Good morning, all today, i'm going to take a look at uh. This thing which i've had for a while actually and i've, been using, and it really does work very well, it's a charge controller or it can be configured as a discharge controller, and it has two voltages, a lower voltage and an upper voltage which creates a hysteresis Band, so you can get it to turn on the relay if it goes over the upper voltage and then turn it off again if it goes under the lower voltage or you can get it to do it the other way around. So if you were using this as a charge controller, you could have it so that it's attached to a battery and when the voltage went below a certain lower threshold, you could get it to turn on a charger, a mains charger, for example. That would charge the battery back up and then, when the voltage goes above the upper threshold, it could turn the charger off, but when it's working as a discharge, controller or a load controller, of course it works the other way around, but uh, let's power, this thing Up i've got a feeling.

The input is anything from, oh, it doesn't say, but i think it's 6 to 60 volts or something like that. In fact, why don't we start on the ebay listing let's go over and have a look at that? So this is the item i bought. You bought this item seven pound 46. I think i paid a slightly different price, but they keep changing the prices 71p postage and it came from a ismart in shenzhen china.

Now there are two types without shell: um is the one i bought, which is the sort of open pcb with the relay and the display with shell. It's in this box, which i didn't think would be as convenient. So yes, i bought the without shell type. This one and what have we done here? Oh all, sorts of pictures and instructions, but they're pretty unfathomable, so i'll go through it bit by bit, but first i need to set it up on the bench with a power supply.

So, first i'm going to take off these cables, which i made up really horribly, actually because i really wanted side entry, and this has got sort of two top entry positions uh. So this is one the cables i've been using on my solar crypto accumulation, machine and, as i say, it works extremely well, but let's re-jig it so that it's on a power supply with a knob that i can twiddle so that we can test the upper and Lower voltage thresholds, i must get some um silicon versions of this wire, because this was really very stiff and when it's cold in the shed, which it pretty much always is at the moment, um this stuff rock hard and doesn't flex at all. You might have seen. I had an item in my shopping, cart on ebay or shopping basket.

I think it's called in this country of - and that is some 40 amp silicon wire, so i think i'll get some of that. But for the purposes of this, all i really need is some very low current wire and i think i'll use my 24 volt bulb on the output so to bench test this. I think i'm going to use this power supply, which is one of those ruy deng ones, with a sort of display module cables, and then i think this is the buck boost one. So, with 12 volts coming in on my bench, i can boost this up to 24 for that bulb.

Let's try that that's interesting. These are totally different. I don't know whether they've got mixed up with something else. These have got flat, uh, slotted, bolts in them and they're the sort of pull drawer types which pull a drawer closed, whereas these are these horrible bent leaf ones and have um, flips or posi drive screws in them.

It didn't really matter, particularly uh. I want to put that in there, so that's going to be fine i'll get my posing and neg the right way around. Let's do that right. So that's on there pause to the top in part.

That looks the right way around. Let's put my bench: 12 volts. Oh, i don't have a display. Do i right? That's the display these don't sort of sit down.

Probably i'm gon na have to get some blue tuck. I think uh, let's plug that in. Is it gon na work? Yes, so 12 volts going in and i'll set this up for about 25 coming out or 24. This is a 24 volt bulb and i'll get a couple of wires to go from here on to here, but they can be quite small right.

That's it wired up! Uh where's my pointer uh, but i don't want to switch it on because this is set to 32 volts, so uh. I think we press v and then what do we press? We press that to move through the fields. Yes, we do so if i bring the digits down, so let's set that for 24. Initially, no, let's set it for 18, because i really want to work within the range of this bulb.

So i think i'll work between about 12 and 24. So let's set this to start at 18. uh. Do you press that again? Yes, you do switch it on 18 volts.

That should be all right. So this comes on because it's got quite a wide range of voltage capability on its input. There is actually a little buck converter on here, there's a little inductor there. Let me go back to the ebay listing actually and just check the input voltage range of this thing right.

The listing is gobbledygook, but it says between 6 and 60 on the input, but then it says something about the expenditure range is up to 48 and i think what it's saying is don't go above 48. I don't know what it's saying to be honest. Well now, what i know so far about this thing is that all the buttons work on either a single click or a press and hold a short click or a long click. I don't think there's any double clicking involved.

So we've got 18 volts there, which ties up with that. Oh quite precisely, actually, although this is only one decimal place to set the thresholds on this, you press and hold the middle button to see all the settings. You single click, the middle button. So shall we do that? First, let's come in a bit closer press, the middle button and we get up 29 down 21 op, dop and fop.

Now, op, dop and fop are all timers of some description or other and i'm not using any of them. But i did work out what they all were and i will go through them all by trying to read the uh unfathomable instructions, but anyway, let's set the thresholds first. So if i'm going to be winding this thing up between about 12 and 24, let's set an upper threshold and you press and hold for this. It starts flashing, so the upper threshold.

I think it's up at the top and down at the bottom um. I want to set it about say: 22 29 was what i was using for and it my on off, which makes doing this quite tricky. Actually so up 22 down. Let's do let's do 18 for the moment.

Let's bring that down to 18 volts. No that's gone too far and then we've got op, which is i think, hours and then the next one is op minutes. Then we've got dop and that says it's in hours, but i think it might be in minutes. This display, i think, is a power bank display and it's not actually intended for this product, but it kind of just works um.

So i think that's minutes for dop and then fop is well. It says hours there, but i don't know whether it's actually hours or minutes. I have no idea the display. Actually, here i can see from my angle that there's a capital a and a lowercase h, so this is intended to show amp hours, but you can just fire up the h and therefore it shows hours.

But i can't remember whether it is hours we'll come back to that anyway. That's the end of the programming press and hold that button again and it writes those parameters in so i've got 22 as my upper threshold and 18 as my lower. So, let's make sure we can see the bulb and i think i need to set voltage a couple of clicks on there to get to digits. So if we go to 19 oops, i did two clicks.

I think 21, just about 22, so the upper threshold has been exceeded and so therefore the load is turned on now you would imagine that the load would start draining the battery down. So, let's drain it down to 21 down to 20 down to 19 down to 18 and because it dipped below 18, it switches off now i've discovered that, after it switches off because of low battery, this thing flashes, for whatever reason you can stop it flashing. By doing a single click, i think on any button yeah any a single click on any button and it stops the flashing. But the flashing tells you that the battery had dropped to a low enough voltage that it triggered the lower voltage threshold turned the relay off and the load goes out now.

As i say, i believe that this display was intended for power banks. So it's got an in and an out marker and i think if it says out, then this works as a discharge controller or a load controller if that is set to in this works as a charge controller. So you would attach the battery to here and a charger to this point here. So when the relay turns on your charger, which might be a main battery, charger, will connect to the battery and start lifting the voltage up.

In my case, i've got a load here. So when the relay turns on the load connects to the battery and the voltage will go down, but let's put it in the other mode now we'll put it in the in mode, so that's charge control. This won't be a charger. This will be a bulb, but we'll see how it works, and i believe for this we press and hold the top button i'll have to check that.

Yes, it is pressing hold the top button, but you have to press it and hold it for quite a long time about five seconds. I think now that changes it to p1 mode. So it's now saying in so it's now a charge controller. But it's also now saying nbe and i'm not quite sure what that means.

Well, i've gone through another few ebay listings for this item and they're all the same. They've all got the same set of instructions. Nowhere on any of them does it mention what nbe is. The only thing i can think is that in this mode, where you would expect to have a battery charger on this side and the battery on this side, maybe it's looking to see if there is some voltage across here and obviously with a bulb on there, there Isn't so maybe that's saying that you haven't got a battery charger, but i don't know what nbe means.

So perhaps i should limit my use of this thing in this video to its use as a discharge controller. In other words, a load based voltage, controlled switch, which means putting it into the other mode, so press and hold the top button for a very long time, and that puts it in p2 mode. It is now a discharge controller. We've got 20 volts coming in, which is what we've got and it hasn't turned the relay on, but there is some timing parameters which i set for op, dop and in discharge mode.

You also get this additional parameter fop. Maybe we should go through those, so i think op is an on time. Limiter. Now, op, you have fairly fine control of.

If i press and hold set up voltage, 22 down voltage, 18, but up you have two fields. So let's set it. I think this is hours actually, let's set it to no hours and one minute, then you have dop now dop appears to be wait. A second yes dop is a delay timer between the on and off times, so that you can't have the relay going on off and off on off off, really quick like that and you set dop in seconds.

So, let's set that to 10 seconds that limits the rate at which the relay can be turned on and off and fop is unique to um the discharge function and it is the discharge. Conduction forced start time, i'll read that one. Yes, this says after the relay is forced to conduct. It will stay on for this forced conduction time and it can only be up to 10 seconds.

So, let's just scroll up and see what that does yeah. That only goes up to 10 seconds. So, let's set it to 10 seconds, see what it does. So we can save that by pressing and holding okay.

So we got 16 volts to trigger the lamp. We need to turn it up to 22. That was the upper voltage setting. So let's go 17.

18. 19: 20 whoops. 21. 22..

That's turned it on and now we've got the f counter doing the 10 seconds forced conduction timer. That means that it can't drop out again until that 10 seconds has elapsed. Now. Are we looking at the other timer? I think we are cause out is flashing and i think i set that to one minute and i think that's a timer before which you can't make it go off again.

So let's try that so, let's go under the trigger threshold. No that has gone off. So it's still baffling i'm just thinking, maybe fop overrides dop uh up is one second dop and flop are both 10 seconds. So let's just do a dop without a fop i'll just program that in but i'll turn off the up, uh second field.

For that off. Stop i've got 10 seconds. I think that goes higher yeah. I think that goes up to 999 seconds.

So that's right! Fine, but i'll have no fop. I think is limited to 10 seconds. So, let's set that down to nothing, save that so now we're looking at dop - and this is a delayed on time timer - i believe so. Let's turn the voltage up.

17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22. That's come on immediately. Maybe it's a delayed off time controller.

Am i still in that field? Yes, 21. 20. 19. 18..

That's flashing and we've got a countdown. Oh maybe that's a delay before you can turn it back up again i'll have to test that. So, let's turn it up to 22. That comes on turn it down to 16.

That goes off turn it back up to 22, yes and there's a timer, so it stops it coming back on again until that 10 seconds has elapsed, which might be useful if you have thresholds which are very close to each other or you've got wild variations in Battery voltage - and you just want to make sure you put in a delay to stop it oscillating could be useful, not necessary. In my application i could just smell the bulb then, so i think it's all getting a bit hot here, um. Now this a single press on this bottom switch is an override, so it's a relay override, so you can manually switch it off or manually, allow it to function as per the voltage thresholds. So i think they kind of call it an emergency off switch i'll emergency off it because it is all getting a bit hot.

Now, if i turn this back on with the relay override - and i just single press on the top switch, it switches between time view function. So this appears to be how long the relay has been on and battery percentage function, or at least the percentage of this figure, this voltage between your upper and lower thresholds, so my upper and lower thresholds are 18 and 22.. If i bring this down to say the midpoint, which is 20 volts, we've got 50 percent at 21 volts we've got about 75 percent and at 19 volts we've got about 25 percent. So that shows you the percentage where you are between your two trigger points uh.

This switches between percentage and time - and this appears to show how long the relay's been on. If i override the relay and turn it back on again, does it start that again, no, it seems to not worry too much about that. So that's how long the uh relay has been on how long your loads been on. So to summarize, the short presses, the top button switches you between two display modes, a percentage mode and a time mode.

The middle button reviews all your settings up down: op, dop and fop in the case of discharge mode and the bottom button is this relay override this emergency off thing now press and hold the top button changes between the two modes charge, control and discharge controller. The middle but middle button takes you into the parameter programming, so the upper voltage, the lower voltage, the op, the dop and the fop, which are all timer settings and if you press and hold the bottom button, oh, i don't think we've done that one! Let's see what that does. Ah that's uh low power, but what it actually means is that, after a period of time, the display shuts off and, of course, its backlight also shuts off so that was low power on. I think press and hold that one low power off means the display never shuts off.

Yes, that's what press and holding the bottom button does. So those are the six sort of function areas now, as i say in my setup, with the solar powered battery. If you mind phosphate eight cell, i don't need any of these time functions. So if i go back into programming mode, i've got my up voltage my down voltage.

I don't want any op. I don't want any dot so i'll. Take that back down to zero - and i don't want any fop so press and hold the set button to save those parameters, and now it's simply a case uh now that's saying off: yes, i need the relay functionality back on that off means that it's got this Emergency override thing, where the relay will never function so press that button press that a couple of times take it up above the 22 volt threshold. The relay turns on take it down below the 18 volt threshold.

The relay turns off it's as simple as that and without any timing functions. This works on my solar crypto setup. Now previously, i was using this unit and i think i did do a sort of review of this unit, but it had a couple of problems. Well, the first problem was that um, the voltage varied wildly.

This was connected directly to the battery and this voltage was varying 400 millivolts. It was just wandering about it, wasn't a very good display. Then one day i powered it up and the little inductor there smoked and blew up the regulator now. I believe this is an xl 1509.

This also has a butt controller, but i think it's a different xl chip. I'll have a look. Yes, this one is an xl 7005. Now is the xl 7005 better than the xl1509, it's a higher number, so perhaps it is now.

I think i found a feature which i haven't been using, which is to put this not in percentage mode but in time mode trigger it. So, let's change the voltage to above the trigger threshold 22. So that's triggered it and now i believe that this starts counting up. So let's do the relay override so that my mat doesn't get too hot.

But let's let this count up a couple of minutes and then take it down below the under voltage threshold, which will turn the bulb back off. The bar is effectively now on, but i've overridden it with the uh button, but bottom button um, because i think it will give you a display of the total time that the uh load was switched on. Let's see if that's the case yeah, so this is clocked up one minute of on time and it doesn't appear to interrupt the counter or the timer if you manually intervene and switch this off so i'll. Leave that off for a couple of minutes clock up some on time, then i'll reduce the incoming voltage so that the relay switches off and see if it remembers that time and displays it so that you can, after i've had a sort of mining session.

I'll be able to see on here how long that mining session was see if that works right, so this module has been switched on now, i've overridden it. So i don't melt my mat. So let's switch it back on that flashes for a bit. So it's been on for three minutes: let's now change the battery voltage that it goes below the lower threshold, a couple of clicks on there: 21 20.

19 18 - that switches off it flashes, but it seems to hold that time. So that could be useful. You can come in see that this is flashing, that the miner has done a mining session, but it's now stopped and that's how long it was mining for yes, i've not used that. That's quite handy, isn't it and then, if i turn this voltage battery voltage back up uh to above 22 volts again that should trigger and the timer resets itself to zero and starts counting up all over again great stuff.

So there it is um i've not shown it in charge, controller mode um, but it works fantastically in discharge controller mode and that's what i'm using it for it's got this 30 amp relay, which is more than enough for my current setup. Now, if i put a bigger minor on the output of this thing, all i need to do is relay this relay into a much bigger relay and have that control the main current um, but at i think something like about 12 amps. Now is this at the high voltage? No, this is at the low the higher voltage, the lower current, so this gets mildly warm, the relay um, but not alarmingly. So like this one, where the 12 amps going through, it was, strictly speaking above its thresh, its rating, which is 10 amps.

This got very hot, but the 30 amp really, of course, just gets nice and mildly warm. So that works fine for the sort of 12 or so amps that i'm currently putting through it and just go through the op, dop and fop. Again. Op is a total on time limiter and it can be several hours.

You can set hours and minutes so that, if your, for example, this thing is running on voltage thresholds but you're concerned that you don't want to charge for say more than five hours. Then you could set up to five hours and it would limit the on time of the relay to that setting dop is the delayed conduction function, so when the threshold is reached, this thing will not switch on the relay immediately and you can set up to 990 Seconds and i think that's to stop this thing if you've got very short cycles, switching on and off too frequently and then fop is the forced conduction. That means that when the relay is triggered, it can't then be untriggered again for a period of time and that's just adjustable between 0 and 10 seconds. So yes, plenty of timing, functions.

Um you've also got the ability to look at this in terms of total. On time or percentage now, this is not percentage state of charge. It's nothing to do with the stated charge of the battery. It's simply the percentage voltage that this is currently at between its upper and lower threshold settings.

So, as i say, this works extremely well. In my particular setup, where i'm controlling a quite high current load uh the instructions, the sort of operating system is unfathomable, as is always the case. You've pretty much got to work it out for yourself, but, as i say in my setup, it seems to work beautifully and the voltage reading is extremely stable. So i'm very pleased with it so i'll put a link to this item in the description below the video where i bought it on ebay.

But i think for this video, that's probably enough faffing about uh, so cheerio.