Tired of AC bricks? Try the DCBuddy

[BZOFIQ]

You guys dismissed controllability early on which was a mistake IMHO.

A controllable module that emulates and EB8/EB832 would have been enormously useful.

Either make it that one can control ON/OFF state of the 12/24V outputs via APEX or provide a board with relays that emulates an EB strip - PLEASE

 

[cdemoss01]

OP are you planning on selling these?

 

[Mattiejay6]

OP are you planning on selling these?

he is.. the link to his website in in the thread a few times

 

[BZOFIQ]

Looks like a fun project but without an APEX (CANbus) controllability you're reinventing the wheel when a solid tested industrial solution already exists.

You need a power supply with outputs use these - all neatly mounted on a DIN rail.

+ This.

Notice there is a 6-Position, 12 Position, 18 Position and A-Z sells every possible combination of fused, unfused, manually switched, etc, etc,

You want two power supplies for redundancy

Use 2 of these these

plus this

Plus a combination of these and you're in business.

You say...but I want to incorporate battery backup, well that's already covered too.

Throw this into the mix and you have a great battery backup!

You want 12V instead of 24V, yeah you get the point - that's covered too.





You know what's not covered? CONTROLLABILITY via APEX!

Control each output in a manner you'd control outlets in an EB8/832 and you have an amazing device. One can then wire relays and create their entire control walls with both low voltage outputs and high voltage outputs via relays.

 

[theatrus]

Looks like a fun project but without an APEX (CANbus) controllability you're reinventing the wheel when a solid tested industrial solution already exists.

You need a power supply with outputs use these - all neatly mounted on a DIN rail.

+ This.

Notice there is a 6-Position, 12 Position, 18 Position and A-Z sells every possible combination of fused, unfused, manually switched, etc, etc,

You want two power supplies for redundancy

Use 2 of these these

plus this

Plus a combination of these and you're in business.

You say...but I want to incorporate battery backup, well that's already covered too.

Throw this into the mix and you have a great battery backup!

You want 12V instead of 24V, yeah you get the point - that's covered too.





You know what's not covered? CONTROLLABILITY via APEX!

Control each output in a manner you'd control outlets in an EB8/832 and you have an amazing device. One can then wire relays and create their entire control walls with both low voltage outputs and high voltage outputs via relays.

The current version features both per port on/off control, current monitoring, and OCP. It doesn't integrate with an APEX (being proprietary and all), but thats what both the local web interface, CANbus, and Home Assistant integration are for

I don't have a DIN rail mount, but the back dovetail mounts would allow a quick adapter to be made if you're already rail-enabled.

 

[theatrus]

As someone who is not tech savvy, whats the best way to go about Home Assistant? I ordered HA Green, but let me tell you what.. getting this thing to work... is a nightmare.. cant even connect to the thing to do the initial set up.

My recommendation would be the Home Assistant Green or Yellow as a managed box to run HA on.

As for the initial setup, its been pretty flawless for me, but sometimes the DNS name system can just go weird. If you can figure out the IP it got from your router, getting to http://thatip:8123 should get you to the setup wizard.

 

[theatrus]

OP are you planning on selling these?

Yup. The links from https://reefvolt.com will take you there.

 

[BZOFIQ]

The current version features both per port on/off control, current monitoring, and OCP. It doesn't integrate with an APEX (being proprietary and all), but thats what both the local web interface, CANbus, and Home Assistant integration are for

I don't have a DIN rail mount, but the back dovetail mounts would allow a quick adapter to be made if you're already rail-enabled.

So you're saying that futzing with another web interface, canbus and/or home assistant integration beats the ease of plugging it into an APEX via Aquabus and having it show up on the dashboard?

Neptune Systems wouldn't release anything like I described above because it would canibalize the sales of their EBs, but you've missed a huge market of APEX users who would enjoy a plug-n-play solution.

 

[theatrus]

So you're saying that futzing with another web interface, canbus and/or home assistant integration beats the ease of plugging it into an APEX via Aquabus and having it show up on the dashboard?

Neptune Systems wouldn't release anything like I described above because it would canibalize the sales of their EBs, but you've missed a huge market of APEX users who would enjoy a plug-n-play solution.

I'm not interested in supporting a proprietary ecosystem and especially building a product around it. The Home Assistant integration is frankly just as easy to setup. I am ignoring all the APEX customers (I'm one of them!) but I'm tired of all the little silos forming in the automation world. HA can bridge APEX to other devices, which is what I use it for amongst a host of other automation functions.

There are ways of doing this, as emulating an EB832 over AquaBus (which is CAN signaled but isn't CAN) is possible, but its going to be a reverse engineering and integration challenge, with a party who isn't at all interested in you doing this.

The firmware is open and I'm not stopping anyone from doing this - the CAN bus hardware is even there (though by default runs as true CAN bus, it can be routed to a UART)

 

[BZOFIQ]

... but I'm tired of all the little silos forming in the automation world.

That, you'll never change.

There are ways of doing this, as emulating an EB832 over AquaBus (which is CAN signaled but isn't CAN) is possible, but its going to be a reverse engineering and integration challenge, with a party who isn't at all interested in you doing this. The firmware is open and I'm not stopping you

Hoping @_AV saves the day and introduces an emulation board sooner or later but I understand why you're not interested.


I don't have the skill/equipment necessary to develop this - you each do.

One can hope.

 

[theatrus]

Just a small teaser as I'm working on organizing the battery module layout.

Some basics:
- 12V-36V LiFePO4 battery support with built in smart charger, automatic scheduled charge capability. Uses a TI BQ25756.
- 24-36V input from the wall
- 12V-36V (fully programmable) output from the battery back to the output port.
- 10-15A battery current support, max fuse size 20A.
- Stand-alone or with DCBuddy support. Has its own ESP32.

The DCBuddy and DCBuddy Split (12V fixed ports/24V fixed ports) continues to make progress at the factory. A set of cases continue to roll of the 3D printer in the background. I may have finally bought the right size heat-shrink to make the 32V adapters.

 

[MikeTheNewbie]

I'm not interested in supporting a proprietary ecosystem and especially building a product around it. The Home Assistant integration is frankly just as easy to setup. I am ignoring all the APEX customers (I'm one of them!) but I'm tired of all the little silos forming in the automation world. HA can bridge APEX to other devices, which is what I use it for amongst a host of other automation functions.

There are ways of doing this, as emulating an EB832 over AquaBus (which is CAN signaled but isn't CAN) is possible, but its going to be a reverse engineering and integration challenge, with a party who isn't at all interested in you doing this.

The firmware is open and I'm not stopping anyone from doing this - the CAN bus hardware is even there (though by default runs as true CAN bus, it can be routed to a UART)

I'm also very interested in EB832 emulation for both the switching and the current measurements. I was planning to contribute to the project as I thought it would be easy to reverse engineer given we have direct control of the inputs and the outputs. I whipped out my scope and CAN analyzer but after connecting them I was disappointed to see Neptune is not communicating using the regular CAN protocol

I appreciate @theatrus for making this open source, that means someone more skilled or than me can try that out. I have a few names in mind. Will tag them in a bit.

 

[MikeTheNewbie]

@mard and @garbled are the smart and tech savvy people I was thinking about in my previous post.
I wonder if any of you is interested in reverse engineering the aquabus communication between Apex and the EB932 so it can be integrated in this alternative open source smart DC distribution unit

 

[MikeTheNewbie]

Just a small teaser as I'm working on organizing the battery module layout.

Some basics:
- 12V-36V LiFePO4 battery support with built in smart charger, automatic scheduled charge capability. Uses a TI BQ25756.
- 24-36V input from the wall
- 12V-36V (fully programmable) output from the battery back to the output port.
- 10-15A battery current support, max fuse size 20A.
- Stand-alone or with DCBuddy support. Has its own ESP32.

The DCBuddy and DCBuddy Split (12V fixed ports/24V fixed ports) continues to make progress at the factory. A set of cases continue to roll of the 3D printer in the background. I may have finally bought the right size heat-shrink to make the 32V adapters.

I was under the impression you were planning to support 12v lead acid batteries:S do you have a LiFePo battery pack in mind?
I recently bought an ecoflow delta 2 but I'm just using the AC output to power my entire system and switching off the heaters during an outage. Maybe I should have waited and DIY a pack with your product

 

[oreo54]

I was under the impression you were planning to support 12v lead acid batteries:S do you have a LiFePo battery pack in mind?
I recently bought an ecoflow delta 2 but I'm just using the AC output to power my entire system and switching off the heaters during an outage. Maybe I should have waited and DIY a pack with your product

This is just an fyi that I picked up from Reefbum vid.
Apparently they make LiFe batts with built in circuitry so you can substitute for a lead acid batt in things like APC UPS's.
In other words condition the PB charge circuit to the specs needed to charge a LiFe batt.
Not sure how it would apply here but when you get choices it's always a good thing.

 

[BZOFIQ]

@mard and @garbled are the smart and tech savvy people I was thinking about in my previous post.
I wonder if any of you is interested in reverse engineering the aquabus communication between Apex and the EB932 so it can be integrated in this alternative open source smart DC distribution unit

Im pretty certain @_AV has this figured out; just hoping he can do something with this knowledge.

There are online resources that explain the Aquabus protocol.

 

[David_CO]

Im pretty certain @_AV has this figured out; just hoping he can do something with this knowledge.

There are online resources that explain the Aquabus protocol.

Just because someone could make it communicate via aquabus doesn’t mean it would really work. It’s almost certain there would need to be code modifications made to AOS to support which imo is basically a showstopper.

 

[BZOFIQ]

Just because someone could make it communicate via aquabus doesn’t mean it would really work. It’s almost certain there would need to be code modifications made to AOS to support which imo is basically a showstopper.

Why?

The device would appear as EB powerstrip to the controller is my understanding. That's the whole idea behind emulating a device.

 

[theatrus]

I was under the impression you were planning to support 12v lead acid batteries:S do you have a LiFePo battery pack in mind?
I recently bought an ecoflow delta 2 but I'm just using the AC output to power my entire system and switching off the heaters during an outage. Maybe I should have waited and DIY a pack with your product

So this charger will support 12V lead acid, it just will require a bit of threshold changes instead of adopting the stock LiFe/LiIon profiles and introducing a trickle charge state. The BQ25756 is pretty programmable.

I too still run a 12V lead acid.

This is just an fyi that I picked up from Reefbum vid.
Apparently they make LiFe batts with built in circuitry so you can substitute for a lead acid batt in things like APC UPS's.
In other words condition the PB charge circuit to the specs needed to charge a LiFe batt.
Not sure how it would apply here but when you get choices it's always a good thing.

I'd only use these BMS-included battery packs if you're looking for LiFePO4. The voltages are "close enough" but again, the battery charger IC used here is programmable.

 

[theatrus]

Why?

The device would appear as EB powerstrip to the controller is my understanding. That's the whole idea behind emulating a device.

You're limited by what the EB832 communication can report. For example, it may never really properly report voltage or current correctly depending on how the communication packets are formed and what data is being sent.

As a starting point, some of the EB8 fields were documented here:

AquaBusLib/src/EB8.cpp at master · Stonyx/AquaBusLib

Contribute to Stonyx/AquaBusLib development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

ESPHome builds on top of (optionally) Arduino and the ESP-IDF framework, so as long as the UART layer is ported from FreeModBus and the right frames are sent, it should be quite possible. Never say never, but not my current priority.