Portable Power Station || DIY or Buy

Hi there, I have to say that I do enjoy camping and yes that is the only picture of me while camping which I had lying around so bear with me. Now even though the point of camping is to get a bit away from modern technology, I have to admit that having electrical power around can be really handy to for example charge up your phone or use your jig saw for an emergency wood cut. The only problem is that not all campsites offer electrical outlets which just recently got me interested in such portable power station products. As you would expect they come with a beefy internal battery and electrical outlets which makes them perfect for camping. But the price can be rather expensive which got me thinking whether I could finally use my big LiFePo4 batteries in a meaningful project. And in case you do not know, I got those huge battery cells initially for my DIY power wall video and then I tried using them again in order to power an electric long board. So in this episode of DIY or Buy let's firstly have a closer look at a commercial portable power station and find out what makes it tick and afterwards let's create a DIY attempt in order to find out whether it makes sense to DIY such a product or whether we should stick to the commercial solution instead. Let's get started! This video is sponsored by JLCPCB and EasyEDA. As you might know I have been using the EasyEDA schematic and PCB design software for years and now I am happy to announce that when you are finished with your PCB design that includes an SMT assembly service, you can like always directly order your PCBs through JLCPCB but now you get a 10$ coupon while doing so. So feel free to join the EasyEDA and JLCPCB user group today. First off I have to confess that I had to buy a commercial portable power station because I wanted to identify its features and whatnot before creating my DIY version. So after turning it on, I used the included charger in order to obviously charge it up. And I have to say that I really like that you can see the input power as well as later the output power on the DC and AC ports. But anyway, after around 2 hours the battery was full enough for me which means it was time to activate the DC and AC outputs and get to the testing. First off though I have to note that I do not really care about the cigarette lighter connector or the 12V output connectors. But it was great to see that the 5V USB output ports were able to deliver plenty of current for lots of fast charging applications. And the electrical outlets also seemed to work just fine with a phone charger as well as with my jigsaw. And they also used a pure sine wave inverter for the outlets which was a big plus. But I was a bit skeptical that the 300W max power would be enough for my jigsaw while cutting. Then you also get a few more gimmicks like an inductive charging station as well as a light but I do not really care about those either. So let's rather skin the power stations rubber shell and somehow open it up in order to reveal its insides. As you can see we got one big promising looking custom PCB underneath which the battery pack was located. At this point I had a closer at the circuit board in order to determine its building blocks. And as you would have guessed; It all starts with the battery pack voltage which like expected is protected by a BMS aka battery management system. I actually did a video about such devices which you should definitely check out in order to grasp the importance of a BMS. But basically put it protects the battery pack from overvoltage, undervoltage, overcurrent and short circuit current and it balances the cells voltages so that none gets overcharged. If you are working with a battery pack energy of 500Wh or later with 1280Wh then such a BMS is definitely mandatory. With that being said we can follow the battery voltage to all the functional blocks like some kind of switching regulator that is used to convert the variable input voltage into a voltage and current that is suitable for charging the battery pack. Then the voltage also connects to the inverter, USB output board, Dc output board and cigarette lighter and all of this is controlled by the main control board that turns each functional block on and off. So all in all such a portable power station is pretty straightforward which is why I put the commercial power station back together and started gathering the main components for my own DIY version according to what I prioritized from the commercial version. To start off I got myself such a a Smart BMS with two current sensors in combination with a Smart Relay. The BMS comes with all the protections features we need as well as a fitting Smartphone app which I will talk about later. The relay is used to either connect or disconnect the load or the charging voltage depending on for example whether the battery is about to get over discharged or overcharged. The relay can handle up to 120A at 12V which is crucial because the inverter I got for this build can do a continuous 1000W which equals around 83A. It also comes with a sinusoidal output voltage which you should always go for. Then I also got myself an additional converter with 2 USB ports for phone charging. And last but not least I bought such a crude variable lab bench power supply which I will use to convert a 24V DC input voltage into a suitable charging voltage for the batteries. Of course I also got some thick wiring, switches, connectors and much more for this build but if you want those juicy details then you will have to take a look in the video description. But anyway, after I was done not only completing my functional block diagram but also my wiring diagram for this project, I started this build by removing the connectors from my batteries. The reason was that I wanted the batteries as close to one another as possible and that meant I had to drill a new hole in the connectors, which was more or less easily done with my drill press. Afterwards I reassembled the battery pack, added some duct tape and mounted some proper heavy duty power wires to its plus and minus terminal along with a suitable fuse. It is noteworthy though that I later had to reposition the fuse since it was getting in the way of the BMS system. And speaking of BMS system, I firstly had to enlarge all of its PCB mounting holes in order to even use it. But afterwards all you have to do to use it is to simply hook one of those boards up to one battery cell through the plus and minus terminal and then daisy chain the boards together through an additional data wire. And don't worry if you are confused now because the manual for the BMS does an excellent job of telling you all the important details. Now after the BMS worked like anticipated it was time to not only wire up the SmartRelay but also pretty much the rest of the components and oh boy while this wiring job looked easy on paper, it took me around 4 hours to create all the power wires with fitting ring connectors and use them in order to wire up all of the components. And let's not forget creating this big minus pole point as well as including the current transformers/sensors. But all of that was worth it because I successfully created this mess which after doing some testing by activating the load and charge side with the push buttons, seems to work just fine with different loads as well as with the charging while also displaying the correct current values. So it was time to partly rip this construction apart and bring in the first plywood sheets for the enclosure. Those two have a thickness of 1 cm and dimensions of 40 by 70 cm. I used them as a base and top piece which means that for the base I had to cut lots of roof laths and secure them to one another to basically create this wood construction that will hold the side pieces as well as the top with a distance of 25cm to the base. And as soon as I was happy with this assembly, I used a thinner 3mm thick plywood sheet in order to cut out the 4 required pieces for all of the sides. Back in my apartment I then firstly used screws to secure the wood construction to the base piece and while I was at it I also added 4 small wheels in order to make the whole system movable. As soon as that was done, I lifted the battery pack with everything attached to it in its place and continued by adding a wood barrier next to it. Afterwards I secured one long and one short side piece to the enclosure and used that in order to give the SmartRelay a permanent position. Then I added the remaining long side piece and moved on to the inverter whose outlets I had to rip out and extend its wires in order to later mount it on the outside of the enclosure. And while I was at it I also found out what wires are responsible for turning the inverter on so that I can also extend them out. And with that out of the way I marked the spots for all of the required control components on the remaining short side piece, created all of the cutouts with a drill and a jigsaw and just because I can also used my laser engraver to give it all some nice labels. Next I pushed the LCD in place and secured the DC input jack to the panel before screwing it to the enclosure. And all that was now left to do was to add the remaining components, wire them all up, drill holes for the inverter in the top plywood sheet, secure it there through nuts and bolts, wire it up as well and let it fall into position and just like that you can make a portable power station. It charges without a problem and outputs more than enough power for pretty much everything and like already mentioned it shows you exactly what is going on on the input and output side, I love it. And believe it or not but while this DIY version was certainly overall more expensive than the commercial version, it offers more energy per euro in comparison which does make it cheaper, just in another way. And since creating such a system is really just lots of wiring and is pretty safe if you are careful, I have to declare that DIY is this time the winner. And with that being said, thanks for watching. As always don't forget to like, share, subscribe and hit the notification bell. Stay creative and I will see you next time.

Channel: GreatScott!

Views: 319,860

Keywords: portable, power, station, battery, bank, big, huge, electrical, outlet, grid, voltage, lifepo4, life, lithium, ion, solar, wall, diy, do, it, yourself, make, project, guide, beginner, beginners, commercial, compare, comparison, cheap, cheaper, bms, management, system, smart, relay, inverter, mains, camping, outdoor, energy, greatscott, greatscott!, 5v, usb, output, generator, buy, homemade, home, made, wiring, fuse, schematic, wheel, roll, wood, working, balance, smartphone, app, electronic, electronics, enclosure, housing

Id: l8Fza6VVF5o

Length: 13min 12sec (792 seconds)

Published: Sun May 23 2021