No repair of Victron chargecontrollers

[eTobey]

No repair for these victrons...

[darkspr1te]

yup, i have 3 x 100/50 in my parts bin because you cannot get to all the parts due to potting compound. also they use a mcu whi often goes and you cannot source firmware for it either.


darkspr1te

[eTobey]

Can you say more about the circumstances? Where was it build in, how much did it run?

A MPPT charge controller would seem like a nice open source project ;-). Somethine that would help the enviroment. Clean (almost) Energy, und less waste.

Too bad i went for a Ebike controller.

[fourtytwo42]

I keep reading potted for environmental reasons on these manufacturers websites but IMOP it's to protect the design and make them unrepairable!

I design my own high voltage pcb's for outdoor use and just use a clear high voltage varnish that burns away easily with a soldering iron and hardly glues the components to the pcb at all so very easy to repair and see IC markings etc so that would be perfectly feasible for commercial manufacturers to use too if they had the will.

[eTobey]

Indee, in my DC controller, i have even used just foam, to keep some rather long caps from vibrating.

I would not mind, it beeing unrepairable, if it would be unbrakable.

But isnt only the case beeing broken there? Nowadays, you can easly manufacture those! Or just use a metal box, i does not have to look pretty.

[eTobey]

It has been repaired:

[coppice]

I keep reading potted for environmental reasons on these manufacturers websites but IMOP it's to protect the design and make them unrepairable!

The standard technique for environmental protection is a conformal coating. Potting is rarely needed, unless the device is designed for permanent immersion.

[Fflint]

One can use an easily removable potting compound or one that sets like a rock. See recent Deye hybrid inverter teardown by Dave. Somehow the parts were potted, but he dug the potting compound out with ease with a flat screwdriver.

Environmental reasons my arse.

[plopa]

A MPPT charge controller would seem like a nice open source project

i found a very interresting opensource mppt charge controller project:
https://www.instructables.com/DIY-1kW-MPPT-Solar-Charge-Controller/

it has some useless add ons but the general principle, efficiency and description is good for rebuild and learn.

not all parts can be sourced as cheap as in the instructions especially if you want to buy at mouser and lcsc only.

it can be scaled up to about 150V.

many could be put in parallel if they communicate which each other about the output voltage and on a solar system you need more mppt controllers anyway.

has anybody ideas where to source broken 150V to 600V mppt charge controllers for reverse engineer or get mppt schematics for that voltage range?