Hello Today I'm going to break this battery up. In fact, I'm going to do it right now. That slides off. Oh, will it slide off? Yeah, it's sliding off Like so.

Oh, it's quite stiff. There we are. and what I'm going to do is leave that to one side. I'm going to turn this into a 4S pack.

So four of these modules, uh, in series. so it'll be 4s4p. Then I'm going to attach this balancer so that we get all the cells in Balance Now we know that they're all in Balance because they're all paralleled up so they're in Balance to start with. anyway.

Then I'm going to try and tip that balance. How will I do that? I'll put a bulb or something across one cell so that it changes. Uh, its state of charge compared to the others, changes its voltage, and then I want to try and get this ammeter involved in the circuit powered by one of these little boost converters. Yeah, I'm going to do all that.

So first things first: I'm going to take off the linking strips, the link my four modules together so all these are completely separate. I'll do that off camera. Okay, that's done. So these should come apart now.

Like so and I think what I'm going to do is have a flat Arrangement Obviously I need to alternate positive and negative. Um, so that I can. well I just want a flat arrangement, right? That's how I want it. Um, so this will be my outside positive, outside negative.

And then I'll link all the rest up. So I need to get some link strips across here and across here to start with right? So the links are done between Negpoz here and Negpos here. So now I need to link the center to here. that should be like so and like so and then that's my outer parse and that's my outer neck.

I'll just tighten these down right. The battery pack is done. Uh, yes, that's posing neg there. So what I want to do now is get some little soldering terminals on the ends of here.

Do it all nice with heat shrink. put this on the battery probably with this connector disconnected and then plug this in and check that the touch switch work works and the lights come on and so on. right using these multi-comp terminal ground lugs. M3 these things I have put five of them on the end of the five wires on this plug so these will just bolt straight onto terminals on the battery.

So let's do that next. Is that out of focus Perhaps it is slightly and that looks like that. so black goes on to the most negative, then a red, another red, another red, and the most positive red goes on to the most positive. Let's just check.

I've got these in the right sequence. that is the next one back, then the next one back. Is that one the middle one? Yeah, then that one, then the black. Okay, so now I can plug in the board which I will do and we'll see what it does.

hopefully not blow up now. Will it light up if I press touch? It does. The blue LED comes on um, but there's not much more to see than that. It's now balancing the cells, but we know they're all in balance anyway because they were all paralleled up.

Um, not so long ago Now I Was just wondering if this is a click on click off type action and it might be actually that blue. LED I Think it's starting to get dim, so touch that no touch touch off. The only problem is the blue LED Fades out really very slowly. so I think it's fading out now and press the tap switch again to turn it on.

Press the touch switch to turn it off, but you don't see the result of your pressing of the touch switch immediately. It takes a while for that blue LED to fade out, and in fact the camera enhances that effect because that's now very dim. but the camera picks it up is quite bright. so press attach which again to turn it back on.

So yes, it does seem to be uh, what's it called where it alternates between two states while doing that? Anyway, Okay, A bit of Blue Tech I think and I'll just stick it on here. Gotta be careful it doesn't touch anything while I'm doing this. I knocked everything over a bit of blue tech there. So I'll put four pieces of Blue Tech on and just stick it down so that's running.

Uh, balancing? Let's touch the touch switch to turn that off. It's a shame you don't get feedback of having done that. That does gradually. Fade Out Okay, what I want to do now is put this ammeter on now.

We should see no current flowing because all the cells are in balance. Um, now black here is connected to the thin black. I've checked that with a continuity test. so uh, black is ground is continuous on this.

same here. the negative output is Commons to the negative input. So everything is common on black. Now my idea is to attach this so that it's output and I believe that this is 12 volts because actually A and B are linked with little bridging links.

uh, probably zero ohm resistors. So I'm going to attach that right up near the ammeter. Cut these wires really short. That will put the output of this which is 12 volts onto this meter.

The input of this we don't need a black wire because the black wire is connected to the thin black and through the thick black and the thick black will go to a negative point. Is that blue LED gone out? Not completely, but it's very dim. Let's touch that to turn it back on again. Um, so actually I only need a red wire on here to pick off some positive.

so it'll be positive of the cell that I'm connected to with my negative and then the thick positive will actually go to this black wire here because we're trying to measure the current in that black wire. So let's get all that wired up. So first thing is to cut this short that will do and then solder that onto these two wires and put some hot glue on there so that, uh, we don't constantly bend the wires right. That's all done.

I've got my ring terminals on here, so I think the first thing I'll do is put black on the most negative part of the battery. then I'll attach uh, this little red one that goes through the Boost converter that should turn the four volts or so on the cell into 12 volts and power the ammeter up so we should see that happen. and then I'll worry about the red one. Doesn't matter if red and black touch together, that's not a problem because they're effectively shorted Anyway by the shunt.

Um, but I don't want to short anything that would cause a problem, right? Let's get the black screwed onto here first. Okay, so if I put red on 4 volts above black, then the ammeter should come on. let's try that. Yes, it does, but I've got it upside down because the decimal point is that way around Again, got to make sure that doesn't touch positive because that goes through the shunt and that would make smoke.

In fact, while I do this, I'm gonna I've just put red onto the ground as well just so that it doesn't fly around and touch something. And now I've got to try and get this over onto here without causing a short up at this end and also trying to keep the dots on the LC LED at the bottom. but let's put that on there and that's powered up. Oh, we got some current, which is surprising because I have no idea where that's coming from.

Anyway, let's get that screwed on. Now to measure the current, uh in this black wire, I need to remove it from the most negative part of the battery and put it on this red wire so that the current flowing in this black wire passes through the ammeter down to the most negative point of the battery and then we can see that current. The only thing is will the balance of mind having its ground connection removed. Um, while all the positives are still connected well, we'll soon find out.

Okay, let's turn that on. Are these attached to each other? I'll try and make sure they are okay not seeing any current, but then perhaps that's to be expected because all the cells are in Balance I'll just get a nut and bolt to hold these two together right to see some current on this Uh ammeter. I think all I need to do is upset the balance of the cells. So I'm going to put this bulb across a pair of cells.

Um I think if I take these middle two blocks I can just put it across there. So the Bulb Has lit and now we can see the 13 milliamps is flowing in this negative wire to redistribute energy between the cells. I've got to make sure that this is permanently attached and then if I remove that, it should settle down and it shouldn't really matter where I put this. So let's put it across these two.

So I'm basically putting eight volts through this 24 volt bulb. Let's put it across these and again, it upsets the balance. I'll just bring that into shots so you can see the bulb filament. You can see that it's lit up.

That's upsetting the balance. and there is a negative current in this black wire. Now are we ever going to see a positive current? We may not in that black wire. I may need to move this meter to a different uh, one of these five wires in order to see a positive current.

A negative current means that I think current is coming out of the black wire so it's coming out of the cell through the meter this way and up the black wire into this unit. Not quite sure what that means just at the moment, but certainly I can place this across cells like this. Oh, that is a positive current. Okay, that was a positive current, so we will see a positive current.

But if I place it on these two cells, let's do it like that: we see a negative current and that's why I Bought this bi-directional ammeter because the currents flowing in these the wires of this balancer will sometimes be positive and sometimes negative. Um, so that's essentially what I wanted to do today. Um, what I really want now is five meters. Uh, one in each of these uh, balancer wires so that we can see when the cell goes out of balance the five currents in these five wires.

I mean maybe I wouldn't need all five, but I'd like to start with that and then perhaps work backwards to fewer ammeters when I work out which ones are important. Now, the other thing that this meter tells me is if I turn the balancer off by touching the switch, you can immediately see the current goes down to zero even if you can't see the blue. LED Fade Out Immediately, Um, let's unbalance a pair of cells with this bulb. Make sure that's in shot now.

Obviously there's no current flowing because the balance is not actually running. but I'll do a bit of unbalancing, then turn the balancer on and we've got five milliamps flowing. Perhaps I'll leave this on a bit longer and make this cell a bit more. This pack a bit more.

out of balance, right? This lamp's just been resting across these two points which is effectively these two Center cells. Um, for a minute or so, let's turn the balancer on, see the current and it's now 18 milliamps. And if I take off the cause of the imbalance, the balancer. oh, that's a bit warm.

Uh, the balance are fairly quickly brings everything back into balance. These balances are very good. I've got one an eight cell balancer on my lithium ion phosphate 8 cell pack in the shed and that's been running for about a year and I've not noticed any degradation in the capacity of the pack. So yeah, these balancers are very good and they can run up to reasonably High currents.

The only thing they say about these is they have a fairly High quiescent current draw. This will when the cells all get down to a certain voltage, this will go into a standby state which is a low power state. The light presumably will go off and uh, is that on or off? that's on I think but it's just got everything balanced. Um, but it still does have a bit of a current draw.

So they say these balancers are only really suitable for large batteries. I See it slightly differently I Think they're only really suitable for Batteries which you charge on a daily basis. And if of course, if a solar panel is hooked up to this, well, then you're charging it on a daily basis. Yeah, the balance has gone off.

Now let's turn it back on. The touch switch isn't terribly reliable, so maybe you do need ammeters to actually see what's going on. and uh, we're not getting any current flowing. so let's balance this back on here and there's some current flowing courtesy of the balancer.

Well, that's all I wanted to do for this video, so I'm going to call it there cheerio.