Hey it's time for another diy, pcb based battery project. This time it's going to be sponsored by pcb way. Let's get started all right. Currently, there's a ton of cool commercially available uh battery products.

Right, let me show you two of the best ones that uh just came out this one right here is the blue eddy. Ac200P. I reviewed this on my channel. It's a very good battery box, a solar generator power pack.

However, you want to call it right and then this one is another one ecoflow max right and then there's a bigger brother. That's the eco flow pro, which i am going to review here coming up in the next few weeks right, but these two are top of the line battery packs that are commercially available. You can buy these. This isn't kickstarter right now, but they'll start delivering pretty soon.

This started on kickstarter, but they're now being delivered. You can just order them right. So here's the thing there's a bunch of people that are asking these are cool, but how can we add just a little bit more battery because the battery that's in there is not enough. This one has two kilowatt hours.

This one has two kilowatt hours, so we've made these before we made some uh booster packs. That's what i call right, so you put a battery outside and then you boost the battery capacity of this right so much that uh blu-ray themselves have now introduced uh. One of their a similar product right so the things that we're doing right uh, but they haven't come out yet so well, why not just buy that one right? Well, you know you could go that route. There's nothing wrong with you just buying that one right, but you'll have to wait and you'll probably pay more than the diy uh version right.

I want to build one that is available now uh and it's going to be affordable and it's going to be easy to build right, and so i'm going to base it around this uh makita box. This is a toolbox. We're gon na put batteries in here. We're gon na put a little face in here and then a little connector.

That's you're gon na be able to connect this one or this one and boost it up by a lot by 3.3 kilowatt hours right so 150 percent more battery, adding to either one of these units. So let's get started all right. So first things. First, we got to choose the battery, and this case i decided to go for this one.

This is lithium iron phosphate, which means it's safe and long lasting, and this one in particular here is very affordable, because our original intended purpose for this is obsolete, so they they built these and then they don't didn't use them for the thing. So now i bought huge amounts of these, and so i'm able to offer them for a very, very reasonable price. So i already tried - and i can put about nine of these inside that box. So now we just got ta, make all the connections to connect them all together, and in this case these are 16 volts, which is pretty useless for anyone.

But if you put three of them in series, then it will create 48 volts and then that's perfect for charging. Well, that's perfect for all kinds of applications: 48 volts, it's a pretty universal standard and you can use it for all kinds of things, including charging. Both of these uh commercial, available power packs right. Here's where pcb way comes in all right.

Here we go uh, i'm using a free online pcb software. You can download this and use it there's a few different versions. I just picked this one right. So here is the size that we want to do this pcb right and i just uh measured inside of the box, one of the sides we're to put this on the side and then here's the top layer.

You start adding the top layer, and all we want to do is connect uh three of these batteries in series right, so here's the first connector, the second half and the third connector. So you connect those this pin to that. Pin right and then you connect this pin to that pin and then this pin uh goes in parallel with the other one, and you can see here that i ran these uh traces right to connect everything first and then i went and filled this out here. To put as much copper as possible, this is a good uh thing to do because, well, the more copper it is, then the the more current that it can carry, not that this thing is gon na need to you know: uh, do a high current or anything, But you know it's just habit of doing it.

I'm always trying to push the limits here and um. Then this right here is another circular we'll talk about later. This is for initial charging and balancing of the batteries. Here's where we're going to put the uh the meter and then here connectors and then a fuse right, and then you start putting those layers.

That's the front. This is the back layer you put both of them in there they kind of mirror each other. So that's that way you use the front and the back uh. Then, of course this is silk screen right.

Of course, here's our sponsored and the reason is because i order all these boards from pcb way they uh they are affordable and they do them really quick. Like within a couple days, they usually get them done, and then they send them to me, and so there we go here is the name of the battery and then here's a url link where uh you're gon na find this video and all the instructions on how To run this right, so there we go uh, there's the bottom layer, all the other ones, here's a 3d uh render of the board. This is what it's going to look like right and, of course, this is sort of the shunt so that we can do the meter right here and everything else is labeled. So there you go.

This is the front. This is the back and then now we just go to pcb way and order this right. So we have to make a gerber file, which i am going to make available for everyone. Anyone that wants to do this and then order it there and then it'll come in the mail.

The next board is going to be the face cover right. We want to put these components in the box, but you know this. These are hard to cut by to measure all the stuff, so i thought oh just make a board and we'll put all the components in there. Then we can interconnect them and then we just worry about making a large hole.

That's within this uh sizes right and then that's going to be much easier and we have to only worry about one hole, and so then those are the two there's another board that goes in here. That is to make the xt90 connector right and then you'll see that all right, so it's been a few days and of course, pcb way since the boards - and here we are - i got ahead of myself and i started populating everything right. So here are the little connectors. These are the connectors that those batteries use uh and then you just populate them by putting them in the little holes here, making sure that you follow the uh.

The little pin right there right, that's connected there and then you solder them on the other side. There's not a lot of components here, basically, nine connectors and then a one fuse holder, one charging cable right. All the stuff is gon na be linked in the video here and then an xt90 connector uh. Here this you just screw those on basically and then put one little jumper from from that connector to this thing, uh and then you use all these bolts come in the uh, come with the meter right and then there's one little connector here for this section.

Now here's the thing with this section in the rush for me to design this, i made a mistake right. These connectors go in here, and the problem is that they're too close together, and so, if we populate all these right here, then you'll be able to connect those in here. But then you won't be able to get them off easily, and so the fix for it is to only use half of them right. So if we only populate half of these, then you get the space in between that.

You would need to be able to do now. What is this section for as the bml as the pcb here states? This section is for initial balancing charge using an 18 volt 2 amp power supply. It may take up to 72 hours to complete what this means is that when you get those battery packs, those have been sitting on that pallet for a long time, and so they might be some might be completely dead, like zero state of charge. But some might be like a thirty percent state of charge and some might be at you know eighty percent charge right, and so i have no way to control that other than just charge.

Every single pack - and you know, there's it's just better to let you guys do that right, because i don't have the time i would have to charge you for that, so that it will increase the price of these batteries right. So i made this here and all you have to do is populate it and then connect this uh power supply. It's an 18 volt 2 amp power supply, and then you connect all your batteries in here. Of course, you can't connect all your batteries, because you have nine and we'll only be able to do five of these right, so you'll have to do them in two sections.

You connect five packs in here, connect it leave it there for up to 72 hours and then at that point all of them should be charged to the very top to 18 volts and they should be okay, and then you take the other four connect them here. Then you run that and then you let them charge all the way up until they're 18 volts at that point, all of the packs will be at 18 volts. So 100 fully. You know charge uh and then we'll be able to connect them in here and then you won't have mismatch uh or imbalance the problems right.

So that's what this is here uh. I haven't soldered this in here. So let's solder, those now all right. Next, we'll take a look at the small pcb.

This is pretty straightforward: the uh battery uh meter - all you have to do - is just uh screw it onto this hole there right and then on. This side is the same thing. You have to get this thing and then it just screws on there, the screws uh. Then you will have to this all just comes with cables, so you will have to cut an extension cord that has this end right here and then solder.

It this way black with the red, the white with the purple or blue and then the green with the yellow right. And then you do it like that. And then you only need like about a foot of distance and that's it and then the section in the center. Well, that's interesting! These are surface mount, uh stands or terminals right so that that's so that they don't come out in the front and you solder them on the surface.

And then you put these little um standoffs and then here is the third board that we're going to use, and this is an xt90 now. This is the prototype, but the final version is going to look a lot better. The you know i just i. It was really big on mine, so i just have to cut it with scissors and stuff just to make it fit in here um.

I guess i could put the the final version. I do have it, but i don't have it here. It's in another warehouse, so it'll have to do this. One i'll have to do for this video.

So then all you have to do is just put it in there screws tighten those screws. This is what it's gon na look in the front, see that okay, that's it! Okay! Now, let's talk about the balancing procedure. Okay, that's this section right here when you get your batteries for the first time, they're all going to be at different state of charges. Right most likely, and even if they're, not this procedure here will just we'll just charge them up and then it won't harm them in any way if they are already balanced, but i doubt very much they're going to be balanced.

So what you do is you connect? Five packs in here next one thing: one in here, plug it in all right. So now you have five packs connected in there. Then this right here is the 18 volt 2 amp power supply. What you do is you connect this guy up here in the little connector and then you connect that to the power right and then you have to leave this a long time.

72 hours. That's my calculations. How long is going to take for these to be charged? All the way up, if a lot of them are completely dead right and then you do that with the other four right, because there's nine of these packs that you'll need for this process right, one: two: three: four: five: six, seven, eight, nine uh and you do That and then, once there are old in uh in here for at least 72 hours, then they should all be charged and then now we can put this and the face into the box. So let's do that now.

Okay, so here are the tools that you're gon na need: you're gon na need a drill and then a drill bit uh some kind of marking thing and then a cutting tool. In my case, i'm going to use this jigsaw right and that's going to be to cut the front face, so this guy is gon na go right here. It fits in here. You see that yeah.

Okay, let's mark those holes, okay. So what i've done is. I mark those holes in there in the plastic and so we're gon na cut right up against those holes here right same thing here, right on the long, the edge of those letters, and then we just got to make sure not to cut right where those holes Are at because that's where the screws that fasten this head, this face is going to be at so there we go now we drill holes along this edge here so that we can start our cutting machine, we'll drill the holes there we go, you got to make Kind of long holes there - and i made the first mistake - i already got to do that at home. Now it's a bit messy here: okay, so i'm just gon na use a knife to deburr the edges here, let's just get rid of the extra stuff.

Now, let's see if let's see if it fits okay, so we might have to take this one off there. We go look at that. It's pretty good! I think there's a couple of little issues here here here and then here: okay, so i think there it is uh, look it's hard to make perfect holes and that's the reason why this exists and so that you can make a rough hole like this right and Then then we can cover it up with this nice pcb there. All we have to do now is just screw it on there we go.

I will screw this guy back in there. Okay, now that we've cleaned out all the debris from that stuff, uh out of the box now the next step is to put the white board in there and you can use these standoffs to secure it to the edge there all right. So i just drill some holes and install the uh screws on this one right here. I have to drill a bigger hole in this side and then uh a smaller one on on here, so that it could uh go in there.

You see that so it goes only to this layer not through that you could also just get a longer bolt, but i didn't have one so i put three bolts in here: that's good enough to hold that in there you don't need a fourth one underneath, if You want to, you could do it, but i didn't do it so there we go now. The next step is to put all the batteries in here and then start connecting them all right. First battery goes in and we're not going to secure these ones. They're kind of tight, so they don't move around once you put all of them in there right, so you connect that first, one there, the second one, and then that will be that one right there.

Third, one, oh actually, no wrong! You don't connect any of them up here, so what you have to do is connect them only on the nine that are inside there we go see. We almost made a mistake there. If you do that it won't work there. It goes third one up here that might be hard.

We might have to do this one first and then this one last. If you do this step and you don't have enough plugs or you have extra batteries or then that means you skip one right and it's easy to do. I almost did it right, and so you just have to take them all off and then find out which plug of the center cluster plugs is missing a battery, and then you have to reconnect it okay. So after that, you should be able to connect this guy.

This is this cable that comes from the meter, the meter right here, and we plug that guy in here, we should be able to get yeah look at that. We already have uh 49 volts. This packs are fully charged now, let's connect the main power this one right here goes on to this one, and now that's the plug in here. This should be live now.

So the last thing that we have to do you route this over here is connect the charger charger that i recommend for this project is 54.6 volts, 4 amps right, and this one already comes with the power pole. Connector just make sure that when you plug it in they match black to black red to red, because sometimes these they put them you can. You can put this differently right and if that's the case, you can take this apart, one off the other one. You see that you can put them this way.

You can put one in the left and then the black on the right, and then you can do it the other way around one on top of each other. So you can change the the configuration on this guy. So just make sure that it matches, and then you connect that in here and that's your charger and then the last thing is going to be this cable, it's going to go in here. There we go and there it is.

The charger slide come on. That's just that it is. The battery is connected when you connect this to the power and turn it on then uh. The the green light will turn on here and it'll start charging your bad there we go so now that is your battery okay.

The last step is going to be to set up the meter, so we know this is a 3.3 kilowatt hour battery pack right because it's 370 watt hours per uh module and it's got nine right. So if you divide uh 3.3 by 48, it equals uh. Just under it's like 69.7, or something that's almost like 70 amp hours right so we have to do. Is we have to click on here? Just help me here: okay, there we go so then you click on this arrow here until this starts doing that right capacity.

So this is where we're going to change. So you click on the thing now we're there so 70 amp hours 70 amp hours, and then i guess you hold it. Oh yeah, you hold it a bit and then the arrow starts. Moving right now, uh full voltage is 54.6, so we have to adjust that 54.

Oh, it is 54 0.6 and then zero voltage is about 38 volts. So there we go so then you just hold this to get out of this. What you just hold it down? Let's see, if that does it, let's hold it up there we go so it estimates that it's at 50 right now because of the 49.7 volts right. So full is a 54.

So then we have to charge this to get it up to 100. Okay. So here we go, i plugged in the charger right. The chargers inside all you have to do is plug in a regular cord like a computer, plug or cord right, and then, when you put it in here and you turn the switch, then the meter starts recognizing that you're charging.

Oh look at that. Why did i put it at zero? That's weird! So there we go starts counting nine milliamp hours into the thing. Uh one is 1.9 amps, which is weird, because this is a 4 amp charger. I guess it's gon na ramp up or maybe it's ramping down, because it's already at 50 volts.

I think that might be the thing right, so you let it charge all the way up and then one that once that happens, you use the up and down arrows. You just hold it until it says uh resets to a hundred and then that's it now. Your meter is uh sync with your batteries. When you have batteries now you know that they're a hundred percent stiff charge.

Then your meter reflects that right and as as you use it and discharge it and charge it, then that's gon na go up and down okay. Now, let's talk about how you use it. The blue eddy comes with this solar, cable right, and so all you have to do is plug it in here and then the bluetooth is going to wake up and it's going to start charging at 500 watts. It will charge this one and a half times.

This has got 150 more battery than the blue eddy, and so, when this one's completely dead, you just plug it in here this one will charge it it'll charge it slow at 500, watts right but it'll charge it all the way till it's full and then you Can discharge it again and it'll plug it in there and then you can charge it up to about 50 150. So that's the blue eddy. What about the new uh eco flow? All right, so the eco flow doesn't come with a cable. That's very usable for this, but all you have to do is make something like this right.

It's a! This is a mail xt90 right that uses it goes on here and it's a female xt60 right and you could either make this or you can buy it on amazon. There's a bunch of uh adapters that you can adapt to to go in here right and so it's the same thing you plug it in charger. There we go and it turned on this would get charged 150 right. So one and a half times when you have that as booster pack, and so you can keep using your device here all right.

So i know the next question that is going to come is. Can i use this with my other device and the answer is yes very possibly if your device can accept uh around 50 about 50 volts right down 38 to 50 volts in the solar input, then you can connect this guy uh this battery into it and then That way, you can you'll be able to charge it like that. Also, the other thing is: can i use this battery for something else? That is just 48 volts, and the answer to that is also yes, and this thing isn't loud. The answer to that is yes, you could use this battery to power anything else that is 48 volts.

Now here's the catch it will only put out about 15 amps. After that, the bms's on the packs will shut down those. Those packs are more for uh energy storage, more so than power delivery right, and so that's why they're kind of wimpy, but if you're uh device that you want to plug in here, it's less than 15 amps and requires that then you can plug in here and It'll be good for 3.3 kilowatt hours. Okay, let's talk about pricing.

Look, this is a diy project right and there are levels of diy, and now i'm gon na give you all the links, so you can buy all the separate parts and you can build this right. If you do most of the work, then you're gon na pay less about 500. I think right about 500 for the total project uh. Now, if i make the pcbs and solder them for you - and you know, do all the stuff and i'd ship them to you, because i'm gon na also offer it that way.

Then you get to do less of the work, but you get to pay a little bit more about a hundred dollars more about six hundred dollars. So that's six hundred dollars for a 3.3 kilowatt hour battery pack and by the way, that's including everything, the box and the charger. All these other things that you will have to buy from somewhere else from amazon and aliexpress and stuff right, uh that breaks down to about a hundred and eighty seven dollars a kilowatt hour. Is that expensive? I don't think so, uh, you know blue eddie's, releasing their own batteries and they haven't released the pricing yet, but i can assure you that they're not gon na sell it for about four hundred dollars for a two kilowatt hour battery right.

I think it's going to be somewhere around the 800 and and so it's going to be somewhere around like three four five hundred dollars a kilowatt hour, famously the power, the tesla powerwall, it's about five hundred dollars, eight kilowatt hour right, and so this pack that you Build yourself and you can get it for about 185 187 dollars a kilowatt hour. Well, that's a very good deal right for uh lithium-ion phosphate batteries that is safe and long-lasting right and it's compatible with your thing. So there you go, you can get it! You can do most of the work yourself and pay less or you can. Let us do some of the work for you and then pay a little bit more.

Also, here's another thing, though: uh developing these products, it's really hard work and it takes a long time and it takes a lot of labor and so uh. I we only made like 30 of these uh kits so that you can put them so once those are done, that's it! These are done now, the only way after those are sold out. The only way for you to make this is going to be by buying all the parts yourself ordering the pcbs and then soldering them yourself. Getting the batteries, and so you're gon na have to do most of the work right.

So it's a limited amount of of kids that i'm gon na sell for this one and then after those the batteries sell out, then that's it right. Nobody's gon na make these because then we're gon na move on to another uh battery type and then we're gon na make products for that stuff, but for right now this is available. It's about the easiest battery to make. I just i just built it in.

Like half hour - and that's because most i was explaining everything and i'm talking to the camera right but uh, you should be able to do this easy right. So there you go. Thank you to pcb way for sponsoring this video. If you want to get all the parts and order the pcbs i'll have a link in the description and then, if you wan na just buy some of the parts that i the kit that i'm making it's also gon na, be in the description.

All the parts links are gon na be in the description. It's amazing how many people ask me where to buy the things when my descriptions are full of all the links of all the products that i talk about in the videos right, so don't ask me where to buy this stuff. The links are in the description. Thank you for watching this video we'll see you guys on the next one with another project, another diy project, there's a bunch of them coming up so stay tuned.

If you like, building stuff you're in the right channel all right, thank you we'll see you bye, uh and.