Another "back to basics" lesson today... If you have a group of batteries and decide to add an additional battery, how exactly do you do that? Even a small voltage difference can result in extremely high amps between batteries.

For example, you have a new battery sitting at 53.0v and the other 6 batteries are at 53.8v.... if you connect them together there will be several hundred amps between batteries for a few minutes. It will likely trip a circuit breaker or blow a fuse.

So you have a few options:
1)set the battery with the lower voltage to not allow charging. You can do this from a bluetooth app in JK BMS and many other brands. Connect the battery and nothing happens. After sundown your other 6 batteries will get drawn down. As their voltage drops below the voltage of the new battery, it will begin to discharge with the rest. First thing in the morning, check to make sure that all batteries are at the same voltage and use your bluetooth app to re-enable charging. Now all of them will charge at once.

2)The other method is if you have the server rack version of JKBMS with a big wire toroid coil in the top right corner, you can simply connect the batteries together if the new one is a lower voltage than the rest. What will happen is that a lot of amps will flow into the new battery for about 3 seconds. The BMS will disable charging and go into low amp charging mode (limp mode). It will charge at 10 amps until it's voltage matches the other batteries in your "herd". At that time it will automagically revert to normal operation.

JK BMS with charge current limiter. upper right corner

Don't have a source on this one, but some good ideas here. 🏕

imagine drunkdriving the sneedclanker on city property 🤩

I finally found a place where I can write my manifesto.

Good stuff on meshcore tonight. Keep in mind I’m in South Carolina. This message is from Tennessee.

I just watched the jankiest electric lawn mower conversion I've ever seen... and now I'm thinking of taking an old lawn tractor and converting it to move the pig pen around the back pasture.

You install a 120v ordinary electric motor and use it to drive the hydrostat drive... you install a 3kw inverter and a battery. done.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNEHsN625M0

I wanted this pole barn to face south broadside. So I looked online for when the sun would be dead east. That time changes from day to day. So I marked it using the shadow of an existing post.

We laid out the building and fast forward to today and solar noon was 13:26. I took this picture at 13:27. As you can seee the trusses make a straight shadow to the posts on the north wall. I got it right!

Well 56 bags of concrete done today. Got a nice rhythm…. A 2gallon bucket from Lowe’s filled almost to the top, 120lbs concrete and mixes perfectly in about 60 sec.

Since I was going to be dumping out of the concrete mixer and it usually hits the post, I cut a plastic 55 gallon drum in half lengthwise and then cut off one end cap completely. This made a horizontal funnel for me. I could dump out of the mixer into my “funnel” and then slosh that in the hole around the post.