Post some of your DIY projects that you've done and are proud of

[rsaeon]

Water Level Meter (on going)

DIY Wi-Fi Water Level Sensor & Meter with ESP8266, Tasmota, Arduino, MQTT, Node-RED, Telegram

PART 1: THE SENSOR We need this sensor to read the water level inside the tank. For this we’ll be using the US-100 Ultrasonic Distance Sensor module. This sensor is 3.3V logic compatible and has a UART mode where it returns a distance reading that takes into account the current temperature for better accuracy. This sensor is wired to a ESP8266 module which is flashed with Tasmota and powered by POE. More info on the software bits after the photos. Here is the hardware: [photo_2024-07-14 11.5…

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Lead Acid Battery Monitor (complete)

DIY Wi-Fi Battery Monitor for Inverters/UPS (IoT Lead Acid Battery?)

A Never Ending Back Story: About two and a half years ago, I bought an inverter that needed four batteries running at 48V: https://techenclave.com/threads/wtb-sinewave-ups-inverter-so-need-suggestions.198174/#post-2269678 [IMG_20210416_020130.jpg] The inverter was paired with four Amaron Quanta batteries, this was a decision I made — I thought the were really cool looking, colour matched the inverter nicely, didn’t need any maintenance and I later learned that this kind of lead acid battery…

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Lead Acid Battery Tester (complete)

DIY Lead Acid Battery Tester with Automotive Headlights (and Wi-FI?)

After building the battery monitors and discovering that one of my batteries was essentially dead, I wanted to quantify just how dead it was. The best way appears to be adding a resistive type load of known amperage and calculating battery capacity with those numbers. Starting off: a junction box, some H4 bulb holders and some headlight bulbs: [photo_2023-11-29 03.29.07.jpeg] The box was around Rs 400 on Amazon and the bulb holders were Rs 80 each, bulbs were about the same. [photo_2023-11…

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40A LiFePO4 Charger (on going)

Teardown & Rebuild of a MuscleGrid LiFePO4 Server Rack Battery

Taking a detour from: https://techenclave.com/threads/working-with-inverter-ups-lead-acid-batteries.217418/ Led me to exploring this option. Most 48V server rack style batteries available abroad are in a 16S configuration and having learned my inverter charges at 14.2V per 12V battery, for a total of 56.8V, divided by 16 resulting in a per cell voltage of 3.55V which is pretty good for a LiFePO4. Bumping it up to 14.6V gives us 3.65V which is pretty much the recommended charging voltage for th…

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1U Rack Mount DC UPS (on going)

The Ill-Advised 1kWh LiFePO4 1U Rack Mount Battery 3S1P 105Ah

Actual capacity would probably be closer to 960Wh with these used ‘C’ grade cells but 1kWh sounds catchy. I’ll be making a top-balancing BMS using Tasmota for this. The entire premise of the project is ill-advised because we’d be dealing with large amounts of current since it’s only a 3S pack and I’d like to build this to provide at least 500W for future expandability. After [a teardown that revealed 15 cells](’ Teardown & Rebuild of a MuscleGrid LiFePO4 Server Rack Battery - PC Builds, Moddi…

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Micro-Ohm Meter (on going)

A DIY Micro-Ohm Meter with Arduino (vollrathd's design & concept)

Pursuant (corporate speak, ha) to this helpful video: [It's No Joke, Size Really Does Matter!! Testing Flexible Busbars. Please read the description.] It became apparent that I needed empirical verification for the connections I would be making in my LiFePO4 projects, unexpected resistances result in heat build-up, and can become disastrous if unchecked — the prismatic cells I’m using are capable of 5C discharge, that’s over 500A! From: [Screen Shot 2024-07-03 at 5.25.26 AM.pn…

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I think I’m seeing a pattern here, haha

But hey, life’s fun so it’s all good