter necessary for LiFePO4 due to the flat curves. I guess they still live in the Li-ion world where voltage is linear to SOC.
Hi Andy - still learning from you here... Hey, what if you set the balance open start voltage lower, say 2.5 volts? My Daly software lets me set that low, even though I don't have a balancer yet (although I need one badly) Wouldn't it pretty much always be on then? I would purchase NEEY, but 91 dollars US per unit is steep!
Hello thx for you videos Very clear and detailed I have issues with daly bms 250A 4s. The parameter end of charge dont work. And the charge stop on the over charge value. If you have any idea your d be welcome.
Thank you. So first of all the BMS should not control your charging! This is a task for your charger or solar charge controller. The BMS is simply there to protect the battery if the charger is faulty and keeps charging. The charger should stop charging before the BMS triggers and disconnects you battery. For example, you can set the charger to charge your battery to 3.45V/cell and have the BMS turning off at 3.6V/cell. The BMS should not disconnect the battery unless something is wrong.
A couple years ago I tried the then-new smart Daly and had nothing but problems with it. I eventually gave up. In the online forums, everyone else seemed to be having problems as well. They have started to die down, but the reports of people having problems have continued since then. About the same time, I noticed that even people with the 'non-smart' Daly BMSs started having problems as well. Something happened to the quality of the Daly products. I lost trust in Daly and I am going to have to see a *lot* of very positive reviews to ever buy something from them again. The 'smart' daily active balancer review by Andy indicated the active balancer works but indicated a few issues and oddities with how it works. Meanwhile, the 'non-smart' review was really bad. Needless to say, I am a long way from being convinced Daly is worth trying again. Andy was very generous in saying many he just got a faulty one.... but I am reminded of the old Monty Python and the Holy Grail line "Run Away! Run Away"
Here's one 👍 18 months in and my 100A smart BMS still works fine 🙂 Only issue is the BT only works when it's charging or discharging with over 5A, under 5A you need to wake the BT up with the button 🙄 i see it as a quirk rather than an issue ( mainly to make myself feel better about having bought a Daly BMS ) 🤣
I haven't tried yet. The cables they cut off are very short and glued to the white plastic plug. I would need another of these connectors and test it out. I'm sure it will work. The PCB seems fully equipped for that.
The question pops up every once in 😂a while 😊 Thanks for your happy and kind story telling man. It's fun to watch your experiments. Please check out the 16s function, they might code the balancer firmware on 4s although the hardware is fully equipped. I have 20s and can only get a green light if I connect the plus pole of the overall assembly to the last pin of active balancer. Currently having 12s battery and won't see cell 12 if not connecting the cell's +pole cable to its position at active balancer. Else, same issues in Daly logic parameters settings, etc not really reflecting battery needs. Also it seems some BMS settings in App reflect settings of balancer which is always confusing. Daly should let one choose (or autodetect) which device one is dealing with.
Hi! I will look on your other videos. I have just got my 320 Ah LifePo4 batteries (24 volt system) and need to buy a BMS system. Which of those BMS system with active balancer you describe in different videos would you recommend for 320 Ah LifePo4 grade A cells connected as 24 Volt?
Hi dod you get this working? I installed a 20s version (21p) and it shows correctly in the app. But damn if it doesnt really balance anything. It starts for a few seconds (lowest 3.365v and highest 3.45v) but after two days of being connected the difference is the same as before. Wonder if you figured it out - sucks to not have it balancing.
Thanks Andy I have been waiting for a review. I will wait till thay make a higher current one. Ps I just brought a companion rover 100ah new for $850 aud so Keen to open and have a look
Hey Andy, I am watching you for about 1 year and a half. You have by far the most comprehensive channel on TH-cam.
You are doing for EVERIBODY a HUGE service. I am really impressed.
Agreed! 😃
Thanks a lot for your kind words 😊
@@OffGridGarageAustralia I agree with the others. I wish I had your sunshine. Melbourne hasn't been so good lately.
Hi Andy. About a week or so ago I posted a question about why no one makes a BMS which charges each CELL individually (but all at the same time in parallel) rather than charge across the entire PACK in series. This new method of individual CELL charging would stop charging any cell that exceeds the upper limit and as soon as that cell falls below the upper limit resume charging that cell. This would eliminate any need for either active or passive balancing. Since active balancing currently requires discharging a high voltage cell into a capacitor and then charging a lower voltage cell from the same capacitor it is absolutely possible to build a BMS which only charges each cell individually with no balancing circuitry neither active nor passive.
I decided to try to make such a BMS myself and in the process, I have learned a few things about how difficult and costly that could be. There would need to be a circuit to take the large "48" volt input from the charger and break it down into smaller voltage paths, one for each cell. This would add additional cost and complexity to manufacture due to the additional circuitry. This explains why chargers currently charge across the entire pack rather than each cell individually, it is simply cheaper and slightly more efficient.
HOWEVA, I decided to try to understand the balancing process more precisely and so decided to build my own BMS using an Arduino to control the process. Since my career was in programming, I do have the LOGIC background to know how to write the code for such an endeavor but have had to learn a new programming language to code the Arduino. I also needed some time to acquire the hardware necessary to build a small prototype. Also, since the chargers today are built for the larger voltage across the entire pack method, I will initially use that method rather than charging each cell individually. Perhaps in the future I will try individual cell charging.
During the learning process, I discovered that one needs to sample an individual cell's voltage multiple times and then average the readings out to get a more accurate (truer) voltage since the Analogue to Digital Converters (ADC) in the Arduino chip detects a slightly different voltage each time a cell is sampled. Sometimes it is slightly higher (in millivolts) and sometimes it is slightly lower. This brings into question how accurate the ADC samplers are in current BMSs.
I have learned that the programming required to create a BMS is in essence very simple and can easily implement both active and passive balancing at the same time. The program simply loops through a series of steps. Step one: ALL the CELLS in a PACK are sampled to determine the highest and lowest voltage cells. Step 2: Charging of the entire Pack is stopped if any cell has a voltage which exceeds an upper SAFETY limit. Step 3: When one or more CELL(s) are above a BALANCING limit and one or more CELL(s) are below the balancing limit, active balancing is invoked to transfer some of excessive voltage from the highest cell to the lowest cell. Step four: If there is a Cell above the limit but no cells below the limit passive balancing is invoked to drain some voltage from the offending cell.
CURRENT BMS design usually doesn't utilize BOTH active and passive balancing choosing instead to use only one of the two methods. When utilizing active balancing alone a BMS usually only attempts to balance when the difference between high and low cells exceeds a certain limit and there is one or more cells below the individual cell limit otherwise it would continuously be transferring voltage and draining the entire pack. A BMS using passive balancing alone wastes some of the stored electrons thereby requiring more time to fully charge a pack.
Since all the CELLS are connected in series across the pack, only one cell can be connected to the capacitor or draining resister at any one time.
In either active or passive balancing, the number of volts transferred depends on BOTH the capacity of the hardware to handle the amperage as well as the time allowed to complete the transfer process. The BMSs you are currently testing may have the HARDWARE capacity to handle the higher amps but have not provided the required time via the SOFTWARE to actually complete the transfer.
For the purists, the term amperage is used to define the number of electrons flowing across a circuit being the equivalent to a charge of one coulomb (6.241 x 1018 electrons) per second. In this discussion, I am using the term AMPS simply to represent the number of electrons being transferred.
Obviously, this is still in the theoretical, learning, testing, and developmental state and nowhere fully developed enough to say whether or not it can be further developed.,
It would be nice if you could have a learn mode, which would most likely learning that certain cells are always the guilty party, and then it could give priority to those cells. Keep up the good work, and keep us informed. I am very interested in what you learn.
Good approach, but I think in the long run it would be better to combine BMS and inverter. In the way of a "Cascaded H-bridge Multilevel inverter". This would have only advantages, except for the increased hardware requirements. But this is already being researched (BM3).
Interesting concept and I like Aaron’s learn mode idea too. It sounds quite do-able, I guess the expense here is in individual cell, high amp, low volt charging gear, but it makes sense if u individually charge each cell to a specific voltage with a set tail current cut off, the dodgy cells will get there quicker perhaps but then u could prevent any further charging to individual cells as they reach their peek absorbtion while the other cells in the pack can carry on charging at peak rate till they all catch up and stop when they reach their set peaks, this would allow for a much more efficient/quicker charging cycle & probably many benefits particularly to solar users/harvesters. I like ur idea, please keep us informed of how u go with it. Cheers
You should be working with Daly Daniel, we might actually see some better results from these pretty red boxes then!
@@evil17 Thanks much for your kind reply.
Thank you Andy. These Chinese products are being rolled out without being fully tested. They actually let the consumers do the testing and wait for problems to come up. Then they apply fixes. In the meantime they have made money from those who dont know and dont COMPLAIN!
Spot on.
I completely agree with this,
after having tested 2 BMS from Daly, which does not work normally, or not at all!
My opinion Daily they just do shit
Hi Andy, I have watched your excelemt vedios for a while now I am fascinated by the balance circus. Would it be possible to replace busbars with shunts then have watt/ capacity used to obtain a real ballance between cells.
Yep, the products are definitely not ready for publishing. DALY reached out to me and want me to test them for them. Off camera. I declined and said if they are not confident about their products, don't sell them.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia My Ant BMS won't turn on, and I am looking for a 200A(?) BMS for a 48V Lithium Ion for a 3000W inverter. Which BMS do you recommend?
Hi friend. I test a daly in new 16s calb 280 ah lifepo4 new pack. Not top balance. I had about 70 mV of differences . I set start balance up then 3.40 mV for cell and i charge at 54.7 v . Daly balance the cells with 20 mV differential. Is very low cost balancer for me is a good solution. With resistive balance of bms i complete the operation and finally i have 0.003 balance in a new pack . Very good.
Your channel is the best. Thank you.
Sweet! I like the daly smart balancer too. its great so far.
Just confirming the JK 4-8S 200A 2A active balance BMS is working like a charm. Really glad you showed us their BMSes.
Me too. I only bought this after watching Andys video.
It is a great BMS, right? I really like it a lot.
I use Daly smart BMS with the Heltec 5amp works well together.
Yep, that would work and the active balancer will compensate for the lack of balancing in the Daly BMS.
I bought one after watching your video, this one I can set when the balancer should start, tried 3.20v and it's no problem 🤗
In the last month I saw my Daly BMS app showing the Active Balancing function, I tried to use but it hasn't work; but Andy give the answer if is good or not to buy or not to buy it.
Yeah, a few people asked that question but it obviously does not work with any of their existing BMSes, they just use the same app for both devices.
MY REVIEW OF THE DALY SMART, 1A, 16S ACTIVE BALANCER. before installing the new Daly, my bank had become seriously out of balance, about 0.250 mV when fully charged, sometimes nudging 275 mV. So I installed the Daly. At first it did not seem to do much -- 1 amp current was flowing through the balancing wires, as it should, yet the imbalance remained high. This continued for several days and I began to wonder if the 1 amp balance current was inadequate for 16 280ah cells. But after 5 days of normal solar system operation, it finally balanced. As I type the delta is 19 mV, with the cells charged to an average of 3.487V. So it works. No, it is not the ultimate active balancer, but for $39 USD, it is the best value, and I can recommend it.
Thanks for your testing. Jkbms is under $75usd and as you know bms and balancer. There is also a 6amp for 8s.
JK BMS prices just went down. I bought mine earlier and now theres NEW prices advertised.
@@noelbondad7423 Where is the best place to buy a JK BMS? Alibaba? Direct?
@@danmc1313 i got it using Andys LINK. They have sinced come down in prices.
Thanks guys, links and prices here: off-grid-garage.com/battery-management-systems-bms/
I tested the 16s active balancer and had to play with the configuration until it worked well. A not mentioned design issue is a heat problem. The temp sensor is onboard, when cover is removed passive cooling works.
Ah, I was just realising that as well. Mine got already up to 48°C doing its job. But then removing the cover seems to be a workaround for an arising problem.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia Thank you for confirming! I first thought it us due to the heat here in Europe but now it's definitely cool and still had a high temp alert. Without cover and a safety layer of plastik 70 everything is ok. Cheers!
use JK-BMS all in...
nice test, thanks.
I didn't understand why daly is used so often? Well, I haven't been following the topic for so long, but JK-BMS has everything, 200A should be enough for everyone at 48V.
But JK BMS is expensive. I can get one of these 8s balancers for 30 US dollars. My battery already has a BMS with passive balancing that isn't quite enough to keep it in line and I need some stronger balancing current which is where this one comes in. I'm just looking for the cheapest strong enough balancer that won't cause imbalancing by continuing to balance at all voltage levels.
JK is definitely the way to go. I was just curious if Daly actually made a decent product. Maybe they will one day...
I knew there was a comments section somewhere as I had previously seen it. then couldn't find it - the secret? Keep on scrolling past all the other video icons/thumbnails.
And because I enjoy your videos, info, voice, sense of humour I have joined up. Tells me it starts the day after my 76 birthday!
Anyhoo. I have a Daly Smart 250 with BT dongle and I think I may have solved my balance problem
Live ion the road in 15" poptop. 540W solar, Renogy DCC50sMPPT, BMS as above. to 400Ahr 4S bank
My charger from Ian Goh ( FPV Solar) is set to 14V when on Genset , (will reset to 13,6 if long term on mains)
Daly set to Bal open 3.4V, open diff 20mV
while charging Cell diff can get over 25mV
Balance works starts to work as soon as I turn off charging and slowly gets down to 5mv even 2mV
so I think that is reasonable?
HOWEVER, following other of your info I have on the way a 4th Gen Neeeeeeyyy active balancer,
Why? because it's there and lust to be sure to be sure
I look forward with anticipation to seeing the results
Cheers
Thanks for joining!
hi Andy, I thing the setting for your smart active balancer is for lithium-ion (4,25 max / 2,2 mini)
I changed it to LFP but the numbers don't change🤷♂️ Forgotten to mention this as another bug.
I don’t understand why these can’t just trigger based on voltage delta - if it goes above defined threshold, start balancing until it gets below threshold. For LFP, most of the curve is super flat so no balancing should be done. But at the low and high end balancing would help increase longevity of cells if they’re kept balanced. On high end it helps avoid a cell peek to high (causing hi voltage damage), in the low end it will help avoid cell going to low (protecting cell as well). Since with LFP both low and high end are very steep, it should be easy to just use voltage delta to trigger. If delta is not huge I don’t mind some imbalance. Finally, when it is in the low/high end it should be great to have 5 or even 10amp since in those areas the curve is steep so a cell that is much lower or higher needs a lot of “support” to stay close to the other cells - especially when charging pack with >20 amp.
Two parameters of level for balancing - low and high level, yes👍
You would have to have some perfect cells and a strong balancer to keep up at the top and the bottom of the range . High voltage balancing only is the way , at least with the current cells and balancers available . Andy has demonstrated trying to bottom balance a long time ago , you can have one or the other but not both without near perfect cell capacity.
@@onthelake9554 I agree, bottom balancing and top balancing on the same set is a bad idea. What if you know your battery is low so you hang out near empty for a really long time trying to conserve power, the bottom balancing is at work for hours and hours through the night and then all at once you charge them up in the day, you charge them so quickly that the balancer can't keep up and you end up with an overvoltage cell because all night the night before it was working against itself.
Yes, you won't do both, bottom and top balancing with a battery pack. We have seen in the many tests, that bottom balancing with an Active Balancer will only give you 2-3Ah at best. If you have a 280Ah pack and are reliant on these 2-3Ah, there is something wrong with your system design. Either get second battery or a larger one if you need more storage.
Top balancing seems to work fine with an active balancer once we leave the flat part of the curve, so 3.45V and above works great. Holt the pack there for 30min to give the balancer time to do its job and then fall back to float and a lower voltage.
Since a perfect battery doesn’t need balancing after the initial top balance, the first goal should be to make your battery as good as it can be and then set the BMS to do the minimum possible needed to keep it balanced.
If you have a 1p battery and one cell has 5% less capacity than the highest, as long as you charge to 90% and shutoff at 10%, you will never really need to keep filling that one cell at the bottom and bleeding it at the top. Just let the balancer deal with the different self discharge rates during each full charge.
I have a 20s6p LiFePO4 battery which i tested each cell (which seems to have been pulled from 20 different reject piles) and matched as good as possible. Originally it was going to be 5p but I went with 6p to give me the capacity of 5p even when used at 10-90%.
I use the ANT BMS which only has 100ma passive balance (I wish it had 500ma active), but the key is in the settings it allows you to choose from to maintain balance.
Since i want the battery to last long and im using my AGM charger which has float, i set the OVP @ 3.5v/cell and release at 3.49v. This blocks the charge for a few seconds, allowing the charger to drop down to float, then opens the port again.
The ANT allows two types of balancing. The one i use is BALANCE LIMIT which jist bleeds anything over a specific value. I have mine set @ 3.44v which corresponds to the float voltage. So if i leave it plugged it it will fully balance. If I unplug early it will just bleed off a bit from the cells that don’t have much self discharge.
The ANT also has autobalance which can be started manually, or triggered when both CELL DIFFERENTIAL and BALANCE VOLTAGE conditions are met. Then it will balance until cell differential drops below the value in the setting, which I set to 0.001v. I can also manually start autobalance and it will run once until all cells within 0.001v.
As you mentioned you should not be balancing when oh the flat part of the curve because it just throws it way out of balance when its time to top balance it.
The only thing i wish the ANT had was active balancing that would bleed any cell over the set value (3.44v in my case) and feed it to the lowest cell(s). But only because it would get it all balanced at the top in 1/10 of the time, and save a tiny bit of electricity.
But as far at bottom balancing its just best to either match the cells better or buy bigger cells and use a smaller percentage of them rather than charging and discharging the same brick each cycle.
Some manufacturers of commercial equipment do use very high amp active balancing to allow something with a bad cell (in a 2p+ pack) to keep going even if one cell shorts and disconnects. Then it sends a trouble call to the company and they go fix the bad battery at the next convenience. But for home use its generally overkill.
Another good video. Really wish I hadn’t bought all my stuff while watching Will Prowse. His love of Daly caused me to buy two 250A models. No problems so far, but haven’t put my side into production yet either.
The BMSes are not too bad except from the balancing part. If you add one of these capacitive active balancers for maintenance purposes and activate it from time to time, it will be OK. I have one 250A Daly in use for while in one of my 12V batteries and beat the crap out of it with the Peter inverter and my electric chainsaw. Not problem with this BMS so far.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia so if somebody has a Daly BMS and they also want to buy the Daly active balancer I see in the app you can see both but can you see both at the same time? Does your phone then connect to two different Bluetooth devices simultaneously? One at a time? Or does the active balancer communicate through a cable to the regular balancer and then get forwarded through the Bluetooth to your app in your phone?
@@SiriusSolar they both communicate through Bluetooth. That is a very good question if the app allows two connections at the same time. I would say you will see only one device at a time. I'll test this as well...
@@OffGridGarageAustralia Good to know, Thx. As a direct result of your efforts I have decided to get 2 of the 5A Heltec balancers, 1 for each of my pack. Appreciate all the effort you put into these videos.
@@inmyimage1081 thank you. That's a great choice, they will work well.
"Hells Bells", I like that!
yep, just one 'DOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNGGGGGGG' of it.
I have been waiting for this video. Have you ever hooked up your scope to the balancer to see if they balance with pulses or linear non switched?
I never did. I'll put this on my list for future videos. That will be interesting!
I was just having your seplos 280 video playing in the background putting some batteries on charge. When you said "Chinese chewing gum" I lost it. My dogs were staring at me and I couldn't stop laughing 🤣😂🤣
Hahaha, it really looks like chewing gum 😂
@@OffGridGarageAustralia my welding looks like the bigger the blob, the better da job. R u wire feed no gas? HOW
Thanks Andy, great test, JK BMS complete with excellent 2A balancing for the win, again!
SO GLAD I didn’t ever buy a DALY as I nearly did 6 months ago.
Did you get your JK back yet?
Yeah, Daly is still a big brand but the products are not ready for prime time. Unless you need a BMS for 500A, Daly is pretty much the only brand who makes one in this size (except the relay BMS out there).
@@OffGridGarageAustralia Yes thanks Andy, received my replacement 4s-8s (12v) JK BMS back, and postage refund. The only SLOW part of the process was postage from this end. Their replacement, once they received my faulty one, was very quick.
I have no complaints about their customer service (though I have not yet had time to test the replacement.)
@@FutureSystem738 sounds good, thanks for your feedback.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia THANK YOU Andy 👍
Andy, it's NOR a HW or a SW issue with the App - it's a firmware issue of the balancer but that can be easly fixed by Daly (if they want)
They got in contact with me... but no sign of improvement with their products.
looks like that all of the other leads of the ic's was populated tried to populate with 16s ? :D
They come as 24s versions as well but they just cut off the remainder of the 16S version. It looks terrible, maybe they ran out of 4s cables 🤷♂️
@@OffGridGarageAustralia looks more they manufacture 24s and then cut the rires for 4s making more cheaper the production because in the video the PCB looked to be populated
Did I not see a label marked as ‘Toast’
On the small red balancer?
Hahaha, great. I'll make one!
Actually, I may use the small balancer in my solar gate project with the Palo cells. That may actually work...
When do you need 1a or a higher capacity like 2-5a active balancer ?
Can I buy a 20S Daly Smart Active Balancer and use it for a 7S configuration for the moment. My plan is use it for 14S or may be 16S?
I wonder whether the cell volt high protect setting could be referring to what you want this balancer to do which is begin balancing when one cell is high... or whether this setting could be used in this way
I wonder if it would be a good idea to use a NEEY Active Balancer in the Seploas BMS, as the current could balance the pack quickly and evenly.
That's my current plan. I want the seplos to communicate with my mppsolar inverter/charger and the neey for balancing.
was wondering and asked the exact same thing.
Could be not a good idea unless you disable the native seplos bms balancing
There is definitely enough space to add a NEEY in that box. If it is necessary 🤷♂️
Thank you! You have helped me a lot! I hope they have better Firmware meanwhile.
I noticed that during your testing you calculated the PACK cut-off voltage as a multiple of the highest cell voltage that you desired. One thing I was wondering about is when the current BMSs stop the charging process they are using the total PACK voltage to determine when to pause charging rather than the highest CELL voltage. I believe that they should be using the highest individual CELL voltage because a single cell might rise WELL above the desired cell level cut-off voltage while one or more of the remaining cells are far enough below voltage to keep the total pack voltage below the pack level cut-off voltage while the bad cell becomes dangerously high.
This problem could arise if a pack hasn't been charged for some time such as having been sitting around before being sold and used for the first time. David Poz just posted a video which had a new pack not delivering the posted amp hours until after it had been charged for the first time. I wonder if one or more cells in that pack could have exceeded the desired CELL level voltage while waiting for the entire pack to reach full voltage on the first charge. When one builds their own pack and top balances each cell before assembly there shouldn't be a problem with one cell being MUCH higher than any other on the first charge.
The reason for current BMSs having a wait time to resume charging is to allow any high cells to get below the cutoff point. During this wait time while charging is paused, cell balancing should be allowed to continue otherwise the high cells would never be brought down to a safe level and the battery pack would never achieve it's full potential amp hours. I seem to remember that during your testing one or more of the BMS's you tested stopped balancing when the charging process was paused.
Yes, that is correct. Some BMSes have both settings for a single cell OVP and a pack OVP. Whatever comes first will trigger the disconnect. The JK-BMS has only the cell voltage protection. And this makes totally sense. As you said, if you have a runner, the BMS will catch that by measuring the single cell voltages. The overall pack voltage could still be below the threshold and trigger point.
There is always a trigger and recovery setting for these features (Heltec does not have that and the recovery cannot be set by the user). If the BMS only has charge balance though, it won't do any balancing if the BMS has cut off the battery. JBD, DALY, Overkill are some of them which are really bad with this design. The BMS will only balance during charging. With these, the battery will only sit there and wait for this single cell to naturally come down in voltage before the BMS connects the battery again. That's a shit design.
I am surprised you did not test a JK active balancer, without the BMS… they make one!
Yes, but isn't that the same as the NEEY just with the same JK app?
Hi Andy@@OffGridGarageAustralia -
Same as the NEEY? I don’t know.
The photos of the JK active equalizer boards looks the same as a Heltec active equalizer…
they both have 1 & 2 amp options.
The JK active balancer board looks different from the latest 4th NEEY active balancer board.
The latest NEEY has a 4 amp balancer.
No the Neey and JK active balancer (standalone) are different. The JK active balancer relies on delta V setting to turn on/off balancing. The JK active balancer has no setting to turn off below 3.4V .
it's good that you dismantled this bms, how many are its dimensions, length, width, height when disassembled? I want to buy this!!! but I don't know if it will fit inside my e-bike battery?
Don't know, I didn't measure the PSB. There is a link on my website to the product with dimensions, but that's the outer dimensions only.
off-grid-garage.com/battery-management-systems-bms/
one more question please!!! turning on and off the active smart balancer daly can only be done with the help of bluetooth? Can I physically make a turn-off button if it is placed inside the box?
@@jurasiksafonins189 I guess, you can just disconnect the main positive to the balancer, but I would check this with Daly before trying.
I recently learned that some BMS do not balance until they have been initiated by the charger and then they will continue to balance when you turn the charger off.
Your small Daly (non smart balancer) probably needs the charger to initiate it .
Hmm, never heard about that before. What would be the difference if a charger is connected? It's not a BMS, just a balancer. It should work in either situation.
Merci beaucoup pour tes nouvelles vidéos très intéressant
Hi. I bought one Daly Smart Balancer and found the same problem as you. . . AlL voltages need to be above the set point before balancing starts.
Yeah, I have some new one here now but haven't tested yet. I hope they have changed the software by now.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia GREAT video Andy, thank you for your awesome contributions to the hobby! I'm a big fan of yours!
I was wondering if you've had a chance to see if Daly has updated either of their 2 active balancers, so that it works the way you stated in your video? Also, I already have the Daly 4S BMS w/ bluetooth. Do you know if their basic active balancer (one w/out bluetooth) would work with the Daly app, OR will I still need the model w/ bluetooth if I want to see it working in their one app? In other words, can the cheaper balancer work with their one single app?
@@heytae I haven't revisited the DALY active balancers since. I have however, newer models of them here.
The basic active balancer has no bluetooth and therefore won't work with the app.
New to this. Can you please do an instructional video on setting the software parameters fo above as they are all blank waiting for a input?
Maybe the Daly is looking for the lowest cell to trigger the smart balancing or maybe "Avg Cell V." In your video the "Avg Cell V." was exactly at 3.30v and I was wanting it to change to 3.31v and then you canceled the test! Thanks for the work you do, it still seems like Daly has a firmware problem exactly like the firmware problem in their smart BMS balancing too. Such a shame.
Oh, I didn't pay attention to the average. I'll have a look again and runs some tests with that in mind. Thanks for picking this up...
I hope this is not the case , it would be even worse design . 3 cells at 2.5 and the 4th one could be cooked before it came on ., even more so on 16s .
@@OffGridGarageAustralia Sure go ahead and run some more tests. Also, what do you think about active balancers charging the low cell "if" the pack is below freezing temperature. Do you think you can test if any active balancer can trigger on and off based on temp?
@@uhjyuff2095 the balancer should only work if the battery is full, not all the time. So it's highly unlikely that the battery is fully charged and needs balancing and the cells are also freezing cold.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia so you think the small active balancing is fine in all temps? I feel users want the bms to be automatic and just work according to the cell manufactures requirements. I hope the JK or neey bms knows to not charge a cell below freezing level because that would be something I want!
Daly has also Victron CAN Bus Support now - brand new :D
Would it be possible to put an active balancer such as this NEEY or a JK inside the Seplos to handle the balancing? Allowing you to close the lid on it, set and forget and not worry about the balancing while still having the LCD of the Seplos BMS for info and communication with the Victron Multiplus?
Edit: You just answered my question at 19:15 😁
Yes, absolutely. That would be fine solution.
Actually Seplos should have woken up in the first place and design a several Ampere balancer rather than the 150mA or so they have built in. Seplos what is wrong with you!?!
If you need a BMS, which communicates with Victron Venus OS, then Seplos is not the only one, for example JK BMS with R485 interface can be connected to the Venus OS. You just need install a driver into your Venus OS device.
hi can you make a video on the New Daly 5A active balancer?
Time to sit back and learn some more
I ordered the 8s 1a smart active balancer. My 8s pack (6P8S - 48, 100ah CALB cells assembled in a 24v, 600ah battery bank) is getting out of balance and DALY BMS cannot keep up. However, once I top balanced with a desk charger SLOWLY to 3.4-3.5v across the bank, the voltages are closer and usable capacity is greater. Before, with the variances, I would see 27.2v but as soon as load was added, the cells that were at 3.5 and some as low as 3.3, I really only had 90% usable and it steadily dropped so I had even less than 90%. Hoping to see improved balancing with the 1A smart active balancer. DALY now has 5a active balancer. I may buy that later. I have DALY 500amp bms (250amp charging).
Hi, great vídeo, have tou tried any other active balancer (a good but not so expensive one)?
Yes, I have. The 5A active capacitive balancer is great:
off-grid-garage.com/battery-management-systems-bms/
Hello Andy and thanks for this test. I purchase a Daly active balancer 8S 1A and received it those days. I'm surprised because on the aliexpress website the picture of the product I ordered does not look like the one I received and the one I received looks like the one you tested 1 year ago (bugged). Did you know if Daly produces a new version of this 1A smart active balancer. I suspect the unit I received is an old one bugged.
Where can the 4th gen Neey be purchased?
Link in the description and on my website: off-grid-garage.com/battery-management-systems-bms/
I saw this info for the small DALY balancer from Lazada Philippines. Start up >= 3.3V (average single cell voltage) Close condition
I have noticed that the voltage reading in the app is not accurate IF the balancer is triggered. Seems more accurate once finished balancing.
threshold settings on balancing is based upon average volt of the bank, not on a single cell voltage. it's not a bug , it's a feature.. 😃
You can parallel active balancers IF you keep separate sense lines for each balancer. That can be quite a rat's nest of wires.
Sharing a common single set of sense lines will cause interference in voltage sensing between balancers due to async operation between balancers.
Balancers momentarily stop pushing balance current during cell voltage measurements to avoid having voltage drop on sense wires.
exactly true. I have seen the app when the balancer is on and the voltage of the cells changes probably from the voltage drop and current when the balancer is pulling current. then it will stop and go back to normal accurate reading.
Thank you Andy.
Hello
Regarding voltage measurements. Have you thought about the accuracy of your instrument? As you have it, you have approx. 5% deviation. You must use an instrument with at least 6 digits and 0.5% deviation. Or even better with 0.1% deviation.
Greetings
I also purchased a Daly Smart Balance 2 weeks ago. As soon as it arrives, I'll check, if it behaves the same. I should also design a BMS and Balancer... Seems, that there is nothing really good on the market 😫
So far, only the JK-BMS seems to be the best option in terms of BMS and balancer combined.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia Currently in Germany, there is a run on Mini-PVs up to 600W inverter power and 600-900W PV-Peak-Power. Many people ask, if they can somewhere get one ideally with some battery storage. If some ready-to-use low-cost, low-power (200W AC inverter, 1000W MPPT-Charger) on-grid hybrid inverter, integrating MPPT charger, BMS and balancer for a 12V battery would exist, it would be sold out in hours...
hello your Smart active balancer i noticed it is for 16s battery banks but it also works on your 4S battery bank ?? or am I wrong to see and is it a Smart 4S active balancer? I hope you answer me in the meantime thank you. Angel
Found your question, sorry, just far too many comments to look at in a timely matter...
So, the balancer works with 4s and it seems they have just cut off the remaining balance cables from a 16s balancer. It seemed to have all the connections and should also work from 4s-16s batteries.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia Thank you so much for the answer and sorry if I asked you the question in the other video you posted but unfortunately I needed to have an urgent answer. I finally decided to buy the other active balancer Where you posted a video and saw that you were really excited about it. it was the balancer of the NEEY. I ordered that because I saw that in your tests it is really very efficient unlike this one from DALY. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR AVAILABILITY 😉☺️☀️🔋
Hello and great thanks for tour TH-cam Channel.
Sorry for m'y english i'am french.
Atcually a have a 16s 105ah lifepo4 batterie pack for my 4600w Solar installation.
Actually pu bms is a 100a Daly and a have adds a heltec active balance that i manually start when a imbalance is to high (0.14v at 55.5v and charge at 35amps).
I want to upgrade my battery.
Please what would you recommand again, neey active balancer or change a Daly bms for to a jk bms ?
Knowing that in the future i would Mike add cells to make a 16s2p battery.
Thanks in advance
I have a daly BMS but it's no match for the 2 JKs I have, it's getting replaced with another JK.
Yep, you cannot go wrong with a JK.
You can see that the active balancer has a CPU, and many transistors on the outputs. I would wager it monitors incomming power on each cell and PWM modulates the output of each cell at the same time by switching the transistors.
Hey Andy, What about testing the PowMr HA02 balancer that is intended to balance 12v batteries in series. I have been using one for the last few days and I think it works pretty well.
I have looked at this option, but one would need many (5) for a 16s system, and not many amps at small mV deltas.
@@mfgxl What I am talking about and using it when one puts multiple 12v Lifepo4 batteries in series. I have 4 in series and there fore using 48v. One unit is enough for that as each set of wires can handle 12v+.
I would be interested to see Andy do some testing on these units too, as I have one I was going to use as you have, but have not used it myself as yet. So u have 4 x 12v lifepo4 batteries (with BMS’s) in series and this seems to be working ok for you, ur 4 batteries are ok to put in series I take it? I had an issue doing this myself once, the batteries I had were not supposed to be in series or parallel, they seemed to be working ok for awhile but did have a bit of an overvolt situation for a short time and it blew most of the bms’s, I pulled the packs apart and have made 2 x 24v 200A batteries with JK BMS’s since and they are working great now, also the batteries were made up of 28 cylindrical cell (15A cells) & the JK brought the strings into equalisation fairly fast that were somewhat out of whack otherwise.
@@evil17 i do not know if my batteries are qualified for serial connection but I have done so a 16aug22 for 48v and they are still alive 03sep22. Previously I used 2s3p 24v setup. I have some (6) unknown brand 12v LIFEPO4 that I picked on ebay auction at a reasonable price (average about A$330 each supposedly 135ah) that I initially used in a 24v setup charged from solar through an Esmart3. They where used to power a 1000w 22-65v limited grid tie inverter through the load part on the Esmart3. It worked but didn't get too much from the batteries as when the voltage gets close to 24v the inverter output is only 2-300w. I there fore decided to try 48v. I didn't do any balancing of the batteries at all and of cause had one turning off too early on discharging (not always the same one). It then had to be restarted the next morning as the Esmart3 didn't start charging because it didn't know the battery voltage. I also had problems with charging switching off.
Two days ago 31aug22 I then installed a PowMr HA02 equalizer and immediately I saw a difference. I was then able to set my Esmart3 to 11.8v battery low, bulk charge 14.5v and o v 15.0v. None of the batteries have turned off since (3 days and 3 nights). Unfortunately I have only been able to get up to 6.6kw (not enough sun) from my solar panels so far but it looks good.
The problem for Lifepo4 batteries in series I would think is that the BMS can't take very high voltage. If say in a 48v system one turns off either for over voltage, under voltage or excess current it would be able to get 36v over it if connected directly to a load. If an external control system could be designed to prevent over voltage on any single battery in a serial connection there should be no problem connecting any number of Lifepo4 batteries in series I would think. I should be able to design such a circuit my self as I am an electronic design engineer but I haven't designed anything really for many years. I got my education before micro processors existed. My education only proofs that I could learn and that I am trying to do from every body else now..
The 1000w inverter has worked ok for a few years but my Esmart3's are giving a few problems. I have 4 x 40 amps and 2 by 60 amps. The 60 amps are new and are ok now but the 40 amps have little problems all of them now. I believe I have fixed one of them (The load FET blown) and I am looking at the rest now.
Got one on order...
Can the balancing cut in be set to 3.35? Or only to the 10th position like 3.3 or 3.4?
It can be set to 3.35V or 3.37V for example.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia awesome, thank you. Although not perfectly ideal that all the cells have to reach the set point at least we know that they normally do all go above 3.35 when they're approaching full even when balance is pretty far off. I think 3.3 might be a little low but 3.35 would be perfect.
I only WISH I could have my bms settings on my pixel 4a android! The JK bms seems like a good alternative to Overkill Solar's, if they can't fix their app in a few weeks or so.
I’m delighted with my two JK BMSs, on the iOS app.
Is it not working on your Android pixel phone? Is there a phone compatibility problem with the App?
That's great! No it's supposed to work on Android as well, but only the iPhone app or the PC download works. I only have android devices though.
I bought a small 1A Daly active balancer, it does not work, the LED is on all the time, but the app does not see it and does not balance it. Please tell me how to fix it?
Excelente video. Una pregunta... el ECUALIZADOR queda con un indicador led interno encendido cuando esta conectado? Aunque no este en proceso de balanceo? Es un indicador muy tenue !
Hi Andy, can I ask if what was the best active balancer based on your experienced? 100balance, Daly active or any other recommendation? thanks
I'm guessing the 4 channel/16 port may have bad ports on occasion.
Need to potentially replace the BMS on the Ebike battery, so am doing the research (or trying to).
I need to do one of these, too…
Addendum: got one of these on the *repaired* Ebike battery, along with a 60 amp smart BMS. Seems to be working…
What is your BMS? Is it Daly? Or would be alright using a non daly bms?
I would not recommend the Daly BMS. Use a JK-BMS: off-grid-garage.com/battery-management-systems-bms/
I wonder if we could find a way to use active balancers with a solid state relay that makes balancer come on with charge from charge controller? Seems like it would work that way its not balancing during discharge ya know?? I mean maybe im wrong cause my balancers arw not here yet and ive not owned one yet so im kimda guessing but some say only balance at a high state of charge and only with charge
The Soc function is working? Thx
A balancer can never determine the SOC. This is a cached display from when we had the DALY BMS connected to the same app.
It does work over a 10 amp charge rate. The charging stops when one cell goes over the limit you set. You will never get the battery charged at higher than 10 amps. Over 10 amps and it goes on and off as that same cells go over the limit as soon as the charging try to start again. So it never goes anywhere. That is why I will install a QUCC 10 amp active balancer.
They are not great devices.
I am going to try the Qucc 10 amp active balancer. I have a commenter that built a 16 cell 280 amp 48 v battery just like mine that said it worked for him and the Daly just was not up to snuff.. It took me just under an hour to see that Daly Smart 1A BAL was not ever going to work. Makes me wonder if the BMS has fatal flaws as well.@@OffGridGarageAustralia
What happened to connect the both active and passive balancers at time to the battery pack? please reply any one
Hi there and thanks very much for sharing this with us. Just wanted to ask how your Daly smart active balance work as I bought one from Amazon (16S 12V) and I contacted to 4S 12 V Lifepo4 battery. It doesn’t work at all . Connection diagram is like this . Black negative and the next 3 cores to batteries and the fourth red core to + battery positive. Could you please help me with this? Thank you in advance.
It probably needs a higher voltage on the last red one, but that's just a guess, not a recommendation. Please refer to the wiring diagram of the balancer.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia thanks for your reply
They didn’t send any specifications sheet. Only balancer itself in a plastic bag 🤦♂️.
@@catalinbelibou5812 if you have a 16s balancer I think it will work with 4s if you connect unconnected red wires together with your 4s positive wire. then in the app change the cell count to 4s. I have only tried this with 3s and 4s with a 4s balancer so unsure about the 16s so be careful and try at your own risk as I don't work for Daly.
@@uhjyuff2095 thanks for trying to help out, I did that and still doesn’t help to balance the cells. Sent it back already. Thank you once again and really appreciate.
Another interesting video, thank you.
While the Daly balancers were a little underwhelming, it's still great to see new products!
I jokingly said that they must have gotten wind of the 250A JBD BMS with external 5A active balancer that I'm developing and have beaten me to the punch.
Thanks Ruben. DALY is not there yet and they actually moved a step backwards with these active balancers. We already have better options on the market.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia, example of better than daly active balancer?
@@codiastluce410 sure: th-cam.com/video/jpG3siEzll8/w-d-xo.html
My Ant BMS won't turn on, and I am looking for a 200A(?) BMS for a 48V Lithium Ion for a 3000W inverter. Which BMS do you recommend?
@@mrtechie6810 Go with the 200A JK-BMS, the B2A20S20P. In the next video, I will show why this is the best BMS on the market. I mean, I've shown this before, but this time, I'll make it the really best best one😉
off-grid-garage.com/battery-management-systems-bms/
Do you have any idea on how long to update for Androids going to take place before I can get the passcode
Mister Andy, what would you do/suggest for the packs that go out of balance on the way down, and the bms turns off use when the first runaway cell reaches 2.5 and leave the rest of them at 3.190? ;d
i have "top balanced" them a few times without using them till they got maxed and relaxed, but it seems there is always one that is more giving than what is best for the group
I've have yet to get another bms than 3 different dalys that I have.
Best Regards
Off-Grid Apartment ;P
Thank you for the informative video. I need a balancer for my 4's 2p 12 volt 147ah lipo4 bank. Do you think the Daly 1amp balancer with Bluetooth connectivity would be a good choice for an active balancer.
Hello. Which active balancer is the best, of non-smart ones? Have tested the 100 balancer, not working. Have now bought Daly but it seems to be the same type. Need a simple cheap one for 6S. Many thanks for the help. Regards Lennart
Thanks Andy
i think the all 4 cells been over is ok as this is leaving the bms to do its job and only when the battery nears full does the cell balance start this way it is not running all the time throwing cells out of balance like you have shown befor
That's a major design fault! If one cells runs away, the balancer won't do anything to help preventing that.
Hi. What is your experience, what is a good balancing current for smart balancers? 30mA, 60mA, 1A? (LiFePo4 Batterie 280Ah)
You say it's Daly's 1st attempt at an intelligent balancer but they are one of the longest-going BMS manufacturers in the DIY market and very late to the party in my view. They should have been one of the 1st and have perfection by now.
Thanks for all your testing, good to know what sh*t NOT to purchase 🤣
1st attempt at an active balancer.
Stay away until DALY can update firmware on their Smart BMS. Daly is not the right choice for a smart bms with balancing function.
They are an established manufacturer with a long tradition and lots of experience. Why they develop and release such products is beyond my understanding 🤷♂️
I have six dalys they're all junk. 5 jk's coming my way now
Is it feasible to establish a Bluetooth (or other) connection between the DALY Active Balancing and Victron GX devices (Cerebo and VRM), or is it exclusively achievable through the DALY BMS?
With the need to have all cells reach a threshold, I would set a minimum value for all cells to reach (ex. if expecting 3.3v to trigger, set to 3.2v). I hope they have the updated firmware in the version I receive...).
Andy is a smart GFDU (Guy from down under) ✌🏻
Hahaha, nice one!
hello my name is Angelo I wanted to ask you the smart Active balance for how many Cells was it originally? because I saw you cut the cables and it worked on your four Lifepo4 cells. but was it originally for 16 cells?
It was bought as a 4S balancer but the plug showed cables for a 16s battery, so, they just cut them off...
But did you test it on 16cells? You mentioned you felt keen about checking it with another cable/battery.
Does it work on more than 4s?
Hi, Wonderful Videos, I'm waiting for my 3 each of Daly 8S 24V Smart BMS's, Smart Active Balancers, 5 Amp Parallel Module .. Ill be paralleling 3 x 200AH Lifepo4 8S systems for a total of 600 Amps capacity.
I noticed you had an app with Daly BMS Wire Diagrams, or a web sire, would you mind sharing how to get that? Have been unable to find much documentation at all to be honest
Stopping active balance when one cell gets below the threshold is a good thing. If you got a drain cell and you start to balance when getting bellow threshold you kill your whole battery pack instead of just one cell.
Hi
I have the same proble: balance status is always off. What can I do?
Would the RS485 be compatible with the driver you showed us in another video withc the victron venus gx?
Hi mister Andy! Im Lucian, from Romania. I need your help , please!! I buy a 16s daly active balancer , and he comes without bluethooth. The seller say,on this model 16s no needs BT. Is that true? Best regards!! Sorry if a disturb you
Thanks for your question, Lucian. They have got both version, with and without Bluetooth, so it depends which one you have ordered.
I ordered the smart version, with BT, but they say that the 16S model does not have the version with BT mode, only the 14s. In the meantime, I tried with a BT module from another Daly bms and I saw that it works, I can use this one for the balancer. But thank you very much for the answer. I want to congratulate you for everything you do, keep it up, you are the best. I have been following you for some time and I want to say that your knowledge and all the tests you do have been very useful to me.
I have a 400A Daly BMS with "Parallel" board enroute to my 43 KWh bank. Daly states it should balance with 5 A but cant find any tests anywhere.
Interesting- I would be more than suspicious of the “5A” balancing until you can test it.
Good luck.
@@FutureSystem738 Yeah im afraid its 5A between multiple banks instead of cells...But ill just get an external balancer then.
Absolutely no point whatsoever paying for a “balancer between packs” when your wiring alone will do the balancing as Andy has shown many times…
As Riaan said: You would not need a balancer between battery packs. Parallel battery packs balance themselves without any electronics.
I discussed this with Daly and explained, there is no limiter necessary for LiFePO4 due to the flat curves. I guess they still live in the Li-ion world where voltage is linear to SOC.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia given your testing on Daly products, I don’t think they live in any battery world…
Hi Andy - still learning from you here... Hey, what if you set the balance open start voltage lower, say 2.5 volts? My Daly software lets me set that low, even though I don't have a balancer yet (although I need one badly) Wouldn't it pretty much always be on then? I would purchase NEEY, but 91 dollars US per unit is steep!
Hello thx for you videos
Very clear and detailed
I have issues with daly bms 250A 4s.
The parameter end of charge dont work.
And the charge stop on the over charge value.
If you have any idea your d be welcome.
Thank you. So first of all the BMS should not control your charging! This is a task for your charger or solar charge controller. The BMS is simply there to protect the battery if the charger is faulty and keeps charging.
The charger should stop charging before the BMS triggers and disconnects you battery.
For example, you can set the charger to charge your battery to 3.45V/cell and have the BMS turning off at 3.6V/cell.
The BMS should not disconnect the battery unless something is wrong.
I would be willing to bet money that you could set up a SCADA network with the RS485 comms.
my daly Smart balancer was 28.00 on Amazon but don't seem to work to well what would you recommend
set the balance delta voltage to 0.02 volts for the best balance. I tested on my battery and it did great.
How it's measuring temperature, is this shows accurate temperature
it'sinternal temp. to see battery temps -you need to buy additional NTC temp sensor for daly.
@@SayWhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat explain more on this thermistor NTC
A couple years ago I tried the then-new smart Daly and had nothing but problems with it. I eventually gave up. In the online forums, everyone else seemed to be having problems as well. They have started to die down, but the reports of people having problems have continued since then. About the same time, I noticed that even people with the 'non-smart' Daly BMSs started having problems as well. Something happened to the quality of the Daly products. I lost trust in Daly and I am going to have to see a *lot* of very positive reviews to ever buy something from them again.
The 'smart' daily active balancer review by Andy indicated the active balancer works but indicated a few issues and oddities with how it works. Meanwhile, the 'non-smart' review was really bad.
Needless to say, I am a long way from being convinced Daly is worth trying again. Andy was very generous in saying many he just got a faulty one.... but I am reminded of the old Monty Python and the Holy Grail line "Run Away! Run Away"
Here's one 👍
18 months in and my 100A smart BMS still works fine 🙂
Only issue is the BT only works when it's charging or discharging with over 5A, under 5A you need to wake the BT up with the button 🙄 i see it as a quirk rather than an issue ( mainly to make myself feel better about having bought a Daly BMS ) 🤣
@@Dirt-Diggler Good to hear!
@@centerrightproudamerican5727 i seem to be in a minority though 🤔
I must be lucky cos i have all renogy solar and that all works as well 😮
🤞 😁
@@Dirt-Diggler 100A? You sure about that figure?
@@riaanstrydom2183 no 😟
150 🙄
I fixed spelling 4 times and still missed that
DOH 😭
Does the Daly work if you use a 16s plug ?
I haven't tried yet. The cables they cut off are very short and glued to the white plastic plug. I would need another of these connectors and test it out. I'm sure it will work. The PCB seems fully equipped for that.
The question pops up every once in 😂a while 😊 Thanks for your happy and kind story telling man. It's fun to watch your experiments.
Please check out the 16s function, they might code the balancer firmware on 4s although the hardware is fully equipped. I have 20s and can only get a green light if I connect the plus pole of the overall assembly to the last pin of active balancer. Currently having 12s battery and won't see cell 12 if not connecting the cell's +pole cable to its position at active balancer. Else, same issues in Daly logic parameters settings, etc not really reflecting battery needs. Also it seems some BMS settings in App reflect settings of balancer which is always confusing. Daly should let one choose (or autodetect) which device one is dealing with.
Why am I not surprised . The delta of displayed voltage to actual is enough for me. That's terrible .
Hi! I will look on your other videos. I have just got my 320 Ah LifePo4 batteries (24 volt system) and need to buy a BMS system. Which of those BMS system with active balancer you describe in different videos would you recommend for 320 Ah LifePo4 grade A cells connected as 24 Volt?
Hi dod you get this working? I installed a 20s version (21p) and it shows correctly in the app. But damn if it doesnt really balance anything. It starts for a few seconds (lowest 3.365v and highest 3.45v) but after two days of being connected the difference is the same as before. Wonder if you figured it out - sucks to not have it balancing.
It's a software issue and only an update from Daly can fix that.
Thanks Andy I have been waiting for a review. I will wait till thay make a higher current one. Ps I just brought a companion rover 100ah new for $850 aud so Keen to open and have a look
Thanks Luke, we already have better products on the market. Even the 'normal' capacitive balancers do a better job as the Daly's at the moment.