Thanks for taking the time with your vids man, must take you ages. Always enjoy your vids, very entertaining 😁

Thanks, Joe for the humor and the insight I'm glad that I found you (I think) this will help me build my battery packs for my electric surfboards. Stay cool!

I really like the zig zacking with the fuze wire... my first attempt would most likely have been something silly like cutting them to length first and then soldering... yeah the fiddely and slow way. Glad i saw this before i did something similar.

i loooove these 18650 ups hacks! Really looking forward to your next one :)

Early joe. I needed this. Thanks!

I got some great laughs when you were so excited about the wire straightning drill trick and shooting the heat shrink batteries with your holstered heat gun. Lol. Keep up the great videos.

just stumbled across this video, liked it so I subscribed.

See many using the nicely spun bus bar with fuse wires for powerwall type banks. How well do these work on ebike packs vs nickel strips?

very inspirational..great vid as always...the force is with you..and I cant wait to see how these red and green cells work on big pack...I do agree..they do seem sucky..

This a real diy because it is explained well how he built and test is thank you

Acetone cleans wire with paper towel or rag very well and makes for perfect connections when soldering.

* The nice thing about putting the cells inside the UPS shell is that if something goes wrong with the cells and they ignite, it's already in a steel container. 😀 * Interesting thing about using the vice and drill to straighten the wire is the wire seems to get stiffer. * I like how you do your fuse wire soldering. Just start at one spot and then just basically connect each cell until you get done, then come back and cut out the ones you don't want connected 👍 * For the busbar->stranded wire connections, you could take the busbar wire and put it inside the strands and then compress the connector around the joint. * Wouldn't unplugging from the wall be "Dis-Contact"? 😋 * I agree with daromer with putting a BMS with it as well. Especially since the parallel strings are getting off balance. However, having them close with base mAh might help with that Overall, great work!! 😎😎

Channeling your inner ave!!

New sub I liked your video thanks for sharing :)

LOL I subbed you man! You really made me laugh with that great self mocking at the end of the video!

You still should have a BMS even if you balance your strings of cells better. A good and preferably programmable BMS will help guarantee that no parallel string goes below 3V or above 4.2. Basically, it will cut the power so that you know a problem exists. I would never leave something like this unattended without a BMS as a secondary line of defense.

Good work. Straighten with drill is nice way ;) I recomend BMS to. If one back discharges just slightly more than others the rest will get higher voltage during charging.

Any further testing or result? Will this also work on a 12v ups? What about just adding a bms between ups leads and batteries?

Hey great videos. You put together your pack the first time and I believe that way would also give a 7S solution that would be the same net capacity. In the first way the bus bars would have been shorter... the 2nd way would also appear to work..... am I missing something?

Are you sure it's ok to to charge the cells can be changed using the lead acid charger? The voyage is fine but liion are cc/cv

Hi! I know this is a late comment, if you could help it would be much appreciated... I did this but the problem is that my ups seems to have a cutoff voltage at 24.4 volts, Is that just a safety feature I can bypass? Or is that actually the required voltage of the UPS? What would cause that on the circuit board?

Hi Joe what happens if I make a 7s15p battery will that blow anything proved I follow all the necessary guide lines because I haven't seen any pack that big unless not researched properly by me... yes maybe if I make a bug bank like if I have a cell that gets bad tham will be a hassle to remove etc...anyways coming back to the question 7s 15p is that possible

I just did a 1500 a few months ago, it's been working great

Can you charge the pack with the UPS without a bms ? The voltage that my UPS puts out to the battery is 27.4v

Nice job man! Keep an eye on the cell voltages, especially fully charged - I'm skeptical that they'll stay within limits over time without a BMS as they don't self-correct like lead cells do. I have an APC1000 still running from 1999 using a couple of newer 9Ah 12V SLAs - but might make a pack for it too when they expire. Just finished my 2kWh 14S16P ebike battery, (yay!) and tested it on two 100 mile runs.. got 80 miles out of it against headwind before switching to reserve pack.

Would larger buss wires between your cell strings help with voltage in each string of cells? I seen wide differences as the draw down and charge.. Also how long did it take to recharge the pack? I have found that larger buss work better.

Hey Joe, love the channel. Do you have any other videos with this UPS running on the 18650's? Did you have to calibrate the UPS in anyway? I've got the 1500 version of the same ups that i'm trying to get working with the 18650's but using solar and the PCM60X to charge them instead of the AC.

3 years later, Legend says that AveRage Joe still straightening wires in 2020.

谢谢你教了我很多新野。

Hey how aboute try to reverse the half of the spinning when you straight out these tubes

You're a cool dude. I could hang out and work with you. Thumbs up and subscribe for being able to laugh at yourself AND getting good things accomplished. Keep on keepin' on.

That is a sweet hack for straightening copper rod

i made some 24cell 6s batteries for camping and they are fantastic! i made two of them but just one will handle music non stop for about 3 days. volume pegged at just under clipping two 150w speakers. useing cheap china cells $0.60 each and amout 2000mah and contestant with each other. top end balancing is all i need to do

Here is a reliable --if slightly complex-- work-around for the 12-volt UPS situation... For a 12-volt UPS, you could add diodes in (for example) the Positive lead to tweak the Charging voltage ... small/medium diodes in the Charge direction to drop the voltage for a 3S Li-ion battery, and 1 large diode wired in antiparallel for the Discharge direction ... preferably a fat Schottky diode since you want to minimize voltage loss during discharge. Or you could use a fat Relay to carry the Discharge current with really low loss, or 1 or more Power MOSFET (they share current properly, unlike bipolar junction devices) ... but with Relay, transistor or SCR, you need some control circuitry to "throw the switch" for Discharge. A regular Bipolar Silicon power transistor could be used for the Discharge current, if you are careful about the current rating and heatsinking. High-current silicon SCRs have long been available and might work beautifully, with proper triggering. Or use an IGBT. With the relay version, you will also need a large capacitor to carry the load for an instant while the relay switches. Note that regular (silicon) diodes drop about 0.7 volt under low current, up to about 1.5 volts at high current. SCR voltage drop is about the same. Schottky (metal junction) diodes are available with a variety of different forward voltage drops, usually between 0.45 volt and 0.65 volt, allowing some fine-tuning. Though rare now, there are also Germanium diodes, which drop about 0.4 volts and are mostly for low current. Similar tricks could be used to reduce the number of Series cells at other voltages as well. For instance, it looks like that 24-volt UPS does not fully charge a 7S Li-ion battery, but would fully charge a 6S battery. Or a low current external charger capable of a bit more voltage could be used in parallel with the UPS charger, to slowly top off the 7S battery charge ... but those chargers may not be regulated as well as the UPS charging circuit. Finally, I have noticed that the cream/khaki-colored APC Smart-UPS 1400 charges to a higher voltage than the black-colored Smart-UPS 1400. That lower voltage is good when the standard Lead-Acid batteries are used, because the cream/khaki-colored Smart-UPS 1400 OVER-charges and destroys Lead-Acid batteries. (I have 10 of the over-charge type.) However, the higher voltage might be perfect for 7S Li-ion. Does the same relation of color and voltage apply to other sizes of Smart-UPS? I have no idea, but it's for certain that different charging voltages are found in the many different models and brands of UPS on the market.

Hello. Congratulations on your excellent contributions to your channel. I live in Brazil and I'm following your work. I plan to make a 24v x 100Ah Pack following this video. but what do you think is better: add more cells and form a single pack or do 2 of 50Ah and connect in parallel? I accept other suggestions. Thank you for your attention.

good videos

I'm obviously too late with this but, two words: bottom balancing. Look it up if you're not familiar with the concept. It will save your cells from overdischarging, which is how they die, and spare you from needing a BMS. Separately, watch that APC UPS. They are notorious for overcharging batteries and cooking them. I've had to hack my way into removing SLA batteries from APC UPS because they bloat up from overcharging. Hopefully they've gotten better with more recent models.

👍

How can it be random when you went for colour ekk

Hi it's been a while, so I got a pcs xs 1300 780 watt can more battery be had on for more capacity milihamp but to keep it at 24v let me know what you think tank you.

you know that segregating them by color only make differences between cell models that much more relevant? if you are going to make mix pack at least mix the cells equaly or at random. Because if one cells color/brand discharges at 2C and the other one at 5C , conecting them in paralell only makest bigger 2C or 5C cell, but mixing them would give you an average over all paralell cells. If your cells would have different C ratings, they will discharge ar different rates and will go unbalanced or damaged without balancing

I've got a couple of those plus a 1500va. The 1500va is looking good for an inverter. It starts up without mains connected with a fully charged 7S lithium pack. I've been cautious about using the charge circuit in the UPS for lithium packs. I guess the charge cut off voltage will be lower than what a 7S lithium pack will usually get (but you will give up some capacity over a proper 7S charger). ... not that capacity is a problem ... over an hour at 150w is pretty damn decent.

yes joe i love dis video...but they say u needs a BMS system or u gonna get fire works .... i like to see more on dis thanks for sharing

what is the reason that 24 volt does not need bms- and 12 volt does ?

My suggestion would be to avoid putting the cells in neat color rows. I;d assume each colour is likely to have the same cemistry and therefore it's own discharge curve. If you randomize the colors then you're more likely to get similar discharge curves for each group. Or even better would be to give repackr.com a try (it seems to produce better balanced packs for me).

hmm wonder how big the pack would need to be for my eaton mx4000 they're 15x lead acids in series. ~198v I'm assuming a LOT heh.

Would you kindly test a router on this for internet and PC/Laptop. How long would this average out for in time wise. With a laptop you can get about 2 hours on a average (so so) battery. This just leaves the router. What would it take to power the router for upto 2 hours. THank you.

Yay...I just got one just like it for $15 at my local scraper. Original batteries are dead, but I have plenty of 18650's. Any new development in the project? Reshuffle of batteries? BMS?

You got a new subscriber. I am also going to work on a same project, i have an APC 1000VA back ups pro model. Can You tell me do i need a BMS or not? Won't the battery charger in ups damage the 18650s?

How do the 18650s stay balanced without a BMS?

lol I had one of those and got rid of it and manage to score a 750 one because it uses the cheaper 12V 7A batteries ($25) rather than the $200+ ones. What I'd like to know is how you'd nicely put that into the unit, live wire and fuses everywhere. was initially thinking sticky side rubber map on both sides but then though could cause problems with the fuses. any thoughts?

If you're putting a lot of cells in series and charging them as a whole it makes a lot of sense to use same type of cells in each series and vary them in parallel... as opposed to what you did. As you did it the capacity of the battery will be determined by the lowest common denominator of each serie and the life of the battery will be greatly diminished as lower capacity cells will go into undervoltage after some cycles. You can clearly see that in your test with the meters. Using same cells in a serie would not really solve the problem but it will be less pronounced and you would use the full capacity of each cell in a serie.

Did you use REPACKER building that ?

My 3s12p 24ah I only had 14 guage wire so I twisted 2 together. Online, it says 10 gauge or bigger is needed

Hi, I just recently found your channel. I'm trying to research and get some ideas on how to build a battery system for my RV. Right now I'm using fore 6 V Trojan golf cart batteries, but would love to build some 18650 replacements. Do you have any ideas or resources on this topic? Thanks

I have a 48 volt ups. External battery system. I bought 16 38120 headway’s. I figure they could my gals oxygen concentration machine witch uses 5amps and humidifier. Total drain 10amps.

Do you expect to have problems because the recharge circuit is not designed for Lithium cells?

Hey joe how do u calculate amps...pls teach me if each cell is 1900 mah than x 63 cells that's 119,700 mah divide that by a 1000 isnt that 119.7 amps?

First off, thanks for this awesome vid. Those red and green cells are more than likely Sanyo/Sony and aren't too reliable from my experience. LG and Samsung tend to make some of the best 18650s which hold decent capacity after a huge number of cycles. As for the BMS, ebay is full of cheap BMS boards. For example: www.ebay.com/itm/7s-Cells-24V-20A-Li-ion-Lithium-18650-Battery-BMS-Protection-Board-Balance-ark/253025332956?hash=item3ae97c2edc:g:6y0AAOSw~e5ZWhFV Honestly, any BMS protection board will be tons better than running it raw (pun intended)

why you don't use any protection circuit in battery pack ???

Yeah, problem is the UPS doesn't CC/CV the cells, and won't balance them, it also may trickle charge and not cut the voltage at all. That last roll of cells was at 3.6v while an other wen't below 3v, I wouldn't charge this with the UPS as the last roll would exceed 4.2v. Defeating the purpose of the UPS which is to be left plugged in. With well balanced (capacity/internal resistance) it could be used as an inverter though, it would be a big battery backup, charged by a smart charger and used only when needed. But as I said, not an Uninterruptible Power Supply, won't seamlessly keep a PC running on power outage for example. I'm also searching for a SAFE solution to replace my UPS Lead Acid with savaged 18650s, but so far no luck. It would need a Voltage regulator, charging circuit, balancing circuit and protection circuit with all the bells and whistles, didn't find a cheap, all in one solution yet.

Thanks for this video. Please choose some better less irritation noise next time.

use thik conducter to connect each cell and you can see the back up time is increeees

what about a load test of say, 500 watts?

Hi, can you put the link to the fuse wire you've used?

My APC 1300 24V UPS only charges cell pack up to 26.5V . (3.78V/cell) I also found that the depletion rate of cells was high when cells fell below 23V (3.2V/cell) Likely would need a BMS .

do you still using it...?? do you recharge it through the UPS or use another charger..?? plz i need to know..

I just thought this was a cool build and test video.

Maybe the cells aren't bad - they may just be high-drain cells. I find that cells that I pull from power tools are usually not that high in capacity but made for pulling a lot of amps out of quickly.

Sheesh.... profanity police comin' out the woodwork. Oh well. I've enjoyed your videos man. Informative and funny. Keep it up Rager

yeahhh you still need a BMS tat will balanced at the same current they are being charged at. but at least the cut off is correct.

You could benefit from memeory boosting nootropics

isnt this dangerous because the batteries rated at different amperage?

Nice work man. Granted, it's about half as nice as what Pete would do, but that's the goal, right? j/k :P

first time i've watched u ... !! .. to be honest ; gave u a subscrb an a like right away , u are one of the sun of an electronic bitches that u like directly .... quick expln...smooth....the speed up... awesome man keep up thats what i like..hh

You shoulda mixed the colours - putting all the same in each group means you wired all the worst batteries togther at once - as you saw in the test - that one bank let down the entire pack. If you'd mixed them up, that would not have happened.

Can someone explain to me at 4:54 why he didn't want to use the much thicker copper as a bus bar? I don't get the joke, is it a reference to another video? Me no high school...

Its not safe to use strips of choreds like that becaus of heat not safe. Good video keep up the good wark.

whats about BMS module?)

Put a BMS on that battery pack.

I say give it a go without bms and keep an eye on it. Not convinced about the whole bms thang

63 batteries X 10usd each= 630usd +BMS cost 18 PB 12v 7ah X15usd each= 270usd. the only change is in the size but i believe PB batteries have better lifetime..

If you test each cell for capacity you can use this pack design tool to help make sure that the parallel banks as close to as equal Capacity as possible when yours using cells that are not equal. www.diypowerwalls.com/repacker.php In case you have not seen it yet.

At: 12:40 Queso in English means cheese.

You're only getting like 700 mah from each cell with that run time.

at 11:17 why bother cut the extra leads as all they do is add additional capacity to the main bus wire. The cut ends also are now easier to get loose from a solder connection and cause problems. Save the work, and just leave them all connected.

I couldn't get past 2:26 of the video. You should change your name to jumpcut Joe. Wow...

Wait a min, your dating collie schmoo cockford aren’t yah... I’m subbin

Now add an mppt solar charge controller

Possibly a better idea to set batteries by weight as opposed to the colour of the cells..

7s9p = 63 cells. 1 cell is about 6Wh. Total battery is maybe 400Wh. Load was 150W and time was 1,2h. So you got less than 200Wh out - that's only 50%. Inverters sucks. Maybe you'll get better results when you balance your battery.

Not balance

Why does everyone use 7 rows?? It seems like 3 18650's equals 12-volts and 6 18650's would be 24-volts.. so why the 7th row?... The math is eluding me

This video inspired me to build my power wall ty! Please check out my videos. You might find some interesting ideas for your own vids

music kills the video

Terrible mix between too different li-ion cells...

Enjoyed the video, the language can go, though.

I must say that was a nice Load there. Oh wait my wife just told me that :)

Dude don't you wish you could use "...and cover it up with heat shrink" on everything in life?

i love your videos but you watch AVE too much =)