DIY 6S to 12S BMS with CAN - DieBieMS

Thanks for the detailed response @jtag! What cc/cv can you recommend me in case the bms doesnt power on when I plug in the power supply?

You can power it on manually with the power button, after that it will charge as well. You will just not have the convenience of it auto powering on.

Uhm well, cant point one out directly, I prefer the meanwell LED power supplies that have a configurable voltage / current, but there are many options out there.

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@JTAG, I am not sure if you read my question above. It was directed at someone else, but you are THE person to answer it best. In short the question is:

If charge throttle is already implemented for end of charging scenario, why not use it for limiting input or charge current? Or is the throttling done not done fast enough to qualify as current limiting?

Advantage would be to improve battery life by restricting charge current. Secondly, one can use any charger(even the one that shuts down when current limit is hit)

Yeas I read it bus was unable to respond to it yet :sweat_smile:, am hard work at work on more things than I can handle xD.

charge(and discharge) throttling is functionality that can be implemented to charge as fast as possible and discharge as long as possible. Because if you limit the currents at either the full and empty state you can do it longer (discharge it more and charge it longer). The BMS knows the cell voltages and therefore knows the worst case, it can however not control the charge / discharge current directly other than just stop it, so it emits a percentage on the can bus that can be used by the motor controller or the charger. This is used I a different application than a skateboard for a client of mine. In the future when I make a USB-PD adaptor this charge throttling will also be used to throttle charging. I hope in the future to implement it in the VESC code as well (to make the VESC throttle back instead of the battery cutting out and throwing you of the board), but the need is not high enough for me to make that a priority yet (I still have an enormous list of todoā€™s of much awesomer things :stuck_out_tongue: ).

Edit: To answer your question, if your are able to implement the throttling in the charger than you should, however that rarely happens since you donā€™t easily have acces to that in the chargers available (I implemented it in an external controller next to a meanwell charger that supports dimming).

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my pack is back together. I also ordered some heat shrink for the pack with my new cells.

20181228_114412

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Thanks for the detailed explanation. Itā€™s very interesting. I understand how that can be implemented on the charger(with CAN) side.

so the bms can only control on or off when itā€™s comes to charging, but if done fast enough does it just average out a certain value of current. Same way how the VESC produces a desired phase voltage?

BTW: I burnt my R36 resistor (for cell 1-5) somehow while I was working to connect canbus to vesc. Using a multimeter they read 5k, 11k, 2.9k , 1.8k, 112, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100. Power tools touching balancing wires, copper dust,ā€¦ i donā€™t know what did it. diebiems tool just went crazy with the voltage readings for those cells. Looked through the schematics to locate what could cause the erroneous readings and a closer look(under microscope) showed tiny brown marks on those resistors :sob:

Aaaawh nice one! Yes these resistors tend to go as described above somewhere (or I donā€™t know exactly really where) when the main power leads are disconnected but when the load is connected and the load is enabled. Then part of the energy to the load is provided trough the balance leads into the BMS, this circuit is only ment for measuring and balancing to canā€™t handle that current. I have rarely had this happen (compared to the amounts of succes), but all of the times it was due to either incorrect wiring of the balance wires or not / bad main power lead wiring.

On request by @Samau18 I added some new functionality to the BMS tool / firmware that is able to test these resistors. I will give an example in a sec.

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OMG. That is exactly what happened. I am using a case for the bms and the assembly procedure makes you disconnect the power first and then the balancing port. At some point I connected the usb to see the cell readings and that when it started the bms without the main battery leads connected. Somehow it needs to be made fool proof, either in software or hardware. I think it can be fixed in software because, I burned 5 of those resistors. 5 is the number of discharge resistors active at a time.

I donā€™t know the exact pathway of the current but 2 of the discharge mosfets got destroyed too(they were on even when the bms was off). I finally have everything working again by using ghetto jumper wire replacing the defective visas and transplanting the discharging mosfets from cell 11 & 12 to 1 and 2.

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Letā€™s say I have your BMS, is there a way to increase the current handling? I need 160A continous and 240A burst. Whatā€™s the limiting factor, is it the thermals? Adding some cooling would give me more current? Or I need to biggyback solder secondary mosfets?

What on earth do you need 160A continuous for? I would love to see that build. Seriously though, at those currents, I would just bypass the BMS and use it for charge only.

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160A is not easy, and I am afraid you are indeed better off bypassing the bms. Maybe in the future ill design a smaller bms build in multiple layers that is a bit more modular but with a small footprint that is capable of carrying this type of current, but that will take a while I am afraid.

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Alternately you could use an external contactor and drive that from the FET gates. This is what gokarts and evs do.

Yeah I was also thinking about external MOSFETs. I canā€™t just bypass it, I need the battery protection :stuck_out_tongue: Maybe itā€™s not like 160A all the time but maximum continuous when for example going uphill full speed.

Maximum continuous is not a thing. What battery do you have, work back from that. If your battery canā€™t do 160A continuous you donā€™t need the BMS to do it.

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Well 160amps continous battery usage on a skateboard with dual motors I would strongly doubt.

Test drive 15% steep Hamburg

That ride is uphill in hamburg the steepest street we got. But it was a cold and wet day - so I did not rush uphill. Between the cars.

I only know Iā€™ll use Samsung 30Q or ncr18650ga, how many in parallel I donā€™t know, because I start with the motor and then workout the battery. So youā€™re saying Iā€™ll never exceed the ratings of diebiems in a real world use? I chose 2x SK8 6374 192kv from hobbyking and focbox unity.

Then you will never exceed the ratings :smiley:

Maybe if you try pulling your car uphill, but before you will overload the BMS your 6374 will just burn with 60A cont.

What if I put some ferroliquid between the stator and rotor and get extra cooling and so be able to push much more? :smile:

Sure go on. Same result. Ferrofluid will only work for RPMs <<1000, otherwise your fluid is elsewhere and your motor will still overheat. Never wondered why it only works for direct drive hub motors at bikes? Doesnt work for geared hub or mid drive systems exactly because of thisā€¦

My Setup is 12s10p of 20700B fine with 15A each == 150A easy possible battery amps.

My Motor max ams are set to 120A each.

Never reached my battery max.