PF5 bms availability?

[BlackwaterPark]

So, it's looking like i'm on my own in addressing this issue with one of my brand new PF5 batteries, and it's also looking like the first logical step would be to pull the bms and swap out with another one. At the time I bought them, the vendors also had spare Bms's for purchase, but I don't see them anywhere any more. Rather than waiting weeks to get a response, I figured I would just buy one, but I can't find any now. Anyone know where they are available?

***edit *** I think I was thinking of the SoK server batteries on second thought..I had ordered and put together a system which had those earlier this year, so I must have had my wires crossed on this one. I probably should have went with those myself in retrospect...I wouldn't be sitting here with a bricked $1,100 battery if I had just spent the extra bill per unit. Oh well, live and learn right?

[ClassicCrazy]

That is too bad  you can't get a new bms or battery swapped out under warranty. 
Do you use closed loop ? I don't know your setup.
But there are other types of bms available . Depends on how you want to integrate everything , monitoring, etc. And if you are willing to make any modifications to make a different bms fit your case.
Some bms if you are lucky use the same type plugs that go to the balance leads.
Yes it can be a bit of messing around if everything doesn't line up . Not sure I have watched any videos of a teardown of that battery .
Larry 

[BlackwaterPark]

That is too bad  you can't get a new bms or battery swapped out under warranty. 
Do you use closed loop ? I don't know your setup.
But there are other types of bms available . Depends on how you want to integrate everything , monitoring, etc. And if you are willing to make any modifications to make a different bms fit your case.
Some bms if you are lucky use the same type plugs that go to the balance leads.
Yes it can be a bit of messing around if everything doesn't line up . Not sure I have watched any videos of a teardown of that battery .
Larry 

Weeks ago, they asked me to send the ssn and receipts for the battery in question, and said they were "working on a solution" and maybe sending a bms. A week ago, I got a call, after prodding a rep at NAZ who's been trying to help me sort this mess out, and I get a call from MP, and he said that lay he knew, they were going to send a bms out. I even offered to pay for it. The call got dropped mid conversation on his end, and that's the last I heard from them. During that conversation, he told me it's better to run them open loop. That's not the first time I've heard this, which begs the question...why the hell bother to engineer a closed loop system if that's the case??  I don't know...the hammer seems to swing very slowly over there at MP, and I'm not holding out much hope that this battery will be anything other than a $1200 paperweight from here on out. I'm willing to try another bms...if i can find information on which ones will work. I can't say at this point I'm worried about violating the warranty terms, based upon my experience with them after this experience. I'm just going to build my batteries from here on out though, I know that for sure, so I'll be getting some practice with bms installation and particulars at any rate.

[ClassicCrazy]

It seems like dealers have those batteries in stock again now.
Call up again and ask them to send a new battery under warranty or refund.
Closed loop isn't that much better than open loop. It sounds nice as plug and play and no hassles . But I haven't seen closed loop  work so well on what I have played around with here with different controllers and batteries, etc. So I just stick to open loop.
But I get what you mean , if it was all advertised as plug and play closed loop system but doesn't work right, that is a bit of a bummer. I hope you get a new bms or battery .
Larry 

[BlackwaterPark]

fortunately, I just heard back from one of the MP guys an hour ago, and they said they had one for me and are going to ship it, so there's progress.  If I can give MP props anywhere in this experience, it's with him (Ronald) and his walking me through their updater after mailing me the correct interface tool, because trying to explain that updater program to a guy that hasn't used a computer since windows xp days was a little trying, i'm sure.  It wasn't a quick process, but he took the time.  That being said, it seems like there should be a more efficient way to do it, like through a phone app like the other midnite gear.

   I don't really understand the advantages of closed loop I guess, so at least if you're going to run open loop anyway, and get better charge rates as was explained to me, there seems to be precious little reason to stay within the brand ecosystem, and just go with the better deals, which is clearly DIY

[mahendra]

Yes Ronald  is your guy.
Midnite has been slow recently ,but they are usually sure of what they are doing.I had my fair share of frustration recently as well.  

In this age of technology it is hard to live without closed loop at least for me and persons i know that uses it.

Closed loop Battery communication technology still needs some work and i trust  it Will get better in time.

[BlackwaterPark]

Yes Ronald  is your guy.
Midnite has been slow recently ,but they are usually sure of what they are doing.I had my fair share of frustration recently as well.  

In this age of technology it is hard to live without closed loop at least for me and persons i know that uses it.

Closed loop Battery communication technology still needs some work and i trust  it Will get better in time.

So what are the benefits, such that would cause you to say you it's hard to live without? From my end, the two things that i've seen on my MNGP screen are the SoC (which i presume to be more accurate than the WBjr?) and that it will give me the voltage values of the highest and the lowest cell in the entire group...which seems of rather limited functionality. The guy I talked with on the phone (mark, maybe?) said I'd get a better charge running open loop, so I can't see where that advantage wouldn't supersede a lightly more accurate battery health reading. What an I missing here?

[Brucey]

Yes Ronald  is your guy.
Midnite has been slow recently ,but they are usually sure of what they are doing.I had my fair share of frustration recently as well.  

In this age of technology it is hard to live without closed loop at least for me and persons i know that uses it.

Closed loop Battery communication technology still needs some work and i trust  it Will get better in time.

So what are the benefits, such that would cause you to say you it's hard to live without? From my end, the two things that i've seen on my MNGP screen are the SoC (which i presume to be more accurate than the WBjr?) and that it will give me the voltage values of the highest and the lowest cell in the entire group...which seems of rather limited functionality. The guy I talked with on the phone (mark, maybe?) said I'd get a better charge running open loop, so I can't see where that advantage wouldn't supersede a lightly more accurate battery health reading. What an I missing here?

From my understanding a battery bms is highly unlikely to be as accuracy as a whiz bang jr or victron smartshunt. Generally bms units have trouble detecting very small loads which a shunt can see no problem at all.

[ClassicCrazy]

Yes the Whizbang will be more accurate if set up correctly . The SOC on batteries can get all messed up - at least on most that I have  used. I have a Victron smart shunt and that is very accurate. The Whizbang would be okay but when I upgraded my system it would have been a lot of trouble to take it out and put it in the proper place so I just left it where it was and got the Victron Smart Shunt which easily integrated into my Home Assistant which I use for everything now.
And I got a computer program written for my hawkes bay so I can get that data now too. By the way the program should work for a Barcelona and probably a Rosie too but I don't have a Rosie to test it on. If someone was a bit geeky they could work with chatgpt to write in the appropriate Rosie code. I used Chatgpt to write the program. Took awile with lots of mistakes but it finally got to work well and stable.
Larry

[ClassicCrazy]

Regarding the closed or open loop - not too many differences if setpoints are set right.
Larry

[BlackwaterPark]

Yes the Whizbang will be more accurate if set up correctly . The SOC on batteries can get all messed up - at least on most that I have  used. I have a Victron smart shunt and that is very accurate. The Whizbang would be okay but when I upgraded my system it would have been a lot of trouble to take it out and put it in the proper place so I just left it where it was and got the Victron Smart Shunt which easily integrated into my Home Assistant which I use for everything now.
And I got a computer program written for my hawkes bay so I can get that data now too. By the way the program should work for a Barcelona and probably a Rosie too but I don't have a Rosie to test it on. If someone was a bit geeky they could work with chatgpt to write in the appropriate Rosie code. I used Chatgpt to write the program. Took awile with lots of mistakes but it finally got to work well and stable.
Larry

hmmm, well this all changes my approach then. I was actually going to get the Solar assistant program...it's the home assistant similar to that?

[Brucey]

Yes the Whizbang will be more accurate if set up correctly . The SOC on batteries can get all messed up - at least on most that I have  used. I have a Victron smart shunt and that is very accurate. The Whizbang would be okay but when I upgraded my system it would have been a lot of trouble to take it out and put it in the proper place so I just left it where it was and got the Victron Smart Shunt which easily integrated into my Home Assistant which I use for everything now.
And I got a computer program written for my hawkes bay so I can get that data now too. By the way the program should work for a Barcelona and probably a Rosie too but I don't have a Rosie to test it on. If someone was a bit geeky they could work with chatgpt to write in the appropriate Rosie code. I used Chatgpt to write the program. Took awile with lots of mistakes but it finally got to work well and stable.
Larry

hmmm, well this all changes my approach then. I was actually going to get the Solar assistant program...it's the home assistant similar to that?

Solar Assistant would be what you want to monitor Rosie/HB/Barcelona. Runs on a Pi. HA also runs on a Pi. But often people will feed solar assistant data to home assistant.

For strict monitoring of your gear and not whole house automation I'd suggest SA.

[ClassicCrazy]

Yes the Whizbang will be more accurate if set up correctly . The SOC on batteries can get all messed up - at least on most that I have  used. I have a Victron smart shunt and that is very accurate. The Whizbang would be okay but when I upgraded my system it would have been a lot of trouble to take it out and put it in the proper place so I just left it where it was and got the Victron Smart Shunt which easily integrated into my Home Assistant which I use for everything now.
And I got a computer program written for my hawkes bay so I can get that data now too. By the way the program should work for a Barcelona and probably a Rosie too but I don't have a Rosie to test it on. If someone was a bit geeky they could work with chatgpt to write in the appropriate Rosie code. I used Chatgpt to write the program. Took awile with lots of mistakes but it finally got to work well and stable.
Larry

hmmm, well this all changes my approach then. I was actually going to get the Solar assistant program...it's the home assistant similar to that?

Solar Assistant would be what you want to monitor Rosie/HB/Barcelona. Runs on a Pi. HA also runs on a Pi. But often people will feed solar assistant data to home assistant.

For strict monitoring of your gear and not whole house automation I'd suggest SA.

The new software I just made runs on a raspberry pi or any linux computer. You plug in a usb to canbus converter, plug the canbus in from the extra can port on mngp or from inside the Hawkes Bay , Barcelona, or Rosie .  The python code I have runs and decodes the voltage , whizbang, current, etc and sends it out as MQTT with auto discovery by Home Assistant. But the MQTT could also go to any other program like grafana , an android app, etc.
It does not have the Rosie canbus fields in it but those could be added.
Pretty sure it is basically doing exactly what Solar Assistant is doing . Maybe Solar Assistant makes a few displays inside it ? I don't know haven't really ever looked at it.
I just mention this project because it is flexible and what a lot of people used to be looking for to monitor . It is free too. https://github.com/larduino/hawkesbay-can2mqtt/tree/pi5_iotstack
Larry

[ClassicCrazy]

To clarify my monitoring setup - I run Home Assistant on a mini pc ( in a proxmox vm but could be stand alone) . It could also run on a raspberry pi.
I have a separate Raspberry Pi runnning some other programs like grafana , influx, telegraf , mosquitto , etc. This raspberry pi is also running the can2mqtt program I developed ( with the help of chatgpt and some other AI) . The current version is running on this as a docker container but I started out running it on an older pi running stand alone . It will run either way.
I should try it on the $15 raspberry pi zero2w board. It would probably run okay on that only issue is it doesn't have a full size usb port so an adapter cable would be needed. And it doesn't  have an ethernet jack and  uses wifi which is what I  used on the other pi.
I am kind of amazed I  understand all this pi and linux stuff as well as I do now because I didn't have much knowledge a few years back.
If I can get to it this winter I will try to write a step by step tutorial with photos of how to get the software running on a pi . Maybe I could even write a script that will install it all automatically from just the command line.
Right  now I am a bit too busy with other stuff to get that done but maybe sometime this winter.
Larry