Hey everyone,
This is Joshua from Lexceon - we are the ones doing the Kickstarter you posted - thanks for sharing! I just wanted to post here to say hello and to answer any questions you might have about using the Batlab, how it could help with your projects, any specific features you'd like to see in a product like this, etc.
The Batlab is definitely a great tool for your use in building powerwalls. There aren't any other systems like this on the market for less than $1000 and is a big need in building lithium battery packs, as you all know. Being able to characterize each cell can *significantly* improve the performance of your battery packs, and the Batlab is designed to facilitate that. A lot of your powerwalls use many lithium cells - they are large packs. One exciting feature of the Batlab is that you can start small and grow your system to fit your needs. If you only want to build one pack, maybe a single Batlab is sufficient to test all of your cells. If you build many powerwalls for personal use or to sell, then purchasing additional Batlabs to increase your system capacity, but with small incremental investments. "The system grows with you."
I'll post a bit about me and our team below if you're interested, but first, here is our intro video which provides an overview of the Batlab and what it can do.
About me and our team
Our team is made up of 5 recent graduates from the University of Kentucky in Lexington, KY. 4 of us majored in EE (with myself and one of my partners getting our MSEE degree), and 1 in ME (currently pursuing PhD in ME). We worked together in all of our classes and assembled our team for our start-up. We each bring a skillset to the team that we hope will help us be successful. Myself, I generally do all of the PCB design and DFM work, my partners Daniel handles embedded firmware, Alex handles PC software, Hayden manages scheduling, purchasing, and "sales", and Chris handles system integration, thermal design, and DFM work. All of us were heavily involved in the University of Kentucky Solar Car Team (we build and race solar powered race cars) during our years of study, with all of us holding technical leadership roles on the solar car team. During my tenure on the team, I served as both the Electrical Team Lead (managing all electrical aspects of the solar car) and overall Team Manager (managing all technical and non-technical aspects of the team operations). The UK solar car team is primarily student-managed with occasional faculty advising.
While working on the solar car team, we designed and built multiple custom lithium battery packs for racing, and a variety of custom electronics such as Battery Management Systems, Data Collection Systems, etc. I probably designed and built upwards of 20 different system boards during my experience on the team.
These are some good links for the UK Solar Car team if you're interested in seeing what it is about.
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You can see multiple pictures and footage of the battery packs we designed and built on both our kickstarter page and at those links.
When we built these lithium battery packs, we would spend a lot of time characterizing cells for optimizing the pack design. The latest pack, for example, is comprised of 420 cells (35 modules in series, each module having 12 cells in parallel). We purchased roughly 650 cells, fully characterized each of the 650 cells (using circuitry designed for this task) and selected the best 420 cells and determined which cells to put in which modules. It was through this process we realized that a similar system can be used by other people. That's how we came to design this system. This is exactly the process I imagine you go through (or would like to go through) to build the best powerwall you can.
I'd love to hear any feedback you have on our design or campaign. We are definitely a start-up (formally started over the summer) so a lot of this is new to us. We have the engineering experience to make a successful project technically, but are brand new to the sales/marketing side of things. Any technical or non-technical comments/concerns/questions would be greatly appreciated! I'd be happy to answer any questions or comments you have as well!
Cheers,
Joshua