New diyBMS controller coming?

Hi, I’m sorting out a group buy at the moment, most likely they will be stocked in the forum shop and sent out to Patreon supporters.

As you only need 1 controller, they are not ideally suited to JLCPCB as you end up with 2 or 5 of them as a minimum order, and the additional parts (screw terminals etc.) can only be ordered in quantities of 50!

1 Like

can you explain, Patreon supporters ?

Have you seen the YouTube videos on the diyBMS?
[https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHhwQCDPuRcZW3u0jJucsiCCsUbNbMy-c]

Patreon is a financial sponsor/support group/website.
[Stuart Pittaway | creating Electronic Gadgets and Battery Management Systems | Patreon]

1 Like

all :slight_smile:

Done :wink:

2 Likes

I’ve submitted an order for 30 PCBs (assembled) and will be making 28 of them available at cost to anyone in the US / Canada that is interested.

Price is TBD at this point but I’ll make them available at cost plus the price of shipping to anyone in the USA / Canada.

1 Like

Will you also be making the screen available in the shop? Would be nice to incorporate that in my mobile 12v pack to replace the basic voltmeter.

Probably not, its easier to just order direct.

2.8 Inch ILI9341 240x320 SPI TFT LCD Display Touch Panel SPI Serial Port Module

TFT display - banggood

Please note that the controller has all the necessary hardware to support lots of features, like the TFT screen, CAN bus etc. but the software still hasn’t been written to enable these functions!

It will happen, but slowly!

1 Like

We will need to make the implementation plugable for the CAN bus as each device may use a slightly different message format over the CAN bus. I’d expect something similar in the RS485 implementation as well.

I also see that the order from LCSC is ready to ship out and I’m expecting it to arrive in a couple weeks, about the same time as the PCBs likely.

Stuart, Thanks again for your great work! It’s very exciting! Can you be a bit more specific about what is and is not currently implemented on this new board? Most specifically, is the TFT display functional? Is there any real reason to install it now? Thanks . . .

Hello! New (US) guy alert.

I’m not sure how you’re slotting orders, but I’d be interested in getting on the list. I have a new 64 cell 16S4P battery I’m building and the way this project is moving seems to really fit my needs better than anything else I can Frankenstein together. I need to do a bit more studying, but is there also a group buy happening on cell modules or will 64 be enough to get the “Good Guy” price?

Thank you!

I’m not aware of any group buy on the cell modules. But with the current module files you would need to submit multiple orders to JLCPCB as they limit to a maximum of 30 PCBs for assembly. @stuart didn’t you create a set of gerber files that were panelized?

I don’t have a list of people yet but I believe there are at most ten people who have expressed interest in the controllers within the USA / Canada area. Once I have the boards in hand and do some basic sanity testing on a couple of them I’ll post them up for others.

The display will switch on and show the diyBMS logo at the moment, but nothing more. I wouldn’t add it at this time.

As you can imagine, the controller had to be designed and built to support lots of external interfaces. I’ve hand tested each of these using sample code, so they work, but now the fun starts with coding these into the main controller code.

At present, the new controller features which are enabled are:

  1. Relay outputs (similar to the old controller)
  2. Emergency Stop input
  3. Module TX/RX connections
  4. SD Card logging
  5. AVR programming interface (so you can program the modules directly from the web page)
  6. Existing core features like Wifi/MQTT logging etc. all working

So the TFT, CAN BUS and RS485 and extra inputs are not yet enabled.

Very helpful! Thank you. I (we) will wait for the next chapter(s) with great anticipation!

Any chance of persuading you to ship to the UK :grinning: ?

I’d be happy to BUT it would be very expensive to ship from the US to UK. I’d suggest wait until @stuart has them listed in the store link.

Thanks Mike. As you can see, Stuart is on the case!

If I don’t care about the logging function on the new controller, will it function without the Micro-SD card holder installed?

Better yet, there are 2 different models of SD card slot available (instock), Will one of these fit as an alternative?
TF-15x15
TF-115

These two have slightly different footprints and due to that I don’t think they will work. You might be able to order the MicroSD part from Mouser or DigiKey. Note that both of these are around 3x the cost as LCSC.