This made me chuckle.
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He couldn’t mean the crazy lawn tool could he?
The nerve
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Let me first say - you’ve had far more experience building than I have, you’re creating great video content for this community, and I respect your abilities.
That said, how many batteries have you built? Or maybe my real question is - do you feel confident you can write and film a comprehensive guide to best practices in esk8 battery building?
It’s a tough subject, hence this entire thread. And standards are increasing all the time. If you’re not running a business building multiple different size/shape/style packs a month, honing your attention to detail and increase your quality levels, are you prepared to film a detailed how to guide?
I’m not even sure that fits in one video. And if you’d just skim the surface, how do you do that responsibly? So a viewer doesn’t watch your video and say “eh i know enough now, let’s give this a shot.”
It’s one thing to do a great series on remotes or wheels. It’s another entirely to wade into a difficult or potentially harmful topic like battery building.
Just my 2c. Maybe you can partner with an expert like @BenjaminF, @Skyart, etc, or turn it into a “what to look for when buying a quality battery pack”.
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I had started writing a series on it. It’s a lot, especially when you throw it all on paper and then look at it while internally negotiating what makes for good content and what makes for proper education.
The more educational YouTube content tends to be, the less engaging it is and the more hurtful it is for audience growth and retention. Generally.
Depending on the existing expanse and expectations of one’s audience, large scale educational endeavors can tank a good deal of one’s metrics if it isn’t approached properly.
But hey, worth trying anyway.
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I’ve built nearly 10 of varying complexity and size. I would say I build them well enough to consider selling batteries to people. I am not necessarily “the forum expert” when it comes to making a perfect battery.
That title is just a draft title and this theoretical video is at least a couple months in the future. That also being said, I’ve been reading this thread since its inception. Pretty much every single post. I’ve seen many bad practices and seen many good practices.
It is a valid question. The answer for me right at this moment is probably. Maybe not 100% yet, but I’m still reading every day, hence me posting the query about what I should include. I did my other two videos based on my current knowledge and I would say that I could easily have sold both packs (one was for a client actually)
Just because someone (I) isn’t selling to people daily doesn’t mean that I’m not honing my skills and improving every single time. It’s okay, you don’t know me personally to see what kind of person I am - I’m always growing and improving
I have built several shapes and sizes now but this is my first mountainboard one. I’ve got tons of reference material on here for how to build it though and I’m open to sharing my progress / plans as I build it for this video.
Keep in mind it is not new for me, I’ve been in the hobby for four years and seen many bad practices. Feel free to go watch my two existing videos and let me know what feedback you’ve got, PM or whatever
Could be an interesting idea for sure
My thoughts right now are that I’m going to have a 2 to 5 minute safety section in the mountainboard video, and do the rest of it like normal. Maybe I can have some commentary over other parts of the video.
Yes this is a major consideration too.
Yeah it’s tough, it’s a major reason why people like James Bruton aren’t at the level of where say, Hacksmith is.
Sad times - yeah. I will consider making a separate battery safety video with a disclaimer at the front stating my experience and whatnot
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I’m in the process of tearing down my 5 year old soldered 12s4p 25r pack and rebuilding it based on all the new techniques I’ve seen here and on endless sphere.
Cells were stripped, cleaned of any surface rust and rewrapped in two different colors
Fish paper rings under the re-wrap and a second one stuck on top.
34 gauge (0.15mm) copper sheet
Using up fish paper scraps & wrapped with fiberglass reinforced packaging tape
0.15mm nickel plated steel on top of 0.15mm copper. KWeld 100j @ 1650A. I tried using pure nickel strips on top of the copper, but couldn’t get a good bond on the test cells.
Negative side
Rounded corners, and cut nickel strips to size & rounded
Eventual pack layout
Copper folded
Next step will be to solder 2x10awg silicone wires for each of the series connections directly onto the copper sheet.
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Mate, that is a lot of fucking work for batteries that are five years old, and previously soldered. I don’t want to tell you it’s not worth it, but you should very seriously consider getting new cells at this point.
Likely capacity damage from heat during initial soldering + however many cycles you put on it in five years probably has those already puny batteries near the end of their life.
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Agreed - this pack will end up being a spare or range extender. I wanted to do a trial build before I tackled these two packs with new cells
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Do that? It’s the flux’s that burns off and poisones I thought you use pure solder in a solder pot.
Edit
Care to explain why you use a fume hood for pots but not normal soldering?
This is, in my opinion, no where near enough. Rant incoming.
If 2 to 5 minutes is all the time you are willing to devote to your “safety section,” then in my opinion that entire 2 to 5 minutes should be spent strongly discouraging your viewers from attempting to recreate anything you show in the video, and possibly directing them to resources where they can “learn more about the extreme dangers of battery building and how to minimize those dangers.” That’s exactly how I would phrase it.
Let me ask you this: Is the purpose of this video to act as a “battery building how to” or is it just a video to show off your skills/advertise your services/fuel video engagement with techno music and slow-mo dutch angles of a cell being welded?
If you want to make a battery building time lapse/advertisement/show off your skills/whatever, then go right ahead. But, in my opinion, if you want to make a video that is anything close to a tutorial then you need to be prepared to put in the work to make it idiot-proof. That includes a very robust safety talk explaining in depth all the dangers of battery building, including but not limited to burning your house to the ground.
If you make a tutorial (or even something that is a little bit close to a tutorial) then you need to be prepared for someone who knows literally nothing about battery building to watch your video and attempt to re-create it without educating themselves even one bit further.
Look at what happened when Pavel Garmas(sp?) made his battery building tutorial video. He has empowered tons of people to watch his one video and think “ok, looks easy, lets get started.” I have seen dozens of posts on Facebook and Reddit of terrible fire-hazard packs (including one which actually did burn up) where the builder said “well I just followed Pavel’s video so I dont know what the problem is”.
If your video gets the kind of engagement which you say you are expecting, then you have to be prepared for the possibility that some noob is going to use your video as their sole point of reference and try to re-create it. If this video is just to get engagement, then in my opinion you should be strongly discouraging anyone from attempting to recreate anything they see in the video, and briefly touch on “the extreme dangers.”
If this video is supposed to be a tutorial, then in my opinion you should put in the time so that even if a noob doesn’t educate themselves even one bit further, following your tutorial exactly will still result in a thorough understanding of the dangers of battery building and a safe pack following all the best practices we hold ourselves to.
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The problem is, everyone here actually cares this much about the safety aspect. Five minutes of talking about safety is a LONG time in youtube minutes. I would almost guarantee you that most people won’t even watch 5 minutes of safety talk. It is very difficult to translate all of this knowledge into something that people will actually watch.
Hence, the reason why I said that amount of time in that video and then a separate one on battery safety.
I don’t see any reason why it can’t be multiple of those things.
Can you please watch my two existing battery tutorials and give me specific, constructive reasons why they are not good enough? I’m not taking the piss here, I actually want to hear what you have to say if you would be willing to put in the time to watch them. Feel free to PM me and we can talk
While that is unfortunate, Pavel’s video is way too long and the fact of the matter is that the watch % is probably under 10%. I don’t even want to watch the whole thing. I did watch part of it at one point, but it’s not even using chapters so it is nearly impossible to navigate.
I will consider this route
Edit: Either way, I will be including more safety in this next video in general. It’s a much bigger pack with much more powerful cells
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i would explain as you do things
e.g as you put the fishpaper down spend 20 seconds explaining the purpose of fishpaper
or possibly show (with a completed battery) where different areas have different voltages as you explain that
20 seconds here and there is better then a 5 minute chunk
Yeah that’s how I’m intending to do it on the next video
Not to discount your suggestion, but that is one of the better ways of doing it
There is a certain level you can go to before people won’t care, so if you bake it into parts they already want to watch, then it makes it easier
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sounds good
if it was just a battery building video and started with a 5min explanation of safety then i would be skipping through that straight away
if you explain as you show things then as a viewer im much more likely to watch
also showing practically how its done is better then just explaining
showing where and why the fishpaper is necessary and showing the potential issues of not using it… is better then just explaining about shorts and anti abrasive stuff.
also truth is that scary little clips / images are more likely to impact then anything (showing on screen some of the reddit fires / burnt batteries is much more likely to make people listen then anything else)
thats just my 2c
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Good ideas, will consider implementing some in the next battery video
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Then sprinkle it out through the video like Shua suggested, that’s not my point.
Then, in my opinion, you should be thinking about what this video is aiming to be. This is why I asked you:
To which you said:
My opinion (and my reason for writing my last post) is that if your main focus is on fueling engagement then you should not be trying to make a tutorial. You should stay on the side of entertainment and steer clear of anything that could be misconstrued as education, as well as slapping a big warning at the beginning of the video for people to “not try this at home” or whatever.
Alternatively, if your main focus is on making a tutorial then my opinion is that you should forget about engagement and metrics, and commit to providing a full education of all the safety practices, reasons for those practices, things to avoid, the extreme risks, etc.
Sure, you may get less views. But at least you would be doing everything in your power to limit the chances that someone will burn their house down trying to follow along with your video. You will never be able to make those chances 0%, but I feel that 0% should be the goal nonetheless.
I speculate that is because he was not intending for that video to be entertaining. I am guessing that he was aiming for educational content, and he was willing to accept that he needed to go outside of his normal video style to do that goal justice.
Sure, his watch percentage on that video might be 10%, but those 10% are the people who were actually motivated to follow along with the tutorial and learn something. If he had made the video shorter and more entertaining then he may have got more engagement, but how much valuable educational/safety content would he have had to cut to make that happen? And then how many more teenage noobs would have felt empowered to plug their ears to the safety warnings and plunge ahead with an incomplete knowledge of what they are getting themselves into?
In my opinion, the barrier to entry for battery building should be high.
That might sound self-serving since I build and sell batteries, but that opinion is entirely based on safety concerns. Hell, the whole reason I am in the battery building game is to try to make safer packs more easily available. That’s the purpose of my webshop too. I want to make the easy option for new battery builders also be the safe option.
But when it comes to education, there is no shortcut.
If you want this video to act as a tutorial, then in my opinion you should forget about the engagement metrics and focus on providing a full and complete education.
I was going to talk about legal liability, but forget that for a second. Just think about moral liability. Think about the chances that some kid burns their house down or gets seriously hurt because they watched one battery building video that was fun and entertaining and had just enough info to get them started, but not enough education about the safety risks or how to mitigate them. Sure, those chances might be low. But they will never be 0%, and that is scary to me.
If you want to be an online influencer, then in my opinion you need to take responsibility for the influence you wield. I feel that you owe it to the people you are influencing to provide them with a proper safety education before and alongside any instructions.
Imagine two videos from a channel, one titled “How to pour gasoline on a bonfire!” and the next one titled “Safety tips and tricks for pouring gasoline on a bonfire.” (Yes, this is a hyperbolic comparison). What do you think the difference in views will be between the first and second video? How about when the first one goes viral? How many people are going to click through to the safety follow up video? How many people are going to watch just the first one, and then think maybe they can try it out?
Perhaps the reason Pavel didnt split up his video into sections in a playlist or chapters in the one video was because of laziness or a lack of skill as a creator. Or maybe (just maybe) he recognized that providing half an education when it comes to something as dangerous as battery building is worse than saying nothing at all. Maybe he wanted to intentionally make it difficult for people to skip the safety talk, so as to weed out anyone who was not committed to following his instructions exactly and learning everything he was trying to teach them.
Ryan, I am not saying that your video will get someone hurt. I’m saying that battery building is incredibly dangerous and if you want to make educational content to bring more people into battery building, then in my opinion you owe it to them to arm them with all of the safety knowledge that you can, engagement metrics be damned. If they cant sit through a 1hr video, they shouldn’t be building batteries.
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I still don’t understand why these two things can’t coexist. My goal with the battery building videos is to make educational, entertaining, tutorials. Why can’t that be a thing?
I don’t really care about fueling engagement with the battery building videos. The things that get clicks are board reviews, of which I do not currently have any.
That’s not my point I don’t want to steer clear of education, it’s the entire point of a battery tutorial
I honestly don’t see any reason for it to be nearly that long, it doesn’t provide more value to the viewer, imo.
Maybe mentioning the watch percentage is not the best idea here. My point by saying that is that people skipped past all of the parts where he actually provides useful information, thus circumventing the part where he made it educational.
I would almost gurantee you the people who say “I watched pavels video and my battery caught on fire” probably watched 10% of it. Could be wrong but if you built the battery exactly like pavel did, it probably wouldn’t catch on fire.
I don’t know, that video was already basically viral so maybe it wouldn’t have gotten more. I think his got views for the title and the timing
Not really sure if either of us have watched that video enough to determine or debate about it
Fine, sure I can do that. I am even willing to share my script with you and see what you think beforehand if you’re willing to read it. Like I said, I don’t even really care about the engagement on the battery videos, I am surprised they got as many views as they did. The first one was just part of a series
Yeah, I am realizing it as I go on. I was already aware but discussions like this bring it to light more. I think the only reason people are saying anything here is because I started on the forum and then became a Youtuber. I know you guys care about the content I produce since it is a representation of knowledge that I should hold as one of the consistent members of this community.
Hard to say, it’s pretty easy to make chapters, harder to structure a video into a logical and meaningful order.
Sure. Someone could sit here and talk all day about battery safety and speculation. What number is enough? 10 minutes? 7 minutes? Half the video? The problem is still getting people to watch it, really it’s about liability at that point. I think the best approach is baking it in, which I will do a better job of in the next video.
I don’t know how specific your time is here but I 100% disagree with this. There is no reason that a battery tutorial needs to be longer than 30 minutes. There’s so much repetitive content in it
Anyways I appreciate your time
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I do agree with this on a theoretical basis though.
Batteries take a long time to actually create properly. You need to be extremely dedicated to do it right. At the beginning they can take easily upwards of 8-10hr
Even now a large battery would probably still take me a full work day, I don’t know how long yours take you to build but I’d imagine at least 5-6 hours
Sounds like both of you agree that a battery-building video is NOT TRIVIAL.
I agree with Duck, his point seems to be to take this extremely seriously
I agree with Ryan when he says that it would still be entertaining.
Would help to show this thread the video first so we can catch anything that may have been missed.
I hope you make the video and I hope its a huge success.
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I think that’s a viable option. I usually only show my rough cuts to my wife, but since most of the baked in safety content will likely be voiceover, it would be pretty easy to edit in more of it
I’ll show yall what I’m capable of, I’ll be back in 6 months when I’m finally done building that battery and recording lol
Also, battery videos take forever to edit, so many clips in there. Probably 200 to 250+ after things get cut up
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