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Comment by dwedge | Hacker News Reader

I know a guy who tried doing something like this and burnt his house down. One of the batteries exploded and took the others with it.

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I was working on an LED project that involved some reasonably-sized lithium batteries, and the guy in the hardware store said "I don't want to hear about you in the news tomorrow". That really stuck with me, and I say it sometimes when I think someone's going to do something dangerous.

Yes, always have a fire plan in mind when starting a lithium battery project. They go up very quickly and generate a ton of choking smoke. It only takes one oopsie with a screwdriver or dropping a cell to start a fire.

That's why you don't touch Lithium Ion packs unless you know what you are doing. I've repaired many Bosch packs before I tried building my own and seeing the guts of professionally designed and robotically assembled packs after they're a few years old is a very sobering exercise in what to do and what definitely not to do.

There are a bunch of youtubers that go out of their way to give massively dangerous advice to people and I always wonder what their liability situation is.

While you are Not My Engineer and <disclaimers> .. are there any bloggers / vloggers that are or at least seem to be giving good advice that you are comfortable passing on?

Yes, there is an Australian dude that has pretty much seen it all, and he's paid his tuition fees so he's a lot more careful now.

I'll look up his name tomorrow, it's been years since I last looked at that (it's 5 am after a night of hacking so I'm off to bed).

Found it:

https://www.youtube.com/c/HBPowerwall

I like the simplicity, I don't like some of the wiring choices but I'm not sure if that is to be code compliant in Australia. Enjoy!

I was just looking for the comment telling me this is _probably_ a bad idea, so thanks!

Driving a car down a busy highway is way more dangerous than assembling one of these packs and storing it in your garage.

Sure, life is all about risk - no doubt about that. But I guess I'm not tooling down the highway in a DIY contraption I built in my spare time with little regard for safety from plans I found on an Internet forum and parts bought from Ali Express.

Not to say that _you_ shouldn't do this ... just be careful out there!

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