Some LiFePO4 Battery Testing Results Manual and Automated

On Thursday, 17 October 2019 03:51:15 UTC+3, kinsell wrote:
On 10/16/19 4:05 AM, krasw wrote:
On Wednesday, 16 October 2019 05:44:35 UTC+3, 2G wrote:
On Thursday, May 2, 2019 at 2:11:13 PM UTC-7, John DeRosa OHM Ω http://aviation.derosaweb.net wrote:
Some updates;

- I was lent a Bioenno BLF-1209WS purchased in Jan 2019. Tested and ran for 8.8h.
- Updated my Arduino automated tester by adding an "LCD Keypad Shield" display to allow monitoring of the testing. The updated code has been uploaded.
- Created a new XLS spreadsheet to parse the automated testing results and create a graph from them
- Added pictures of my test rig.

Find all this, and more, at http://aviation.derosaweb.net/batterytest..

John OHM Ω

Congratulations on building a battery tester (I wouldn't bother, myself).

But here are the shortcomings of your tester:
1. It has no discharge cutoff. It keeps discharging the battery until totally discharged. This can damage the battery, and is certainly not good for it. I would not test a battery w/o this.

2. It does not discharge at a constant current. The current decreases as the voltage drops. Modern battery testers will do this.

3. It does not discharge at a constant wattage. This is a more typical scenario where avionics will increase current as the voltage drops.

That said, it is better than sitting down for 6 to 10 hours and recording meter readings. I have switched my avionics battery from a Pb to a LiFePO4 partly because I don't want to buy a new battery every 2 years.

Tom

1. BMS does the cutoff inside battery anyway

Unfortunately, not all LFP batteries have a BMS, and of those that do,
not all have low-voltage cutoff. Of all the misinformation that gets
spead about on LFP's, that right at the top of the list.

Given how easy it is to add a low-side power switch, I wonder why you
would build an automated, computer controlled tester that lacks this.
Adding it would make it useful for a wide range of batteries.

I have built tester that uses coulometer and low voltage switch, I have a car tail light bulb as a load (10 or 20W). Parts for this can be bought from ebay for next to nothing. Search ebay for "battery coulometer" and "DC12V Battery Low Voltage Automatic Cut off Controller". You get automatically reading for your battery capacity. Mine can be installed between charger and battery so that you can also read how much capacity was charged.