Big Upgrade to our DIY Lithium SBMS & LiFePo4 Battery Bank - Part 1

Follow along as I decommission the venerable @electrodacus SBMS100 Solar Charge Controller with BMS and retrofit our whole electrical system to the SBMS0 with 4 DSSR20s.

Part 2 - Diversion Hot Water can be found here:

Building our own Lithium Bank with an external BMS costs $0.27/kWh, far less expensive than the ~$0.75/kWh that a pre-rolled drop-in lithium battery costs. If you already have equipment designed for lead batteries, and you only need a small 1.2kWh (100Ah) battery, that might be okay. But for our Full-Time life on the road, 100% Solar Powered Cooking, Air Conditioning, and Computing, we need a lot more.

I've shared the 3D printed wall mount design here:

😔🎤 Very sorry about the audio clipping in this video, I changed the lav mic on my transmitter and didn't check the levels and it was a bit too hot, combined with me projecting over the wind noise... 😔
(I fixed it the best I could)

00:00 Welcome to Costa Rica!
01:10 Introduction and Context
03:05 Removing the SBMS100
05:55 3D Printing a Wall Mount
10:30 First Powerup of the SBMS0
11:00 Battery Configuration Settings
13:27 Big Boy Shunt Retrofit
18:48 Here comes the Thunder
21:17 Mounting 4 DSSE20's
24:01 Will Ferrells
26:50 Solar Diversion
27:20 Intergalactic Spaceships
28:30 DEXT16 Installation
30:57 Woot! Charging Action!
34:20 Torquing the Batteries
35:08 Upcoming Video Topics

Get a DJI drone here:

[Everlanders]

Part 2 - Solar Diversion Heating out now!

[johnw]

Just a bit of warning - remove rings and watches when working on big batteries. I noticed your wife had hers on. I managed to short my wedding band on a 1120Ah pack while using a wrench and now they call me stubby.

[JockeSelin]

Now I need to organise my wire boxes, maybe some foam inserts or something to keep them as organised as your wire drawer. 😁👍🏻
Very good vijeo, makes me want to install one of these kind of doohikeys now. 🤔 Thanks!

[craigmckenzie]

Great install video. Best explanation on how to install an Sbms0. What a special wire draw? Everybody should have one.
As always a joy to see your videos.
Cheers

[cameronblackmon]

Oh man I fell off the map as a subscriber but I am so glad y’all kept up with the videos because now I have this great back log to watch!

[JeffHarbert]

Amazing, Jason. First making SMD PCBs on your stove in Oaxaca, and now this. My hat's off to you.

[davidpatrick]

I'm 68 now but years ago an old timer teased me saying there isn't such a thing as a "hot water heater" (he built houses when he got off work as a line foreman). A good friend. He said it is a "water heater" ... he said. thanks and keep up the nice weather living.

[pfunnell]

Perfect timing, our 8 cells, sbms0, 2 dssrs and dext 16 are all here ready to go and I feel a lot more confident tackling the build with this to refer to. 👍

[PJWoodbury-Speed]

Thanks for another great presentation .I have in use one of the first SBMS120 units in my motor home in New Zealand it has never missed a watt. I do agree that if you don't have a basic electrical understanding building your own Lithium cell battery system is not advisable .Have helped people with magic smoke problems but not easy. Keep up the good work.

[gustersongusterson]

I love the wire drawer, so neat and tidy! Great video, I really enjoy the electrical system videos! Safe travels.

[Chris-uteq]

Recently found your channel and became one of the 3%'ers! Really like what I have seen so far. Thank you fir taking the time to share with the community!

[lithtweezie]

Always Super, Super job. I'm always completely blown away by the quality of your work!

[BM-hbmr]

Again, another awesome video. Appreciate the time. I love to see nice clean wiring. I do shelters for AT&T and Verizon, I am a stickler about cleanliness. So are thuse 2 companies lol. Atleast you do have to tie all the wires in a track . Hate tying wires. But beautiful work sir.

[brandondelgado]

You can use your multimeter as a recharge resistor to bring charge the caps. Just use voltage mode black on batt, red on inverter pos and wait until the voltage goes down to zero. No pop!

[Jeep]

Great video! The booger hook that interfaces with the impact gun is what keeps the impact gun from damaging things.

[mouldyboats]

Yes that was nickel plated bus bar. Most ideal for your situation and offshore, in fact, I would always only use it for battery applications when available. I only remove it when scrapping the stuff.

[NimblyJimbly]

Stoked for this series!! Love your technical solutions and am constantly amazed by the depth of your knowledge. Thank you so much for sharing.

[MrAlvinDude]

As always, very nice and tidy job, with excellent use of the limited space available.

And thank you for including the still photos of several aspects of the prep work.
It makes an old hacker like myself, very happy to get a glimpse of the "workshops" that are available and used, while on-the-road 😀

Looking forward to this mini-series.

[robertburgess]

Your electrical and solar battery panel is amazing Jason. Looking forward to the next video.

[RichardCrabbe]

Hello from Canada!! Another great video! Thanks for all the work!