Been helping a fellow get his new LFP batteries charged to 100% for the first time.

1)set red dip switches on the first battery to all OFF. Make all other batteries different than all OFF and make sure no two are the same.

2)use the JKBMS bluetooth app on your phone to conenct to each battery and set the pack capacity amphours and change the balance start voltage to 3.45v

3)Set inverter to Lead Acid mode and set the bulk charge voltage to 57.0 and the float charge voltage to 56.0v. By keeping the battery at 56v, we keep each cell >3.45v so it can balance. (56v/16cells = 3.50v per cell).

4)When connecting battery to inverter for the first time he used a 48v forklift headlight. We tried a 12v car headlight and it burned out before the capacitors in the inverter could charge. So connect battery negative to the inverter. Then connect the headlight between the battery + and inverter +. Turn on the battery breaker and the inverter breaker. Headlight will illuminate breifly and then get dim. Now you can connect the battery + wire to the inverter + without a spark.

5)we connected batteries one at a time to the inverter and charged them individually to 56v. Let them sit for a bit and keep an eye on the highest and lowest battery. In my friend's case, the highest cell was 3.48v and the lowest was 3.37v. After a few hours the hi/low was 3.50 / 3.489. Perfect.

6)Disconnect old battery, use headlight trick to connect next battery, rinse, lather, repeat for all batteries one at a time.

7)"a few days later" all your batteries are at 99% SoC and resting should be about 54.5-55.2v. Now you can connect all of them to the busbar and switch them all on.

8)For JK bms users connect short "network patch cables" between all batteries using hte RS485-1 RS485-2 connectors. Daisy chain them.

9)for JK BMS users, use the right most tab on bottom of screen to select CAN BUS protocol... for EG4 inverters use Lux power. Connect a "network patch cable" from Battery CANBUS to inverter battery comm. Set EG4 inverter to lithium mode, lux power.

Spent the day today building walls inside a shipping container. What you see here is 1/2" foam board lining the walls with the aluminized layer OUTWARD. Then we built walls and carried them in. We cut a board 84-1/2" long to act as a shim... pounded it inbetween the bottom plates to make the walls push outward and shot screws in the container floor. Doing the same for the top for the ceiling. It's a high cube container, so he's got 8ft ceiling inside and an air gap at the top. It's a container with doors at each end too.

Tomorow's project is to finish the celiing studs and install 3" thick foam insulation and install plywood for walls and floor.

I built the end wall with exterior door on it tonight but we lost daylight before we could install it.

From a 400ft tall tower repeater to a 130ft tall grain elevator. 30 miles between T400 to the east and Oswego SC.

Spent another day working on friend’s shipping container walls. Got his end wall on with rough opening for an exterior door that is recessed in the end of container 2ft to give him a dry place to stand to unlock door.

Thanks to BlinddogJones for showing up to help as well. Had a good lunch and got a fair amount of work done.

In case any of you ever needed to know this. Previously, I found a table from the UK using stones for weight.... this one in pounds with a convient calculation.

Only in America. Dragging us kicking and screaming in to metric system. I have seen units in a paper mill that were ml per gallon before. Lol.

20 more 620w panels today

Wish I had that space. As well as being 20 years younger.

Speaking of 22cal.... here's my mom's "get offa me gun". 22wmr.

We are putting metal siding on the house. A week ago I used a diamond blade to cut a groove in concrete porch surface. Yesterday we finished installing horizontal lats in the the ICF blocks. Today I find that the groove I cut is just too narrow to pracitcally put the Z flashing into because of the hem on the bottom of the flashing. We we tried cutting it off with hand grinder, powered sheet metal shears. Everything deforms to damages the metal. Tried grinding the groove to be 1/4" wide and that's not practical. So the solution is to bend my own Z flashing with a break.... but I can't get the correct color of metal in the state of SC.

Many months ago, I had watched a youtube video where a guy went to a metal roof fabrication shop where they have all the dies to make many profiles of ribbed roofing... they have the coils of the correct color material. I got a bid from them to make me 23 10ft long Z flashings in the correct color with no hem on the bottom.... and I'll drive to ATL in two days to get them.

If you end up doing a lot of fabrication an aluminum Bender for siding is a good thing to have on hand. I had my house trim covered with aluminum probably 25 years ago, and it's getting ready to be needing redone.

Meshcore update...

I can report that a Heltec T096 with GPS turned on and a 4000mah battery (pretty large battery) will last 3-1/2 days. Now that I've run it down, I'll recharge and test it without the GPS running. I expect it will last for over a month.

The GPS unit that is built in is pretty darn good. Inside my house I'm tracking 32-35 satellites, it seems to get a fix before the T096 main processor can boot up. I do wish meshcore companion app had more intelligent GPS power management.... Maybe turn GPS on every 8 hours to get a fix and go back to sleep until someone requests a position from your tracker. Presently, it seems the GPS runs 100% of the time and that's a waste.