Too many issues with the JK BMS? Time to move on?
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- Опубликовано: 8 фев 2025
- Here is a small collection of all the problems and issues I have found in my comments, some forums and you sent me via email about the JK-BMS.
And, I'm not sure if they will be fixed and if JK is still actively developing their firmware.
Some new firmware versions are floating around in the interwebs but they are not officially on the JK-BMS website for download. Lots of communication issues and customer service complaints have been reported, next to all these technical problems with the BMS.
It seems, the glory days of actively working with the JK team and develop new firmware quickly and efficiently are over!
So, is it time to move on and look for something else?
You can find the latest firmware on my Google Drive through the links on my website here:
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Too many different communication standards. I am using a number of different JK-BMS even one in a motorcycle conversion. They are the best on the market (IMHO) and I think the key is to keep the pressure up to continue iron out issues. And you are the man to do so, Andi. Without any further to do.
Thank you. I'll try my best. For the last few months I'm treading water.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia we are in 2024… products any one can do… a good customer service it’s not so easy to all have. We have to demand this! For me, company that don’t give after sales help is out of my future investments and I didn’t care if it is the best product in the market because for me the best product in the market is the one that have support, if we ( consumers) are not important after the sale… they autómatícly are out of my buyer mind!
@@jpcme2002I have pretty much the opposite opinion on that, specialy in the software/video game industrie, they sell unfinished product and than try too update it instead of making a good and finished product in the first place.
Same for electronic products, they should work perfectly from the start and customer service and updates shouldnt be necesary for in the first place.
I want too install and set it up and than dont touch it for the next 10-20 years.
@@jpcme2002here here
@@jonasstahl9826 I work with Tech products and I agree on send the products to the market asap, what I don´t agree is zero support after that... but each person have their way of thinking... I give suuport to my clients always even after the warranty period... they say that is the best way of making the difference... rest my case
Hello from Ukraine. Please remind JK that they completely forgot about version 14. Thank you for your work.
There are too many protocols. This thing should be listed as a single standard somewhere so anyone can implement this protocol in their inverter\bms\etc hardware.
It would be nice to opensource JK INVERTER BMS firmware so the community could implement all the new features and fix bugs.
I'm eager to see a new BMS)
Open Source would be great for this BMS.
Yes
It would solve all bugs, but it would not happen, Daly, Seplos, JiKong and others.... they will never work together.
That would be Great. I wanted to install the new BMS after the first great videos. Now I will go with Batrium. Hoping this is better. If you could bring JK to make it opensorce, that would be Great 🎉
Interesting to see other BMSses. Andy, what about Batrium -rising the australian flag 🇦🇺
Hey Andy,
thanks for trying to take this up with JK (again).
One thing that might impact the SOC ist proper calibration.
For each the 5 JK Inverter BMS I own the voltage and current reading was different.
While voltage calibration is quite simple current calibration is not.
In the App one can only enter full amps and no decimal places.
That makes current calibration too inaccurate.
This might be an easy fix in the app by allowing decimal places (Nachkommastellen).
Of course even the best calibration will not fix the poor measuring of low currents but it helps.
Thanks for staying on this topic!
Stefan
The current calibration should be done at higher reading where an integer number is sufficient (30-50A JK recommends). The BMS is not great at lower amps and has a fairly large margin of error. So, there is no point pulling 5.5A from it and calibrate the sensor.
Andy - Have you considered making a face to face meeting in China with the factory owner of JK BMS and maybe getting a tour of the manufacturing facility? I think that video would be great and give you a chance to speak with the owner perhaps through a quality translator to explain the potential of his product if the software issues can be resolved? Something to consider since flights to China are not that expensive from sunny hot Australia!!!
I would definitely watch a Video like this, even if it's 2 hours or longer👍🏻👍🏻😅
Pigs might fly - you dont get the PRC mentality at all bro
@@RobinRastle actually considering I am within driving distance of China right now and regularly doing business with chinese owned companies, I feel that I have a decent grasp on their business acumen and goals. Maybe try trolling someone else...
In person business meeting with the manufacturer to establish/strengthen an ongoing relationship seems like a fantastic idea. And great content opportunity Id love to watch!
Just installed smaller JK to my sailboat this summer. So far been working great.
Looking forward to see how these develop over next couple of years. My new boat will have at least four big battery packs! 🤓
Thank you for voicing our concerns! I switched to a JKbms because of your recommendations. It is really sad that they even stopped supporting whatsapp support :(
Great man! Great job done and there'll more to come.
Andy, thank you for persistence and help to other involved
Hi Andy, I am very thankful to you on highlighting the SOC 100% issue and SOC drift. I appreciate your effort in contacting JK about it. Thank you very much. I didn't realize JK also ghosted you. I am so sorry about that.
My Outback system is still trying to figure out what the percentage of charge is after I switched from L-16 lead to LiFePo4.. You can give it total potential capacity in amps and kilowatts, charge efficiency in a percentage and the top and bottom charge voltages but it takes time for it to count what goes in and what goes out before it can give you its algorithmic best guess.. There are stand alone devices that do this very well but for the cost it seems kind of excessively solar nerdy although I have been accused of this by the family..
It's just a shame, we spend so much time getting the software to what it is right now and then they drop the ball...
26:30 you said it all. WHY WOULD THEY? They simply work well enough. They are not German, Excellence is not what they are going for . The most profit for the least input.
After your consultations with them they would have seen sales go through the roof. Good enough. moving on.
Money talks.
Add Asian arrogance and management loss of face if not maximising profit - hence withdraw Eng team and start new build version of of BMS so customers have to replace existing with newer h/w. Would you buy a PRC Car with this mindset?
Hi Andy from italy...., at 18:16 you're right they are selling a ton of these bms already. Why they had to invest time and money for evolve or develop the software. they're goal is to sell and make money.... and they're already doing it. They are Chinese manufacturer they don't do things right they just want to make money.
after watching hours of your videos about this bms I think it's a great product (compared to others on the market) with some fixable problem.
The most important i think it is the SoC 100% reset that a programmer can fix in 5 minute (if there was the will). it would be enough to set the 100% at the sum of all 16 cells (like 55.2V in your case) I think this is more than enough to give the battery time to absorb and be sure that they are really at full charge!
the other imperfections maybe are marginal problems and we can live without for the moment..... (no one it's perfect neither this xD)
It would be interesting if the engineers you were in contact with could find the source code.... we could make the changes ourselves and recompile the shit that JK is ignoring us for...
Great Idea with the Bluetooth on/off functionality...I hope they implement it one day 😇 Thanks for making all of that public!
I hope they will respond one day😅
Tak!
Thank you very much for your support! Amazing 😍
Good morning from Ukraine 🇺🇦
Thanks Andy again for your work ! I tried to modify my soc to 100% but unfortunately doesn’t work and I really disappointed.
I’m using the version 15.29.
Thank you for the video and of course your time in making it.
AI corrected version:
Thank you for the video, and of course, for your time in making it.
And I just ordered 3 of these because they seemed like they were recommended here.
I buy a JK bms 3 years ago with a 16s 280k setup. Awesome BMS. i buy it thanks to the Andy recommendation.
I wish they ( and every other equipment ) would have all or most important data sent out in MQTT format. That way we can easily use this in our monitoring and control systems like Grafana, Home Assistant , etc. It can't be more complicated to do that then set up all those different inverter protocols.
But then you are adding another system in between making it more complex.
Are they not supposed to be plug'n play?
@@OffGridGarageAustralia I don't have a new inverter /controller that communicates with bms so I need a way to monitor. Really mqtt wouldn't be any different than another inverter protocol . There probably is already someone who made an esp32 to JKBms converter to mqtt. I have a github project for my jakiper pace bms that does that and it works great for monitoring .
you can read the Neey balancer with BT and stream MQTT with it, I do that because I want the cell voltages that are not on CAN
@@martijnheeroma5492 thanks - I will look for that project for the Neey
Thanks for these important updates Andy.
I like the topology REC BMS uses with multiple inverters that has a separate master BMS that talks to the inverter. That sort of separation of duties seems wise (and it's the one that manages the shunt for, e.g., SMA inverters).
The REC causes other issues from what I read in the forums. The contactors, the master/slave split... all adds up to more complex systems.
@OffGridGarageAustrailia it’s hard to agree that a parallel master/(multiple) slave BMS system that works with high amp charge and loads is more complex than a moderate amp serial control master/slave system which doesn’t work well if there is a slave (or more) in the system. The workarounds you do seem pretty complex-just a different vector on the complexity spectrum(s).
I am not sure what the issue would be with contactors. In 3 years of running, my contractor has only opened when I turn the BMS off for servicing (checking torques, adding components, etc). I did have a protection event during commissioning the alternator and it worked as designed-BMS reported high temp and the pre-alert signal turned off alternator, solar and shorepower charging and the contactor opened after the chargers were shut down. Perfect. Anyone opening switches or contactors under high currents (charge or load) is just learning about welding in an expensive way😢.
There are well engineered systems that work very well. Not too many of them are engineered where JK does its business. (I am sure they have great engineers, but the boss/marketing is in charge.)
@@jimduke5545 I have limited experience in this field but I just bought 20 x 314amp EVE cells and a 12v EEL and 48v Apexium enclosure, both of which came with JK BMS's. I think opting out of the 12v BMS was only a $50usd price reduction. Given the job it has to do it may be too good to be true to expect quality hardware/software and support at this pricepoint. I was looking at REC, TAO, Batrium and others and trying to compare features but it was really a bit much to juggle all the pro's and con's. I generally look at a product and try and work out the best engineered option unless of course the price is astronomical. Personally I don't want regular updates and firmwares. I wan't to install it and know it just works and leave it alone for the next 5-10 years. On 4-5k worth of battery and enclosure I'd happily pay 10-20% for the BMS as insurance. Take it you are pretty happy with the REC Bms.
The only added complexity is having two types of appliance. This is outweighed by each being simpler, with the master dealing with aggregation and not half-heartedly trying to make one thing do everything.
There are issues with the delay timer at BMS switch-on, but that's easily remedied using a resistor (and it doesn't happen often).
Thank you for all your efforts Andy! yes there are issues even with communication I will check compatibility with my Voltronic inverters but who need communication when I have automation and a Victron smart shunt! I limit my charging current once SOC reaches 90% :)
I use 2 of these. Thanks to Off=grid I was able to navigate setting up the units. They need a fluent English speaker to translate their near gibberish "manual"
I live in South Africa we are off the grid and don't want to have sleepless nights about solar and batteries so we bought 2 us 3000c Pylontech batteries. We need 4 more of them so far so good it just works.
Hi Andy, your channel is great, I have 2 battery boxes with MB31 and JK-BMS PB2A16S20P on a 3-phase Victron, communication via CAN Bus is difficult so I updated the BMS firmware from 15.12 to 15.27, but 15.27 contains a bug Charging or discharging the battery now always indicates positive current on the VRM portal, while the Multiplus and the Shunt do indicate negative current when the batteries are discharged. So I downgraded the firmware to 15.24, which solved the problem. Greetings Eric Wilke
Thanks Andy
Thank you.
Thanks for this video Andy. I have 2 of these JK inverter BMS with latest firmware and they work kinda ok. Truth is, I find that my Daly worked better and I was happier using the Daly with the Neey 4a smart balancer. I'm seriously considering going back to the Daly/100 Balance. I also got spoilt with Daly's wifi feature on their BMS which allowed me full control of my battery from wherever in the world I am from my mobile phone. Daly's SOC reading seemed to have always been on point.
Yeah, don't know about the Wifi feature over a Chinese cloud service. It basically gives them access to your BMS and battery. From a safety perspective, not a great solution...
@@OffGridGarageAustralia I see what you mean but I don't think it's any different from having any other inverter for example connected to the wifi...same principle in terms of being accessible from a cloud server. I think once you have your inverter with the protection settings, that's a good safety guard as well especially if the inverter and BMS are from different providers thus using separate servers.
Why don't you using VPN to access your LAN???
Cloud is a NO GO in perspective of savety!!
I use VPN to my LAN since 20 years ago, even to access internet thru an unsave public Wifi AP.
Can confirm the SOC drift, but the 100% charge with Voltronic inverters works perfectly fine for me (MPP 5048GEW).
I really agree with everyone pushing for an open-source firmware though.
Strange, that it works for you and not others. So many issues...
Enjoyed the video. Thanks for sharing
Thank you.
8:33 i actually think this the behavior you want.
If an alarm gets set in the inverter it stops charging/discharging complete just because one battery pack has an issue.
Debatable. We have to differentiate between alarm and protection. JK has only one setting for both. Other BMS, Pace, Seplos have separate settings to actually get an alarm before it triggers the protection.
So, yeah, in this case, the alarm is the protection.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia so like i sad in the other comment JK should set a warning if only one batterie pack has a problem and an Alarm if all packs have the same problem
Thanks for keeping it real! Nice to have someone in this space to help us navigate the tricky waters.
Also: Neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Thank you, I try my best to get this all fixed. Not sure if they still want to keep developing this BMS and software.
I've got two of the 'old school' non inverter BMS's running on two 24V 280Ah sets of cells and as a management system that is basically there to protect and keep the cells balanced I can't fault the JK BMS'. It is the add on fluffy bits that simply don't work. I'm so glad that I chose to hide my two touch screens in a cupboard on a temporary panel that I can later remove as the SOC is a joke. In the current UK summer my batteries currently cycle between 85% and 100% daily according to Victron which appears to be pretty accurate when I watch the voltage and amps in and out but JK think the batteries are cycling between 0% and 12%. I can reset to 100% on the JKBMS by forcing an OVP alarm but within a few weeks they are back at 12% when in reality the batteries are at 100%. I won't be replacing the JK BMS's but I might be throwing the touch screens away soon and I won't be buying JK BMS's ever again if another BMS manufacturer can sell me a BMS that manages and balances like the JK but can also calculate a simple SOC too!
Thanks for sharing and confirming this ridiculous SOC calculation JK does.
What I dont understand is why you cant go in and enter SOC figures yourself for 0% and 100%. As a user you will have more idea os true SOC that a vague JK estimate. I use Victron smart shunt
now im done watching you have 91.9k subs, congrats andy !!! road to 100k
So close!
Hi Andy, I don't use JK, I am still on team JBD and doing just fine, for now. However I must still say thank you. Thank you for the time you have spent on scouring through all the comments and all of the emails, and lending an ear to the voice of the people. You stand with us, and we are lucky to have you as an advocate and liaison with the powers that be!
So what do you think about the new Overkill BMS? Two new models!? 100% in house design, no more JBD clone, no more measly 100A limitations?!! ☺Very exciting! (somehow I feel like you already know much more about them than I do. 😂 only time will tell I suppose).
0806’24/ 2039h 🇺🇸 0807’24/1339 Bris 🇦🇺 Good afternoon. Thanks Andy. I have , painstakingly, numbered all the cells as per the JBD- BMS so, I don’t have to hunt for those cells in case I get alarm. So far in 7 year period I saw only 2 such alarms similar to yours. Soon enough the cell was isolated and charged to 3.55V, left it resting for 48 hrs. After which discharged it to 2.8V and charged to 3.50V and connected back to the array. No issues after that. Chemical issue, I assume. Also, I use only JBD-BMS, as they proved to be steady and faultless. The newer JBD-BMS come with BT integrated so it’s better than the external BT dongle. The external BT connector is still present in the BMS. I did not know this until I saw two BT signals on screen, both exhibiting identical readings. Being puzzled, I detached the external BT dongle, and I still viewed the readings. The blue LED deep inside the BMS was blinking. That indicated the BMS has built in BT. Also note that BT shuts off in 3 mts after nonoperation , thus no battery drain. Nice.
FYI, all BMS ( except DALY) are built in one single factory in China, Shenzhen Jiabaida Electronic Technology Co; LtD. If you look at the design, you’d observe the similarity. Only the LABEL is different as per buyer’s requirement. Some with ridiculous Killer name. The original
Jiabaida BMS, is a good controller and I stand by it. Cheers und 73s…
/Me: How is the weather in Australia?. /Andy: 22 Amps!.... 😆😁
That's how it works😆
Interesting! If you build a battery, and later on decide to add another battery, JK might not be the right choice it seems. On the other hand, I was planning using the Smart Shunt anyway, but the issue what bothers me is the alarms, like you said, you would like to have an alert somewhere catching your attention. I am looking forward to your hint about that other BMS.
Apparently, it works ok with other inverters. Some may work, some wont... but who knows...
Yikes, this is upsetting! I just ordered (6)Yixiang New Energy DIY Battery boxes along with (96) REPT 320ah cells based on your recommendations. I hope those JK Inverter BMSs don’t let me down. 😢
he should reimburse you for that.
It all depends on what you want them to do.. If you are more into just basic functionality you will be happy.. If you are a cutting edge nerd that is always looking for more features you will forever be disappointed with Chinese tech.. Some people like to do their own add on things like tapping into the red warning signal that flashes the LED and have it activate a transistor that can then signal with the high or low pulses some communication with software that could send you an Email or activate an audible alarm.. In Andy's case this could tell him which battery is in alarm.. If the red LED flashes at different rates for different alarms software could detect patterns and report what is in alarm..
Same here, four white Yixiang cases with JKbms's on their way.
@@MMMM2MMMM2MMMM when you receive them, please update us on how everything arrived.
Breaker heating depends on if they have short circuit fast current trip. The series winding electro-magnet driven solenoid trip latch adds a lot of series resistance to breaker. Most high current breakers with short circuit quick trip are in the order of 4 to 5 milliohms. That generates a lot of heat at high inverter currents.
A good compromise is breaker without short circuit quick trip and use the BMS to provide the quick trip function. That keeps the high current breaker down to about 0.5 milliohm.
You can check breaker milliohm resistance with your YR1035 battery impedance checker.
Any BMS that uses ten parallel 1 milliohm cheap SMD chip resistors in parallel, distributed across the BMS PCB, is going to make a poor accuracy, poor temp coefficient, current shunt resistor. Second issue is op amp DC offset that amplifies shunt resistor voltage for STM103 uC 12 bit ADC to read. DC offset means zero current as read by BMS wanders around within a +/- couple amps range as the DC offset drifts around. They have to consider anything less than about +/- 3 amps as zero current for charge blocking or discharge blocking MOSFET override to avoid MOSFET overheating on high current.
To have a good Columb counter you need good current measurement accuracy from low current (1 amp) through high current (200 to 500 amps). How good does your multimeter DVM do measuring AA battery 1.5 volt on 500 vdc scale?
BMS needs to have a good, user friendly, 100% full SoC Columb counter reset procedure to wash out cumulative amp-secs error build up in Columb counter over time. Many BMS's require a charging cell overvoltage trip to reset Columb counter which is stupid.
I would allow user to select 100% SoC reference reset (preferred) or rested cell voltage SoC estimate. BMS would need to time periods of near zero battery current for three to five minutes period before using cell voltage to estimate SoC.
And I wish I could understand you 🧐
What annoys me most personally is the lack of communication with the manufacturer.
I've tried to contact JK several times, but nothing comes back....nothing at all, nada, niente, zero
same here - but now it might hurt them cause what andy says will be hurt - in the good times and the bad and ugly times we are facing now while nothing happens. The app has not been updated for quite long (like the feature to turn off the display based on a schedule which can not be so complicated and it is very usefull in small cabins / logs and RVs.
Yep, same here. No feedback after two days publishing this video. They don't watch, they don't care?
@@OffGridGarageAustralia I have now installed 5 of the old B2A20S20P. If you "calibrate" them, i.e. current and voltage, then they work quite well in conjunction with a DSD TECH SH-U09C3 and a SerialBattery software.
BUT the specified 200A are more like 100-120A in the long run and the non-existent software updates are an imposition...
The company probably just wants to sell... it's actually a shame.
I have bought several Yixiang kits, so tried asking the if they are able to contact JK - guess what - they came back and also say that support is not talking to them.
@@chrisgroothoff2611 I'm not surprised at all ^^
I think this goes back to something I commented in the past. All these companies need to “Standardize” and agree on the coded communications so they all work together properly no matter what manufacturer of equipment you buy. I don’t know, like HTTP or HTTPS, or SSH, or telephone and cell communications.
Would you expect Ford to standardize with Chevrolet or Chrysler?? Outside of tertiary things like batteries and tires and gasoline it just is never going to happen.. The best hope is that someone writes a software that translates the major companies in the markets data to that universal language like Google translate does with verbal languages..
This will never happen. It would mean the inverter manufacturers would need to adopt this standard too.
Ford and Chevy do share common ground with common automotive systems. Ford has a 2nd protocol on the canbus (can2) think of it as their extended feature diagnostics of the car/truck for systems that automotive companies don’t share.m But in this case we are talking about mostly a common closed system for batteries. With a few inverters having extended features that would talk with their proprietary accessories. But again, the basics non-extended is mostly agreed on with a standard of ODBII.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia Yes, yes it would. And they already have most of the same communication monitoring but it just needs to be writing in an agreed protocol format and error codes for safety reasons. It won’t add to the firmware size, just be a different firmware with the same communication and basic errors, codes for issues and then they can stack the extended features on top for that brand.
Addition add on: If some country like the EU required it for safety reasons I bet they would all change without any issues.
@@GadgetReviewVideos You are talking mostly about Chinese manufacturers with little to no incentive to do this.. It would be a low demand zero profit venture..
Make low temp on both battery. If you receive alarm on cerbo that means than there is bug in software : they used AND instead OR to calculate total alarm from 2 batteries.
Possible. The alarm itself is at least visible on the rs485 within the modbus protocol. I just saw that myself when testing all alarms
Only the reporting to victron seems to be the issue.
Was this BMS not supposed to support 40+ inverters?
Being once a design in an R&D team within a company, I too soon learned that money was the only drive in the business. We as a team built the first ever Home sound recording desk call the CMC by Allen and Heath Brunel back in the 80's, and we lead the market for about 2 years, we ask our boss that we need to move and keep developing, but he said NO we are doing just fine with what you guys have done, and so we lost the lead. So I fully understand your desire to move on!! Ken in Wales
Nice 👌 bit of history there
Just open source the software. Let the community improve it!
I wonder how many fires and explosions that would generate?? People are trying to elevate what is basically a programmable safety device and make it into a multi layer reporting device, even the manufacturer is doing it.. It would be far better to let the charge controllers and smart inverter do the heavy lifting and only mess with the BMS on initial setup and if there is a problem with it or a cell.. My Outback Radian with the Mate 3s connected to the internet based OpticsRE software tells me 95% of what I need to know.. There are many current shunts, temperature sensors and voltage monitoring points to alert me of any issues with the battery in general.. If you try and make a safety device too complex you start to add more and more points of failure..
They will never open source it.
Too dangerous, would you take an open source plane...?
I still get comments from people who are mad at me for not recommending JK anymore. Like, I understand why people still like them and use them, but to say they're "good" isn't really fair. Their software is just ... not great.
Agree - great hardware, crappy software, especially with the inverter style BMS. Still, I'm using them (the older version, not the inverter style) because they do what they're supposed to do and stay out of my way, while I just have my own monitoring software talking to them.
@@upnorthandpersonal Care to share more?
You can read more here: medium.com/@upnorthandoffgrid
@@offgridstuff Besides the link to my blog Andy just posted, you can also find me on the diy solar forum, feel free to ping me there - can't post links here. I use Grafana with a driver for the JK to do the visualization. It's on my Github, but as I said, can't post links here...
Thanks Andy. So complex, so many standards. 😢
Until they ALL get together with common protocols and standards, I can’t see this being resolved.
SOC drift? One of my two identical paralleled batteries right now says 15%, the other says 87%. The SOC figure is absolutely useless, thank goodness for the Victron smart shunt.
This will never happen, Dave. They use RS485 and CAN as the standard, but everyone makes their own protocol.
As I see, everything is fine if you only have one battery. Problems are only concerning a set of two or more batteries in parallel.
So I will give the JK a try, because I only have one battery at the Victron Multiplus. I hope in that case, everything will be fine.
Yes, that will work at least from the alarm perspective.
Once i had some trouble with a Chinese product, so.... i contacted the factory explaining my problem. I received a fast reply in Chinese: 我是來賣東西的不是來解決問題的 (did translate this to Chinese myself.) In English i was being told: "I'm here to sell, not to solve problems." It seems JK used Andy to boost their sales, and now they moved on to another project, Andy is no longer needed.
That's how communism operates. Use the useful people til they are no longer useful. Then, bye, bye. You're in a ditch
So right bro - typical arrogance - beware
@@RobinRastle I just received another reply. I was asking for specific details. "I do not know what you need, we do not have it." 😂😂😂
Thanks Andy for this info. I will stay with the Seplos and Neey balancer reading the Neey with an ESP32 via BT. Not perfect but JK will not make it any better.
Yes, stay with the Seplos. There is no need for upgrading atm.
i have four of the Apexium DIY Kits with the JK-Inverter-BMS 15x and have not experienced any issues so far. i feel lucky.
Would you share the Firmware Version you are using?
@@raulvintila5490
Vendor ID: JK_PB2A16S20P
Hardware Ver: V15.XA
Software Ver: V15.12
i also have the LuxPower 12K inverter/charger using the Pylontech protocol
Forget the communictaion, as mentioned in one of your first videos? What is BMS gonna say to the inverter? Let the BMS do it's job, keep an eye on your battery & cells. If one parameter is no longer OK, block the system. Job done! -> KISS.
Andy, be careful to not get sued... ;-)
Hmm, happy not beeing an "early" adaptor. Between the lines you always told: they are still working things out, so there may be some flaw though there are some very well thought of feature in this BMS. But as always with chinese companies: you have to push them and tell them, that they could potentially make a better product.
Just sticking to the old "black" JK BMS for the upcoming installation of 3 new batteries to be build. Just thought about buying the JK Inverter BMS for the next 3 batteries to be build - erm, wait - no.
Thx for sharing.
JK used to be very responsive, but I haven't had any tech contact since March. I hope this is a wake-up call for them.
You could use the relay on the JK-BMS to trigger an alarm in Home Asst so you know when you have a fault. Bit of a kludge but better than not knowing. Funny that they havent solved this because from what your saying the old version on the battery shelf connected to the "peter" boards works correctly.
Oh, yes, there are many workarounds to trigger an alarm as such, but that is not really the point.
The problem or feature of the JK is, it has only one alarm/protection level. Which is the same in this case. Other BMS (Seplos, Pace) have multiple levels: warning, alarm and protection but are far more complicated to setup. JK is easy. So, what do we want?🤷♂️
Andy, will you still inform us if there is new firmware for the JK or any changes of those issues in the future?
Thanks a lot for your effort!
Yes, of course.
your the expert you need to show us the right one on everything.
I can only share what I find.
I really hope they will fix the alarm feature
I'd not worry too much about the password generator. The attack vector is so small (Must be within bluetooth range)! - If there was cloud access for the BMS (Deffo not a good idea) then yes I'd agree. But as it stands, getting an unlock code from JK is virtually impossible, so the code reader is essential.
Hi Andy, How about the Pace BMS? Ok, including a separate active balancer, it is twice the price but you where quite happy with its features
Another excellent vid
Hi Andy,
awesome video, thanks for collecting this list. It gives some additional ideas about what to check in my own system.
Regarding to the missing battery pack information of the lowest/highest cell display: I am pretty sure that ot only the infomation about the pack containing the lowest/highest cell is missing. I think, the voltage values shown are for the master only, even if one of the slaves have higher or lower cells. At least I got that impression recently when adding pack that has never been balanced before and the Cerbo still showing a delta of 1mV or so.
Maybe you could try to verify this therory in your system?
Ah, yes, thanks for the update. I remember that problem now. Yeah, this is only the master showing...
Thanks for all this research Andy! 🤩When will the review of the competitor's BMS be released? Which is the brand, if we may know already?
Great work! Have you ever used their high voltage version? I have 62s pack for a vehicle
It is a classic clash of cultures. The Chinese work to the 'You bought it, your problem' ethos. In the West, we want customers to return so we provide support, to an extent (car companies are really bad at this, often refusing warranty). In China, they never stand still, and constantly move forwards innovating, but never getting it 100% right.
Yeah, there is a huge problem. Some Chinese companies do a lot better though.
But the west has this culture of LOCK IN the customer.
Hi Andy I have done the update to 15.27 :-(
now the CAN protocol number 4 for Victron will Report negativ current as positive!
If I use protocol number 2 (plyontec) all fine at cerboGX.
And yes we will all about the competitor BMS ;-)
Thanks for testing and your feedback. Great, it even breaks more.
I have the same problem with 15.27. I'm back to 15.24 and all is fine. But in the changelog there is nothing abióut changes at the victron protocol.
@@thomasreitze6138 Yeah, they are not putting much effort into these firmware versions any more. Bugs everywhere and the documentation is... well, they didn't even mention the new fw correctly.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia Schöne Grüße aus Kassel Andy!
Lets hope they fix it
I'm not confident.
My 3 month old JK BMS blew up, not happy.
No issues with Deye 12kW 3ph inverter and 4x JK inverter BMS. System works perfectly from the day one.
Need more info in regards to the discussed issues.
Will do some tests when i have my Deye 12k 3p hybrid inverter and 3 batterys in use.
Aloha Andy! Thanks for another great video! I have been seriously considering buying one of these BMSs. Is there another BMS alternative?
Soooo happy I kept away from yhis BMS brand.
It's nice to see a fully spec BMS but if you must rely on an influencer - no pun intended Andy 😄 - to get things done or have a company listening to you , then you are done.....
Still happy with my 123Smart BMS designed, built and supported in The Netherlands that functions flawless since 18 months.
If this BMS would have supported a CANnbus comms, I would have extended it for the additional two sets of batteries I will be building the upcoming months.
Now REC seems to be the only option for a BMS that can be used for parallel operation now and series operation in the near future when I might switch over to a high voltage system
Hey Andy, you should plan to do something big for the point, when you pass 100k subscribers😉
So many people are spending money to be safe, to be informed, and do it right. And then you get the idea to test. Thanks to you we are getting information ✅
Edit: 91.8k
Thank you!
It’s a pity that I found out about this problem after purchasing the BMS
The BMS is good and does what it supposed to do. It's just these last 5% to make it really good, which is missing.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia i know, but if be honest, i also faced with SOC issue, I though that, maybe something wrong with my battery.
Is Seplos v3.0 a robust alternative, after knowing JK BMS issues?
@@raulvintila5490 i think so, because most manufacturers of battery assemblies use seplos
I think this is okay Andy. Why? We are confusing the system w/ parallel vs. series. This was a big issue in the phone company when I worked there as well. Usually all the batteries were in the same area, so no big deal. Set up all chargers to work the same and they would all shut down. OR make sure you only had one parallel string.
I emailed jk telling him to watch the video and work on improving if he doesn't want to lose all the clients he's created over time. I had to email info because the sino contact form times out (504). Not a good start.
Yeah, something is definitely going on here...
17:12 yep, totaly possible. They are simply not sending tht CAN frane that would include that data
It would seem that a change to the total Ah capacity setting resets the cycled Ah and cycle count to 0. Might need further testing.
Yes, it does. As soon as you change the Ah in the settings if resets other parameters and values as well. The BMS assumes you have a different battery now and starts from scratch.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia Somehow I missed your reply. I have had the same issue again, but need to figure out why the BMS changes the configured capacity. I reached out to JK, so let's see if they respond. Thank you for great and entertaining content. Sorry, but I just had to subscribe to @OffGridGarage2 😁
Sometimes i am really happy with the seplos bms and neey balancer
Yes, it has its issues as well but, yeah, damn yeah!
Hi Andy,
I think something is wrong here. When different brands are buidling cases or complete batteries, they use an OEM version of the BMS. This simply means that brands like Gobel for example should provide support for the problems with their cases and batteries. A company can hardly be expected to support every product they deliver to OEM manufacturers.
That being said, they should provide support to people who bought their product directly from the store, like you. One of the people and maybe even the only one who put the latest JK BMS on the map.
I have two of them, but am not sure if I am going to replace my seplos BMS for these two.
People should not only complain to JK, but also to the Case/Battery manufacturer. Put reviews on websites and so on.
This way these companies will also put pressure on JK to fix things.
It is hardly doable to just keep switching BMS’s every time a new one comes along while the former one has issues and so support anymore.
Is a peter board an option to fix the communication problems ?
Keep up the good work.
Hey, i remember a guy telling us. No need for communication, use voltage is fine 😂
That's what I do ever since...
Thanks Andy!
Today I installed V15.27, and after that, Victron only shows positive amps.
Totally unclear how JK manages to make things worse after updates.
SOC also seems to be way off, and amp calibration seems not to be linear.
Calibration with 40 amps gives low readings that are way off, calibrating with 4 amps shows 32 amps @ 40 amp discharge.
what a ,.....
@user-he3on8xb4d - that’s what I have also found with the struggle measure the current.. good the hear it’s not my fault…
Hi, yes, the same problem here. I´m back to 15.24 and it works.
@@paultest3917 Does anyone know the resolution of current measurement, seems it jumps from 3,4A to -3,4A.
I now calibrated @40A.
@@paultest3917 I now did build in a JK BMS hardware 15.1, previous one was 15.0 (printed on PCB).
Same effect, positive and negative amps of 3,4 A, sometimes I do see 3 A around zero amps.
If I disable the Multiplus II AC in the BMS is measuring correct, so it seems the multiplus II is drawing little spikes currents from the battery if powered.
Earthing the battery negative didn’t help, seems JK BMS measures spike currents and not average!
I have observed another potentially dangerous feature of the JK BMS. Remeber that you can power it on by applying a 5V higher voltage to the BMS?
When you have more than one battery (so at least two in parallel) and one of them shuts down due to low voltage, so low, that even the BMS powers off because one cell is down to 2.5V, it immediately will power on again, if the other battery is at least 5V higher, so for example one bat at 45V, the other at 50V.
This situation happened at my batteries, when it was around 0°C and one battery was slightly better insulated than the other. One battery got charged at the day, the other was not (due to low temp protection). But both Batteries were discharged at night due to the power consumption of the BMS, so after some days (about 2 weeks if i remember correctly), one bat was 5V higher than the other and the lower one turnend on and off again and again, draining the cells even more. 2 cells were down to 1.8V, when I discovered the issue.
Hmmm, interesting. Never though this could actually happen. Should the 50V battery not charge the 45V battery if they are in parallel?
@@OffGridGarageAustralia The 45V Batterie was still blocking charging because the temperature had dipped below 0°C and didn't rise above 3°C (low temp protection recovery) for some days. The 50V batterie did not have the dip below zero because better insulation, temp sensors not exactly the same and so on. Temperaturs in 2 batts are never exactly the same.
For some days temp was around 2°C, Berliner Winter, and so one battery was still in under temp protection, the other was not and the voltage of the batteries starting drifting more and more until the BMS of the not-charging-battery shut of (Low cell voltage), but the higher external voltage turned it back on again immediately, still not accepting any charge because still around 2°C. And so the low cells were drained even more by the BMS switching on and off.
I had to physically disconnect the lower temp battery.
And yes, my battieries are also located in the Garage. :-)
Now that I think about out: shouldn't the low temp protection reset by power cycle of the BMS? I don't know, I couldn't check because the BMS was turning on and off within seconds. No chance to connect with bluetooth. I could only measure the cells, saw two of them down to 1.8V, then switched off the circuit breaker of the batt, recharged it manually and kept it of until it was a little bit warmer.
One thing I forgot to mention: I'm using the standard JK BMS as you have in your battery shelf, not the inverter BMS. But the issue is the combination of low temp charge protection, low cell voltage power off, paralleling batteries and 5V power on.
You didnt put the cells in parallel?
@@MegaCyrik No, I paralleled two packs, each with 16 cells and its own BMS. This is recommend, because you can monitor each cell separately.
Andy: I see on your webpage you recommend the EPEver Tracer MPPT charge controller. Today my last one got scrapped. EVERY single one i have had my hands on trough work or private have had issues locking up and not doing MPPT properly. It just hangs at battery voltage instead of going to the peak voltage. You can trick it by changing the charging voltage to what the batteries is at, and thus the voltage on the PV jumps to open voltage because it stops charging. Then change settings back again and it MIGHT or might not pull it back down again to battery voltage on the PV input. I would not recommend such products. Tho: That's the Tracer N series with orange buttons. 20A and 40A units.
Thanks for sharing. I bought one years ago and never got to test it out.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia yeah, it lasted quite a few years. Swapped it to an Victron of course when it died.
My question now is. If you had to build some parallel 48v batteries.
Would you still buy a couple of JK BMSes? Or go back to Seplos maybe?
Somehow they are still in business even though almost all 48v boxes come with a JK.
And still they are not making a BMS with active balancing.
Regarding your two batteries showing different states of charge it would help if they were wired in a better way eg as per the pylontech instructions so each battery has equal cable lengths back to the inverter. A few of these problems seem to relate to inverters and not the BMS.
That is not a problem in this case. In fact, I have wired all 5 batteries in this tower from and connect them only from one side. Not a single problem with SOC bouncing all over the place.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia That is not best practice at all. So easy to do it better.
I don't have any problems with JKBMS, it is very flexible, it can accept variable number of cells. It is fast, I have many BMS working in parallel feeding from a common bus where many MPPTs put the current. The only improvement I would make is to that overcharge / overdischarge protection timeout can't go lower than 2 seconds. I would love to have much more precise tuning of current flow parameters.
I don't use inverter's from JK BMS though, I have car inverters, many of them connected to the same 24V current bus
The SOC drift probably happens because the BMS doesn't measure small currents below 1A or so. And especially in winter when there is little sun, a lot of small currents will trickle into the battery.
The threshold is 0.3A for each BMS. 3 of them in parallel makes almost 1A of unmeasured current. But this is just for the total current reported to the inverter.
With 2 BMS, when charging with 0.5A, each BMS will get 250mA even they both show 0A. So there should be no drift in SOC.
Make Garages Great Again!
Bitte mehr davon vielleicht bekommt JK das dann endlich richtig hin… danke für deine Videos
Gruß aus Deutschland
That's the plan. It's a wake-up call.
I'm perfectly fine with my overkill/JBD BMS's.
The Daly BMS I have for my 13S10P battery decided that 52.65V is 100% full charge, when I originally set it to 85% for that voltage (54.6V is a full charge, but the Daly BMS complains of "Cell voltage high 1" when at around 4.10V or higher, which is why I set 4.05V/52.65V for Absorption on the Victron 150/45 MPPT so I won't get that alarm on the BMS). I bought a Victron 500A/50mV shunt, and set 52.65V as 85% in the Victron Shunt.
So you are using Li ion not LFP. Keep it at least 3m away from combustible items.
Thanks andy for taking the time to create a video after contacting you via discord! We have been a bit shocked to see after tests to not receive any alarm for more than one pack! 😮😢
Must be a fake Andy. I'm not in any Discord group.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery except when some stranger might say or do something controversial in your name and get the modern DEI government types to come knocking down under at your door.. The price of being a celebrity I guess, cheers Andy..
@@OffGridGarageAustralia No Andy. Jens of meine Energie Wende shared our tests with you and our contacts have been in touch with you via Website. So indirect via Discord channel from us out of Germany. No fake at all. Do not be scared. 😉✌😎
I wonder if you capture the messages being sent by the bms's whether there's a problem of interpretation at the inverter? Has anyone tried to capture the CAN messages and interpret the messages?
Hi Andy, for the communication problem, I am not agree with you in the sens that if you look closely into the Pylontech CANBUS protocol (V1.2 or +), you don't have the informations you want to be transmitted... The problem is not the JKBMS for this but the choice of the Pylontech protocol for communication..
Same question here, what protocols did you use, Andy? Apparently you could let the JK run on native Victron protocol as well? Did you already try that? Or if that's your default, why not switch your Victron system and the JK to Pylontech protocol and see if there's any changes?
My JKs are running on the 04 Victron protocol. I have also tried the Pylontech settings in the JK and the Venus OS worked as well, but usually Pylontech will give you less information.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia According to the victron canbus protocol, the event/alarm shound be here with canid =0x35A.... Strange
Thanks for this detailed Video👍 Yes, it is really very disappointing what JK is currently delivering in terms of improvements and support.
As a customer, you feel a little bit ripped off. I bought a total of 6 JK inverter BMS with 200A for our planned 48V LiFePo4 storage.
I have now 2 of the 6 planned LiFePo4 blocks in continuous operation for a few weeks and I am really anything but satisfied. And to be honest, I have no desire to assemble my LiFePo4 blocks 3, 4, 5 and 6 with the JK inverter BMS anymore, because the JK BMS really have too many errors and flaws and I am slowly but surely losing the desire to tinker and build myself with these JK inverter BMS.
I will definitely keep an eye on the alternative you mentioned with the 300A 3A Balance BMS and of course order it straight away to test - if this BMS is good😅
PS: For me, the SOC drift is just insane. The two LiFePo4 blocks sometimes drift apart by up to 50%. My previous 8s 24V blocks with the Xenes (Daly) BMS had a maximum SOC deviation of 5% (even if they couldn't be fully charged to 100% for several weeks)🤔
For me, the two blocks with the JK inverter BMS no longer run in parallel and networked with the VRM portal, they are now offline again as a standalone BMS and the SOC calculation is again done by the Victron SmartShunt in the VRM portal.
So for my part, I'm done with the JK inverter BMS and would like to throw them in the trash😏
Best wishes from Germany
Your Sunshine Ossi 😎
Thanks a lot for sharing. More problems, not great!
I have the JBD BMS in my battery shelf and it shows a much closer SOC than any of the JKs. Yeah, using the JKs as standalone device with the Samrt Shunt as point of truth really works the best so far.
I've seen you video about the Victron EV Charger. I have yet to setup mine. Electrician is coming out next week.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia Well, hopefully your wallbox works better😅 The calculated charging power can be corrected in the wallbox with the power calibration. We have now set 0.8 as the factor. The problem with the display is already known. I have pinned the solution to this as a separate comment under the video😉 However, I am currently still waiting for the required adapter plug from Victron that should solve the problem.
Daly is now sending me 2 of their new 100 BALANCE BMS with 200A for testing. I will then try them out with the next 2 LiFePo4 blocks🤞
Fun fact: the password is fiction in the app.
The ble connection has no password and you can cause it to dump the passwords and change the passwords just by sending the right code with a ble debugger if you want.
Any chance you can do instructions how to do this? I think for the people who have forgotten passwords this would be extremely helpful.
@@lexicase8805 An ESP32, Homeassistant + esphome + esphome-jk-bms is the key! one of my Inverter BMS stored the new password in a wrong order (old firmware-bug?!) and with that solution it was no problem to read the password from the BMS.
@@lexicase8805it seems that esphome jk BMS component reports password to homeassistant or a log. For the ble connectivity only esp32 or esp8266 board and power suppy are necessary.
@@lexicase8805(1/8/24) The current best advice about passwords is that everybody forgets them because they need to be long (c. 20 characters of all kinds seems reasonable) and so the _right_ thing to do is to use a proper password manager. There are many good ones, take your pick, and then all you and I have to do is remember _one_ password which unlocks all of the others. As an extra bonus most password managers will also generate new passwords of your chosen length and character sets for new websites and apps. It works well for me.
Personally I plan soon to move to using a passkey wherever possible since it's a physical object which I can take care of at home by myself.
(Of course neither a password manager nor a passkey can prevent exploits of weak software design such as is described above, but everywhere else it's a good start.)🙂
BLE is inherently insecure.
Storing the password in clear text rather than a hash is just a poor design choice by the BMS firmware devs. They're two entirely separate issues.
this is a limitations of the victrom and you display. i have my esp32 i did test this and its reporting fine.
Heya, to bad that you don't have the good communication with jk and maybe it's time to looks further
I really don't want to abandon the ship as of yet, but if they don't respond any more...
Like you i put a temp sensor on the breaker...all the tIme.
Andy, at 5:30, could it be that you are not seeing a charge alarm on the Victron simply because you are not charging? Thus there is no need to sound an alarm.
Andy, I am trying to place an order for 2 of the JK-PB2A16S20P BMS units. But, the none of the photos from ANY seller (eBay, AliExpress Etc.) match the photos shown on your web page. Notably on your images, the inductor (Upper left) is at the very edge while every listing I see has it inset by a half inch. Also, I see on the lower left what looks like a large blue capacitor? This is also missing from EVERY BMS for sale. My question is, will I be getting the latest version or an older one?? I want to make sure that the software you provide on your site will work with these units.
Andy, do you see a reason to issue 300A BMS? 3A or even 5A active balancer would be great but I dont see a point to have 300A BMS when I dont have 600Ah cells. For 300Ah cells 150A or 200A bms is totally enough. Rather have more small batteries than one very big one.
This is just what they are offering. I neither see the point of a 300A BMS and a 3A balancer. My small 100A JK-BMS with 0.6 balancer does the job just fine.
We will see and discuss when it is here.
My JK inverter BMS reports all data to Victron VRM, It graphs consumption and solar input OK. V15.12. My 4.3 inch screen also works fine.
Sounds like I'm better off not "UPGRADING" my FIREware!