Valence XP Super Thread
- Thread starter Travis
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U can try doing it like this without the holder.
What kind of 485 adapter did you get? Do you know for sure that you have 5 volts positive and negative going to the battery?
Does USB shows up in Device manager.
What version of .net are u using. U shud install the older version specifically 2.0.
Also need to make sure all boxes are ‘checked
mannytheseacow
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Thanks for all the replies, but as I said in my original post I’m confident about the comport and settings. My 485 converter cable is probably 4 years old, and has spent a lot of time at sea connecting sonar and gps for bathymetric survey. When my new cable arrives I’ll try again. This one is pretty cracked and frayed.
make note that when I connected the 5 volts from my USB to the battery I had very inconsistent results and often would not connect. Using a single 18 650 to supply 4 volts to the battery worked great. Also I could use the USB power if I installed the terminating resistor.
mannytheseacow
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Got my new adapter today (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B077ZM1PSG/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) and after going through the driver installation process it connected right up with no issues.
I have a couple questions- my apologies if the answers are in the battery manual- it's good to have this stuff in a forum for others to see and I'll go read the manual while waiting for a response.
1. Of my 8 cells, most were at 33% SOC, while one was at 99% and one was at 40%. Once I had active communication going another one came up to 99% quickly... is this just part of the balancing process? I assume they will all be the same once balancing is complete? They continue to balance as I type.
2. In the "Battery Info" tab all batteries show a red cell and "Communication Error". Can I assume this is because they have been in use for a couple weeks without a computer connection or BMS?
3. Did anyone else order the BMS from China via ebay that Travis posted? If so, how long did it take to arrive? Or are you still waiting?
Thanks for all the help and feedback.
I have a couple questions- my apologies if the answers are in the battery manual- it's good to have this stuff in a forum for others to see and I'll go read the manual while waiting for a response.
1. Of my 8 cells, most were at 33% SOC, while one was at 99% and one was at 40%. Once I had active communication going another one came up to 99% quickly... is this just part of the balancing process? I assume they will all be the same once balancing is complete? They continue to balance as I type.
2. In the "Battery Info" tab all batteries show a red cell and "Communication Error". Can I assume this is because they have been in use for a couple weeks without a computer connection or BMS?
3. Did anyone else order the BMS from China via ebay that Travis posted? If so, how long did it take to arrive? Or are you still waiting?
Thanks for all the help and feedback.
I ordered a couple of the China units now they're out of stock. the communication plus and minus on my Chinese units appear opposite of the one in your link. They didn't take long to get to Hawaii I think they were actually shipping from the USA.
You said 8 cell blocks or 8 batteries? I assume you mean 8 batteries. the manual talks all about when the state of charge will show 100%. As you're discharging the board inside the battery will not reduce the percentage unless it's tethered to a laptop or u BMS.
There are some parameters about when the state of charge will show 100. Basically when you're charging and the cells are all over 3.4 and amperage is under a certain number the state of charge will jump to 100 even if it was coming from 30%. Basically the state of charge resets and gets recalibrated when the board in the battery realizes that it actually IS full and very roughly balanced.
some of the batteries that were sold the first week I did not get a chance to balance myself. I have been finding that about three out of every 24 batteries need to stay in the balancing State 4 days after fully charged in order for a Cell Block to catch up. The bleed off resistors are quite small. Then after some discharge capacity testing and recharging they stay balanced. It seems like they must have been sitting a long time and some cell blocks had faster self discharge rates than others. The manual recommends balancing at least once a month.
sometimes during this first long balance charge I get impatient when I'm waiting for a cell block to catch up and I take the side cover off and charge it directly with 3.65 volts.
You said you have some red cells? Are you talking about in the top left in the voltages square where it says cell bank1, cell Bank 2, cell Bank 3, cell bank 4...? Red is bad. Pink is sort of okay but red normally means your voltage is over 4v on a cell and this could earn you a battery over-voltage strike in the Life Time counter.
Communication error? Mine always says in pink "communication error." actually when I first plug it in it says no error and then after only a couple of seconds when the boxes are updating continuously suddenly they'll blink just for a brief second as if it had a communication error and then they continue just fine. And that's when the communication error shows up in pink and it stays pink like that but keeps working fine. maybe there is a fancy way to stop it from happening like changing the bod rate or something but I'm not a computer whiz. I'm not worried about it. I've left my batteries connected to the laptop for over a week while charging and balancing and never had to restart the program or anything as long as I avoid installing other programs and stuff. It just kept on balancing and showing active battery info in all the boxes.
I've got my balancing location set up on grid. The first time I charge I'm using 3 amps and I'm only able to get up to around 14v safely without pushing one cell over-voltage and that's with balancing active. I have to let it stay at 14 volts for about 10 hours. Next I carefully watch each cell's voltage and so that no cell gets over 3.8 during the next steps. I push it up to 14.2v and finally the amperage falls down to about 0.25 amps and then I can slowly start raising the voltage over the next three days. Eventually I can get the voltage all the way up to 14.55 without any cell going over 3.65 volts and that's when I know they're finally truly balanced. I'm trying to hook up about 100 batteries at my house but I want them all balanced first and I'm still not finished. The Balancing resistors are tiny. You can put your finger right on them and they won't burn you. I think they can only bleed off about 0.25amps and so the first time these get balanced it's taking forever. If you take the side cover off you'll see the balancing connector looks like a standard hobby charger shape. I think if I were to purchase a bunch of 4 cell balancers like for the hobby crowd it would probably plug right in and have bleed off resistors that are capable of higher amperage but I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to be patient this first go-around because I don't want to purchase that many hobby balancers LOL.
I assume you're in Hawaii if you want I could come over and give you some pointers on it. I've been staring at this Valence screen for 6 hours out of every day this month.
mannytheseacow
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I do not have any red boxes on the Valence software, just the pink “communication error” box. Like you said, when I first reconnected this morning it didn’t show the error but then after a few minutes shows again. I’ll ignore it. Otherwise things seem fine.
mannytheseacow
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The usb communication dongle that I linked does indeed have the labels reversed on their diagram. The voltage out seems reliable and I’ve not had any problems with it yet or been required to use another battery for communication power.
mannytheseacow
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I ordered the U-bms from China or us... wherever it comes from. They said it shipped weeks ago. This virus is making my overall system install take for ever.
Thanks again for the help, Travis. After reading your follow-up and the battery manual I’m left with the impression that there’s no way to really get a live accurate reading of my battery bank’s overall charge state? I miss my old $20 MPPT on a couple marine batteries that just said “80%” charged or whatever it would be. Just a simple way to look at a screen and see what my overall levels are. My gut feeling is my bank of Valence is pretty much fully charged all the time and I’m not even touching their storage capacity with my small daily use. But it would be nice to be able to know for sure.
Thanks again for the help, Travis. After reading your follow-up and the battery manual I’m left with the impression that there’s no way to really get a live accurate reading of my battery bank’s overall charge state? I miss my old $20 MPPT on a couple marine batteries that just said “80%” charged or whatever it would be. Just a simple way to look at a screen and see what my overall levels are. My gut feeling is my bank of Valence is pretty much fully charged all the time and I’m not even touching their storage capacity with my small daily use. But it would be nice to be able to know for sure.
If you leave the laptop on long enough eventually the cells will become balanced and when all the right parameters are met all of the batteries will read 100%. then if you leave the laptop on while you're discharging the percentages will accurately reduce as you drain the batteries. I'm really excited to hear how the China BMS does for you.
mannytheseacow
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So if my laptop is connected all the time is that $600 u-bms doing anything?
The laptop is just for seeing what's going on, the BMS will actually trigger the relays/contactors to cut off the loads for under/over voltage and probably can be used to control when to turn on/off chargers.
