Vassen from Sandton

Yep, I have one of their batteries here. They are using a 13S configuration of 117Ah NMC cells for their 48V, 5kWh battery.

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Well, they do use chips purpose-made for at least the balancer, and the maker of the chip probably has a reference design on which they based theirs… but that is if you want to nitpick. The design is their own, they do the firmware…

Did you guys know you can update Pylontech firmware over the CAN-bus now? I mean the tools aren’t quite there yet, but it’s in the newer protocol versions as well as in the newer firmware versions. BYD’s Premium LV can update the firmware using an app on your phone. I don’t know any others (other than Victron’s SmartLithiums of course) that has that ability.

What I’ve learned so far: … ok ok ok, stompies I picked up along the way …
Use A-Grade cells, cells that are of similar internal resistance installed in the same bank.
Balance them properly and thoroughly upfront.
Don’t run the bank at min/max charge/discharge. Let the cells “idle” between say min of 30% SOC and max of 90% SOC - the users “see” a min of 20% and max of 100% - so that the cells can last their cycles … and less “support”.
Close the box and don’t touch it again … or the warranty is affected.

Ah well yeah in that case, comparing them becomes MUCH more difficult…

Okay okay. I didn’t mean they manufacturer every single component themselves. :joy:It’s definitely not a diy equivalent of getting some cells and the bms and packaging it together and claiming to have developed a battery.

Ive seen posts of people doing it. It was more for compatibility issues though between US3000c not working with B versions. I didn’t have any issue with mine. With these things I go with the “if it ain’t broken don’t fix it”.

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Tell us more please… My 3000b’s need an update for the GX to get all the info from the BMS. :wink:

Vassen So glad to see you are here … Me Also here …

Hi Ryan

I actually joined after I saw that you got kicked out and joined here.

You should feel lucky though. At least you got a mod to tell you what happened. I was just wiped out. No warning, no notification. Nothing. Just a login failed when I visited the site. :joy:

Hopefully we can have civilized discussions here and continue to learn and share what we learn.

There is a vast knowledge and experience needed for a “Proper” installation. You can install some cables and a box, but you can also burn your house down or heaven forbid cause someone to be shocked with AC/DC. My house is 230v but my Dad is 380V. That cant be good shock.

There is a way to transfer the firmware blob to the battery by splitting it up in chunks and sending it one by one. The battery sends back a frame to ack the one you sent. When you are done, you ask the battery to verify the checksum of the blob it received. Then if all that checks out, you ask the battery to transfer the firmware to the “lower module”. So essentially it’s a two-part setup, with one CPU doing the comms bit and another doing the more sensitive stuff, and you use one to upgrade the other. I don’t know the full details yet. I just know it is possible. I don’t know another battery so far (other than the newer BYD stuff, and of course the SmartLithiums) that have this. OK, the Discover Energy AES battery has a USB cable and software, that’s about as close as it gets.

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Well, if you just need to simply update the firmware, I’ve seen a thread on the other side under the battery section “pylontech 3000c and 3000” where the guys have successfully updated the firmware using battery view. Firmware is also provided together with battery view. Apparently pylontech has provided these to resolve some issues of using mixed banks.

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That’s the traditional way. It uses the RS232 port on the device, which in this day and age (can you believe it, this was the defacto standard of the day) actually requires someone to go out and buy extra hardware. But the CAN-bus is there already, so people already have “the hardware”. Hence my excitement about this development.

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Being able to update the firmware via CAN is actually quite a nice feature, although I have never needed to update the firmware on a Pylontech battery just yet.

Although I am now reminded of something interesting I discovered with the Hubble battery. They seem to have copied the Pylontech CAN protocol. Now I know a lot of batteries use basically the same CAN protocol and it has become pretty standard, but there are a couple of clues here that give away their game a bit. The first is that in some of the older versions of Pylontech CAN, they didn’t send the minimum pack voltage, and Hubble don’t either, but the real smoking gun is that the Hubble sends “Pylon” as the battery manufacturer.

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Now this is interesting…

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As you say, a lot of it is pretty standard. One major difference that sort of divides batteries into two families is, is how they send alarms. The one bunch sends the alarms/warnings on a frame with id 0x359. The others (the larger group) send it on 0x35A.

A small number, Pylontech, Sony/Muratta, I think maybe LG (not sure), they send 0x359. The rest sends 0x35A. Then there is a small number who sends both. Pylontech’s latest firmware sends both 359 and 35A.

So the ways in which you can tell that the protocol was copied from an older Pylontech, is:

  1. They send 0x359, but not 0x35A.
  2. Byte 5 and 6 in 0x359 is 0x50 and 0x4E (the letters PN)
  3. 0x35E spells "PYLON " (yes, it is padded with three spaces instead of null terminated).

Now I would think that if you did either of 2 or 3 above, that could be a legal problem, but IANAL.

@Stanley , does Hubble identify as Pylon in 35E, or in 359 ?

0x35E spells Pylon in the Hubble’s CAN messages, exactly the same as real Pylons

Edit: Now I’m curious enough to go check what the Hubble sends in 0x359 as well

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That’s a little bit naughty…

It’s also a missed opportunity. Most manufacturers I’ve dealt with want their own name to show up on the display, and Hubble would fit nicely in the 8 bytes provided. So yeah, kinda feels like they copied it, init?

Hah. The Hubble is currently sending the following on 0x359 (in hex) 00 00 00 00 01 50 4E
Where 0x50 is P and 0x4E is N
the 0x01 is just the Pack no. in the Pylon spec.
So, yep, an exact copy of the Pylon spec.

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I am just speculating here, but I know that the Hubble batteries are manufactured in China and arrive here fully assembled and programmed etc. So my suspicion is that the Chinese manufacturer was given a copy of an old version of the Pylon CAN spec. and told to make it compatible.

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This reminds me of the people in school who use to copy homework and would copy the authors name and they’d forgot to change the name to their own. :rofl: