Nice presentation. I ordered a battery from Bioenno a while back. It turned out the model I wanted was tied up in production for a while, and rather than asking me to wait, Kevin himself offered me a VERY SIGNIFICANT upgrade for free, to get me up and running faster. Stand-up guy, stand up company.
Thank you for posting this... really great presentation! I just upgraded to general and starting to build out a QRP POTA setup. This helped answer a lot of questions I had about what to do about a battery.
Thanks again Mike for great content. Started following you when you got started a couple years ago, same time i got started, and you have never failed to present informative videos. Because of you i bought my 891, my bioenno 12ah, my WRC, built my go box and got started in POTA, i guess you can say you've been a big influence for my YL and myself. You are our Tom Cruise of ham radio...lol! Keep up the good work and see you on the air. 73 de W8MJL & K8MKL
Thanks, Mike & Kevin. That was very interesting. I was amazed at the broad list of applications that they are involved with and the description of the internal board and how it works. I've been using LiFe batteries in my RC airplanes for some time (Rx, servo power). Of course our batteries do not have internal circuit and we use special chargers with balancing capability. I'm thinking about using one of these for my Ham Radio Portable operations.
Much as they keep your airplanes up in the sky, they will keep your radios running too. Absolutely fantastic batteries. You might need to configure your charger to operate without its balancing feature though. I had to do that with mine.
Thank you for sharing the live pro batteries he did answer a lot of questions for me because I never knew how they work. And actually how safe they are again Mike thank you for taking your time to put this on your RU-vid channel. 73 WD5ENH Steve
LiFePO4 batteries can be absolutely abused and they will take just about anything you throw at them. I've seen guys shoot them with a crossbow, overcharge the heck out of them, all kinds of things. I don't think they would work after that but they never explode or catch fire. Super safe.
Excellent presentation. Kevin sold me a 12V 12Ah battery and I've used it on road trips, state parks, and now I'm using it (testing) as the power supply for my home UHF/VHF radio.
Brilliant, I've recently asked a lot of questions about this elsewhere on the interweb and the answers have varied from being extremely wrong to haven't a clue. Finally, I can get some decent power for portable operations!
That's a lot of useful information about the product. I just bought the 15ah version with a wall charger. A bit of practice, surfing the learning curve for my FT857 and I will be in bidness.
Glad you found it useful, thanks for watching. I think you'll find that there isn't much learning curve at all. Just plug it into your 857 and your in bidness.
This looks like an updated presentation by Kevin, and it is informative just as the last presentation was... I really like my 20 Ah Bioenno LiFePO4 battery.
Awesome! Very interesting presentation! Probably as interesting as my own story with Bioenno :) ! The Bioenno batteries are hard to obtain in the Nordic and Baltic countries of the European Union, no dealers yet. So I wrote straight to the company asking for the info on how could I buy the 12V/ 20Ah pack and immediately got an answer from Kevin himself! The answer actually was " What's your address?". The ordering and paying was quick and easy. And then, a few weeks later I got a parcel at my door with my battery in it! Right on time, for I was finishing my go box and a video on it! My field test of the 12V/20Ah Bioenno just confirm what Kevin said about the duration of ham radio operation on one charge in his presentation. Accordingly to my measurements, my go-box was able to run off this battery for more than 3 hours at nearly full 100W power at a heavy duty cycle ( ~90 percent CW TX, 10 percent RX + a tablet PC) and it only consumed 14 Ah of 20 Ah available! Thanks again for a fine video! 73! Linas LY2H
@@hamradiotube I was charged for shipping around 130 USD , I don't have the papers at hand. One could say a lot, but it depends on the market and on the overal value for money. So as to the market, there is not much choice in this part of the world , except probably one German company selling LiFePo4 cells for DIY ( expensive but of good quality, I have a 12V/12Ah from them) or go the chinese way (why not actually if you know what you're doing :)). As to the value for money, I think the Bioenno, even with the high shipping costs included is a very good deal since it's certainly a very long time investment ( how many years would 2000 cycles make even for an active ham radio user? 10? more? ). :)
@@hamradiotube ... To be honest, in my case it's simple laziness! LOL After retiring from almost 50 years in low voltage systems engineering, batteries are my weak point because the systems I worked with seldom used them! Bioenno's presentation was a great piece of education.
I use the 20 amp hour battery with a power-gate to use as a ups system. I also used it with a 150 watt power inverter to power two PA speakers .With my radio I tested for over 6 hours and the PA speakers for there. I don't have any thing to monitor the battery, so I have no clue how much joice I had left. I love this battery and every thing is on with Anderson connecters.
It's certainly amazing how much power you can get out of these batteries. You can get a wattmeter to monitor your amperage and voltage like this: amzn.to/38Jtkpz I have 5 of these types and the Powerwerx one is the only one that is accurate. There are no shortage of ~$15 ones out there but beware, they will be off a little.
Good video Mike❗️👍 I am going back and checking out some of your older video since I haven’t been one of your subscribers very long. Looks like you’ve got a lot of good videos posted 73. KV5P
This answered a lot of my questions. And is still a valuable video 2 years later. I do have one question. And maybe I missed it. Can you have a Solar panel charging the battery while you are using the battery? Not sure if ever need to do that. But would be nice to know. Thanks for your videos. Hope to catch you some Tuesday evening on 10m.
I did almost zero editing on this video but I am always amazed at the amount of uhs that I edit out of ever one of my other videos. It’s really weird the things you don’t notice about yourself until you are editing your own content. It’s like, that’s how I sound?!
@@hamradiotube Absolutely... most people have no idea that they’re doing it. I work in a job where my interactions are recorded and that was something I had to work on. I did it a lot in the beginning and had no clue I was doing it. That being said I love your content. I’m in my early 40’s... which I guess still makes me a younger ham😁, and your videos are right up my alley. I find myself watching mostly you and ham radio crash course. I’ve been a ham for 5 years and I almost gave up on it due to the pushback I was getting from the old guard. I really got tired of hearing how I’m ruining the hobby by being a no-code extra. Literally every time it came up that I was an Extra some older ham would start complaining about it. It was very disheartening. You and Josh have really renewed my passion for the hobby, so when I say keep up the good work...I really mean it. There are younger or newer hams that need to know that there is a place for us, and not everyone set on making them feel less than because they didn’t have to take a code test.
I am very happy that I'm still considered "young" in something and I'm about to turn 41 in a couple weeks :( I've been a big fan of Josh's channel too. When I got my first Baofeng his channel was one that popped up a lot and I've been watching ever since. Fortunately I've never experienced too much pushback locally from the older hams. Most of the guys around me are really nice and encouraging. Being on RU-vid you'll get your share of ass hats but that just comes with the territory. The way I see it, people that complain about someone else's operating style, license class, no code extra (I'm a no code Extra accredited VE as well), are the same type of people that would say if you can't drive a stick you're not a real driver. They're just not capable of adapting to change and are prob a bit jealous that technology has surpassed them (don't get them started on SDR radios lol!). I know that there are a lot of great Elmers not only on RU-vid but in the real world too. I would encourage anyone who is subject to any kind of hostility to just brush it off and find a different repeater or club or whatever.
@@hamradiotube you are very welcome, Mike. I tried so many times to be here when you were live streaming but it never worked because of the different Time Zones we live. I already felt bad because of never making it to one of your life streams. I promise to get better. Happy sunday & stay safe...73's.
I just bought one of these batteries yesterday from DX Engineering. I charged it up last night. Today I'm going to set it up to run my Yaesu 2600m 2 meter radio in my pickup. My RV has lithium batteries so I'm familiar with them. My question is, how do I know the "state of charge" (percentage of power left} with these since voltage is no indicator? The system in my RV has an indicator in my monitoring system. Is there a way?
If the BMS built into the battery will handle varying inputs, why do I need a special charger (instead of a generic 12-14.4 volt type) to charge it? I would think that as long as I could be certain to restrict the input current, that the BMS would make the battery happy and I'd need one less piece of gear. And could even use a conventional MPPT controller. (Again, within the charge range limits.)
LiFePO4 batteries want a constant current/constant voltage charge. The reason you need a special charger for that type of chemistry is also due to the charging voltage of the cells. They charge up to 3.65v per cell, or 14.6 volts for the pack. Once saturated they will settle to about 13.3~ V. Other chemistries have different charge voltages so while you can technically use even a power supply for your radio to charge it, you will never fully charge it because you aren't going to a high enough voltage. Even LiPo (lithium polymer) batteries charge to a different cell voltage. Lead acid is even lower. The BMS (or pcb) in the Bioenno's protect the cells from over charge, over discharge, over temperature, and balance the cells voltage. I wouldn't say the BMS handles varying inputs. Not sure where you got that from. You will also need a solar charge controller specifically for LiFePO4 if you plan on going that route.
What's your call sign and name? LOL! I bought one a few months back, great battery. I had used my sealed lead acid booster pack to power portable and outgrew that real quick. My whole shack is run from a anderson power pole distribution block and I have run everything in my house shack with the bio during power outages. Just unplug the power supply, plug in the battery and I'm on the air.
Wouldn't those battery boosters absolutely destroy lead acid batteries? I love when the power goes out at my house. I immediately go to my radio and marvel at the zero noise floor. Its like I'm at a park, but I'm home. I love it.
I have their 28, 40, 60, and 100 watt solar panels I'm going to review. It hasn't been very sunny here since Memorial Day so I haven't been able to film a proper review yet. Initial tests have given me about 1.3-1.5 amps with the smaller ones and I'm hoping to use one of those with my G90 go box / solar generator. I suspect they will give me a bit more power during the summer as the sun is more overhead.
Why do the larger batteries (20A, 30A, etc) use a big gray Powerpole that most hams would simply have to cut off, when the same 45A style PowerPole that the charger uses would still exceed the discharge current of the battery?
Unfortunately I wouldn’t get your hopes up. I don’t really know the answer but I believe it has to do with shipping costs. You can order them but it would cost prob twice as much.
You have to calculate it based off how you operate. I go by a 50% duty cycle as I operate primarily portable running pileups. That totally changes the amount of time you can get.
@@hamradiotube Basically what i meant by "wrong" is that the calculation is done on "TX watts" which is missleading. E.g. lets say you have a ft891: That thing draws ~1A at just RX, 7A at 10W TX. So on 50/50 RX/TX @10W a 12AH battery will last for like 2:30h plus/minus. (~5h at 20/80 approx)
@@pulponair No you'd prob get more like 5 hours at 10 watts with a 12ah battery running ssb. A bit less with CW or Digital I suspect. I don't really care about the formulas though. I've got LOTS of actual on air time and I always have a meter in line to monitor my AH's used as you can't go by voltage at all. I've still not depleted my 20ah battery but I ran the 891 for about 4 hours at 90 watts and made 300 contacts. I used 14 amp hours. By that math I was using about 3.5 ah per hour. I would estimate almost 6 hours of use out of the 20ah running full on pileups. I haven't run qrp on that radio in so long I don't have any data to back up the operating time, but it would be pretty long even with a 12ah battery.
@@hamradiotube Glad to hear that it lasts longer than it seems. 300 contacts in 4 hours? That is one contact every 48 seconds, sounds like a hard day ;)
I built my own portable power box, currently has a lead acid battery in it, but will be changing to lithium Iron to make lighter and better power cycles, excellent video, thank you , 73
