Hey: let's talk about batteries and pcbs. This video is sponsored by pcb way where you can order all your printed circuit board creations. Okay, a bit of background here for those of you who don't know these right here are es200g batteries. These came out of a fleet, a giant fleet somewhere, like 10 000 scooter, uh fleet that was decommissioned, and these batteries were uh, then saved, put into pallets and then eventually we bought them right.

But the problem with these are that these are have proprietary stuff like the connectors, are weird and when you connect stuff to them they're on, but they turn off and we have to figure out how to wake them up now, someone in the forums and the internet Uh was bright enough to figure out what the commands are and uh. Then they published those and, as a result, we were able to develop a little product like this one. This we call these dongles and all it is, is a arduino board that will spit out the code that is required to wake these batteries up and you connect them in here into the uh cables. We found the connectors up in china and we order a bunch of them and that's how you do now with this connected in here now.

The battery uh can wake up and stay on, and this allows you to then use this battery for whatever you want. An e-bike scooter or a big power wall, and so this is a dongle, but then today we're gon na talk about designing this dongle. This is the regular dongle. This is the mega load dongle, because it's so much bigger and what this allows you to do is connect around 10 up to 10 of these batteries into a single board like this and then have uh an output connector plugged in here, and then you can power.

All kinds of things with 10 of these - these are about half a kilowatt hour each. So you put 10 of them. Uh you're, talking about five kilowatt hours around five kilowatt hours of battery, which is very powerful. You can power your entire house.

You can use it as backup. You can do a bunch of things. With these battery it becomes a a really big uh compelling battery. So, let's get into how to design this and which parts you will need and where to order them the connectors first, this connector is the output connector of the uh battery pack right.

So this is the input connector into this board. The smaller one here is the charging connector right, so this would be uh the input and those are two different different circuits in the battery. So that's why we separated them, and if you really look closely in the board here, there's three traces right. Three tracks in here uh and they're, separated as they have a common uh positive, uh rail, and so that's the reason why the middle one is a positive and they are fused each one of these battery packs are fused with a 20 amp fuse out here.

Just in case, anything goes wrong. If you happen to you know short it out, then these fuses will go off before the internal fuses of the packs will go by the way the the the packs are fused at 40 amps in the inside. So it would. This will blow a long time before and then there's also a bms that will turn itself off at 25 amps right, but before any of that happen, this fuse here will blow to try to save all that uh and the positive rail.

And then this negative here is for charging right, and then we have uh pads here where you can put the the charging uh pigtail right and you can choose these. I came the ones that we built. We built a small number of these and we offered them and we made a video last week showing you how to plug this into the wall. And it's really simple once you have this done right.

But then what happened is that we made a small number and those are all gone so now what you have to do is you have to order all these and then make them, and so here you have a choice to put whatever cables. I mean up to 10 gauge american wire gauge into these holes right, uh, the net, the pot native and then the positive, and then you charge through that and you can put whatever connector you want. And then these bigger holes here are to put the discharge. Uh connector right and you can put up to like a four gauge, i want to say maybe a six gauge or a four gauge uh all american wire gauge cable in here, and that's to remove the the power out of here.

Right and i'd say you know this - i wouldn't go much higher than like 100 amps, maybe 150 amps, but at that point then these traces start getting hot right, and so i wouldn't go past 150 amps on this board. The traces are are thick right and they're wide and they're running on both sides, so they can carry quite a bit of power, but they do start getting hot after, like about 100 amps right, so i wouldn't run them more than that. Uh, the other things i've noticed here is that this is where you will mount your uh dc to dc. This is a little a power supply that makes the 42 volts that go into this uh power strip right and then lowered it to 3.3 volts uh to power the arduino.

This right here is the arduino and it has a code that will be linked, uh on the product, page uh and in the the parts list right. So this is just a regular arduino. I think this is called a nano or a micro um. This is a nano because it's got the usb thing uh and you plug it in there to program it right and then, let's talk about this thing right here, so this square right here is to put this.

This is a hall effect sensor or a half of a transformer right. Essentially it's just a that's just a winding that goes in here and you put it in there and then you pass the two uh. What would that be the positive negative, the positive wires, the charging and discharging, and so this basically keeps track on this screen. This is a meter.

It will it will. You can set the screen to your final battery size and you set your minimum and maximum voltage and capacity things and there's a bunch of settings that you can sit in here. This part right here is the the electronics and it has a radio in here. So you can work, this is actually a wi-fi or bluetooth, i don't remember wi-fi or bluetooth, but this actually is wireless.

So you don't have to keep this connected. Uh there's a usb cable that connects from here there, but that's just the power you can get this power in here from any other power supply and here's a little radio right, and so these this is wireless, and you can put this somewhere else and then you Can have your battery there and then this board right here. That has my picture and i don't ask me why i put my picture in there. I just you know just don't know when just tried something new and put it in there.

This is to hold that and usually uh hey. Where is that? Actually, i i didn't make it on this one. This is an early version of this board, but the one that uh i'm gon na link here for the file has two extra holes in here. One allows you to do is position this here and then allows you to mount that this unit here and then screw that in there.

So, as you can see here, there are holes in here so that you can put the screws, but that's what that is right. Now, let's look at how this looks on the software to make the pcb all right. This is one of many free software's available on the internet, i'll put a list to a bunch of free ones. You can just use them to design a board like this right and then you can use it uh that file that you make at the end.

You export it out as a girver file and then that gerber file, then you order through a pcb uh shop like the sponsor of this video, a pcb wait right, and so here we go. You basically uh start a new pcb see these right. Here you can move them around. Whatever is just as easy as that.

You pick all the the uh parameters of that stuff in there, but yeah. Basically, let's start with the new one right, so you go file new pcb. This is how usually i start right and then here uh it applies some some uh preset things right. So there you go take off the grid because then it just gets it's a little bit messy right.

So then, what you do is you start applying stuff from the uh? Well, in this case right. What happens? Is that i've already like, like this connector, for example, i went and looked for it found it and then all i do is like. If i want to put it in this pcb, then i just copy it and paste all right and there's like a connector there. Let's look at the uh: oh let's look at the branding right.

So let's say that i wanted to make sure that this is sponsored by pcb way or you wanted to add some text right. So then you come in here. Oh look at that boom. So then you add your text uh and then you pick which f, which uh layer you want that text to go or some of the parts right uh with that design.

You can add a bunch of things. You can look at the 3d version of it right. So here's a 3d version to see you can measure things uh you can connecting pads right. So let's say that you got this guy and then you wanted to add another one of these connectors and then you want to add a pad and connect this pin to that pin you know, let's see and you want it to come this way or whatever.

There's that's one way to to do it, and then you want to connect this other. Oh, so what you do is you change to another layer right, so the bottom layer now can come in here boom. There we go and when you look at this, for example, there's the one pin on the top of the board. But then the other pin is on the bottom right, and so those will not short out and uh.

Then you know, even though they're they're crossing there, but one of us is on one side of the board once again. So this is you just have to learn. Some of the basics of pcbs, and basically you can make your own pcbs and you can order them a pcb way. So there you go.

That is how you can design your own board this board right here i already designed it. I will share the gerver file, which is the final file that you will need. You submit that to the pcb shop of your choice, uh and then well, you get these parts and then you order all the other connectors and all the components it takes to make. This and then you can make this board uh in this dongle mega dongle, so that you can connect all your batteries now.

If you want to see how to connect those batteries and stuff, then i made a video. I will link it on the bottom here. I will make a future video showing you how to set up the meter all right. Thank you for watching this video we'll see you guys on the next one bye all right.

So there we go. We just added all the batteries there. 21 batteries about 10 kilowatt hours and that's what all the connections there look like: um yeah. Now we have two ports, the discharging port and the charging port, and each one of these batteries has a dedicated charging plug in here and so now.

They'll: wake up for the very first time when you plug them in here: they'll: just wake up and they'll charge, they'll stop right. The full bms will work because you're charging them through the right port and then the full bms will work when you're discharging them, and then this will measure your state of charge here. So this is a hundred percent uh. You know programmable.

You can program in your entire, your capacity and the voltage and if there's even stuff, so you can put uh relays and stuff in here so that you can tell it if it goes over a certain amount of power to trigger stuff or to goes uh. Above us thresholds of capacity, then you could also do it right. So this is a full programmable meter there, but there you go. This is essentially what this powerwall would look like.