Honestly, Someone tell me they have hooked up a BMS and said to themselves, “that’s a nice piece of gear, easy to hook up, charges fast, reliable.”
(As opposed to Balance chargers)
4 Likes
Never touched a balance charger, but it’s about 20 more minutes of work to save 2 minutes of work 100 tines over
1 Like
Ive wanted this for months. Finally bit the bullet. Much excite.
5 Likes
How do you check your cell levels?
1 Like
After a while I’ll pull the shrink wrap off it and take a look…the 10s1p only has like 5 full cycles on it so far. I am getting a new enclosure for it in a while (Meepo won’t fucking ship) and I’ll check it then…run it dry and see how far put of balance it is after a hot and heavy run
Sounds a lot harder than just plugging it in to the charger 
3 Likes
I mean touche…but I’m usually lazy and that one is supposed to be as close to waterproof as possible so like less ports is better
On the 12sXp blocks I can poke a small hole in the corner to get at the nickle bridges to check after it, the 10s3p I’ll be working on will be modular so that’s an easy check…just pull the pins for balance out
External balance + fancy waterproof connector with somanypins = best of both worlds?
2 Likes
Hmm…honestly I think it would be better if you have an internal balance BMS and an internal GX12 or something so you could check if you wanted but don’t have too. Most of the time you don’t need to balance but it would be easy should you want to (the BMS shouldn’t do anything should you be bypassing the external charge port
3 Likes
I just don’t trust BMSs. By the time you realise your board is acting funny and you pull it apart to check and find a faulty BMS, the damage has probably already been done.
A smart bms is a good option, but they are bulky and you still have to go to the effort of using the app to check everything.
A good balance charger is ideal. One charger for multiple voltages, adjustable charge current, see your cell levels every single time you charge, more space in the enclosure for batteries, less components in the board that could fail.
9 Likes
+1 on wonky bms.
But I’m also fairly convinced you don’t need to balance charge every charge, and you don’t have to charge to 4.2v every charge. Just need an easy (like maybe even passive) way to check that voltages are in the “green” zone.
I don’t really like the way balance chargers work, but overcharging high cells and bleeding them down until the low cells catch up. Seems like unnecessarily keeping cells in an overcharged state.
I’ve caught the smart bms acting up, but at least I can check on it.
I totally agree that you don’t need to balance charge every time. But I do like the idea of monitoring my cell levels at every charge.
2 Likes
Is there any cheaper balance chargers for 12s than the one you bought? And what port is best for the balancing?
2 Likes
My thinking is somewhat like Mr. Tetra. Something onboard that maybe gives a green-yellow-red on cell voltages, and a multipin port to balance periodically or when indicated.
There are many many different plugs you can use. Gx16 or gx20 are pretty widely available.
As for the balance chargers, i really don’t know. I had a bit of a look around the other night and finding products and product reviews was a little bit harder than I’d anticipated. So i just bought the one that I had used.
1 Like
If I have (2) battery packs, 1, 12s3p the other 12s2p combined in parallel to make 12s5p. Can I have a smart in both and get a 12s5p reading?
If you are using 2 BMSs you’d get 2 readings…you can combine them permanently and use 1 but that’s a lot of work
There’s a few listed there. I think Graupner also makes one. None are cheap.
1 Like
hmmmm
80€ shipping 
The one from @glyphiks you can get for $250 US + round about 50$ shipping directly from Ultra Power.
The good thing on the one you linked, you can charge 1-12s (or as min it looks like) the Ultra charger can do only 6-12s.
2 Likes