Home-brew battery measuring station

[hoober]

How about doing "pre-made packs" since that's the way most are sold now. Not many users buy cells and make their own anymore. That way the lead and the cell construction would be in the picture so to speak. If I was to test packs , I think I'd like to limit to 2S or at most 3S and use bare leads only. That way the connector of choice would not influence the testing and it would be easier/cheaper to test them. It would still be a good enough sample to interpolate data for 3-8S packs without requiring very high power capacity.

[BrianG]

Originally Posted by Arct1k

http://www.powerohm.com/catalog/GRCAT00.pdf

RH350?

Well, I got the reply back from the Iowa distributer (pretty quick too) and the cost is....

drumroll please.....

$749.00 (plus freight)



Yeah, I knew it was gonna be pricey, but man! For a resistor? Granted, it is an 11,000w resistor, and nothing that beefy is gonna be cheap. Wow. Looks like I'll be making a resistor bank!

Originally Posted by hoober

How about doing "pre-made packs" since that's the way most are sold now. Not many users buy cells and make their own anymore. That way the lead and the cell construction would be in the picture so to speak. If I was to test packs , I think I'd like to limit to 2S or at most 3S and use bare leads only. That way the connector of choice would not influence the testing and it would be easier/cheaper to test them. It would still be a good enough sample to interpolate data for 3-8S packs without requiring very high power capacity.

That's kinda what I was thinking anyway. I just figured the ESC was good up to 6s, so why not? At least the option for higher power will be available. Still, to get say, 200A, out of 2s, I would need 0.037 ohms. To get that, I'll need a bank of 81 resistors at 3 ohms each. I'm gonna need to build an addition to the house.

I agree; the bare leads idea is probably the best. I'll probably make a bus bar setup where I solder the bare leads to the bars for the least amount of contact resistance. No alligator leads for this thing!