🔋 Build a 320Ah Portable Power Station | DIY RV & Off-Grid Power!

Welcome to Dude RV. Hey, I appreciate you stopping by and of course say it with me. You got here just in time. That's right just in time because it's Friday and it's time for another edition of Friday's Fives. This is actually a special pop-up edition of Friday's Fives. In case you don't know Friday's Fives is normally a compilation video, 20 to 30 minutes long, four to six products. Occasionally I get the opportunity to work with a product that ends up being a standalone and I call them pop-up videos. Pop-up videos usually require more effort on my part. We're all, wait a minute, all the background watchers you're wanting to know. Waterfall's still not working. I haven't worked on the wall this week. Trying to get caught up. We had lots of rain the other day and I discovered an unpleasant truth. There's a gopher hole right here. And it's going straight down. So all the water's coming out of there and going right down there. So I got to plug that and you can see that I got lots more plugging to do. I like my sand pile but boy it's just it's horrible when I start a project and it rains. Anyway, let's get to this pop-up video. So go, not sure how they want it pronounced, go kilowatt hour, go KWH, go KWA, go KWA. They sent us their 12.8 volt, 320 amp hour, 4,000 watt hour LifePo4 battery built-in app monitoring BMS. So I don't have to have a separate BMS system to know what's going on with my battery. I got an app for that now. All right now on a recent, so recently we went up to Palo Pinto Mountain State Park and I was truck camping. I actually drug my little trailer up there to do some kayaking. I had a tent with me and I realized, you know, so I rely on a CPAP machine and I got to have a refrigerator. Both of those things require 12 volt power or 110. So I've been going to a campsite to power my CPAP but I actually have a 12 volt brick for my CPAP machine. If only I had a 12 volt battery bank big enough to power the refrigerator and the CPAP. Well, by golly, 320 amp hours should get me through the night, right? So I need a couple of things. I need a way to charge the battery. I need a way to hold the battery and I need a way to distribute the power. So I need to be able to gather the power with a charging system, store the power in the battery and distribute. And this one battery has the same footprint as any other standard battery, automotive size battery. It is taller but it has more power than three 100 amp hour batteries and it fits into pretty much the same space. So I'm going to take this big battery and I built it a special home. Using scrap lumber, we're going to mount a battery with possible plans of a future expansion and then we're going to have our distribution. So charge and distribution will all be inside the box. We need a 12 to 24, 12, 24 volt automatic charger. We have the charger itself. I'll be taking the alligator clips off and we'll be hard wiring that to the battery. All right. So that's to get the charge in from a 110. So I can charge this from a 110 wall socket in about 12 hours. They've got the specifications are on. Because it is a lithium ion battery and it has its own battery management system, you could dump a bunch of power in it. So if you're going to connect this, you wouldn't want to use it like as a starting battery. You'd want to use it as a house battery. But if you connect this directly to the alternator, in some cases it can burn up the alternator because it'll take as much as that alternator will put out and the alternator just can't keep up. A distribution fuse panel. We'll have a disconnect outside so that I can turn the whole system off. I have the fuse block to protect the system. There is a hard 60 amp breaker that will be mounted in here. Since most of what I'm doing is going to be 12 volt power, I don't plan on putting an inverter in here just yet, but I have expansion room so I can put an inverter in the middle here. I can get a 2000 watt inverter and drop right in there. Most of what I power is 12 volts. So I'm going to put in three, actually there'll be four cigarette style plugs. This panel is really cool because it has two USB ports. It tells me how much power is in the battery bank. There's an on and off switch. I presume that's going to be for the battery bank itself. Nope, that'll be for all the plugs. This will be going in about right there, thereabouts. And then the dedicated CPAP plug will be right above that. CPAP plug on this side and then the big panel here. In the future, if I put an inverter in, it'll go right there. That way I have space for two batteries and all my stuff. Maybe a little overkill. That's a heavy duty switch, but it looks cool though. I'm going to drill a hole and put it right there. We're getting there. Now I need to put my panel in and then we start doing some wiring. We have the power. I have the in-light panel and we have our dedicated plug for the CPAP. Now I'm going to put in the 60 amp disconnect breaker and the fuse block on the inside of this wall here. All components are in place. We just need to wire it all together. The Dooderby black box is ready. Well, for the moment anyway. Got it all wired in. Of course, it wasn't real. This is not an elaborate setup. I have the switch. There's my switch. We're off. If I get an over amperage, the 60 amp breaker will trip and I can reset it right there. I like that the big disconnect switch came with protectors, so that's cool. Still have to be a little bit careful with this one because that's still... But there again, this is just the battery box. This is not a gearbox at all. For now, I have left the charger not connected because I'm going to be doing an inverter. I want to show you the app because there's an app for this battery. We're on. The black box is done. All right, so we got it all put together. Believe it or not, surprisingly enough, it's all working. Nothing has exploded. We're currently charging the highest rate that the P20 smart charger will go. It's putting out a 3.1. It's going pretty quick, but how do we really know what it's doing? There's an app for that. Let's take a look at the app. Our app is called the Go Kilowatt Hour. K-W-H. Go. Anyway, I know that's pretty light. Moving right along. We're going to do a connection. You're going to probably either need to put a charger on the battery or put a load on the battery to get the Bluetooth to wake up because it's in a standby mode. I personally encountered a little bit of trouble, but all you really have to do is either scan the barcode on the battery or it'll automatically identify it. If it's already activated, it'll just show up when you launch the Go Kilowatt app. Boom. I've named the device, the battery, Blackbox One. We show that we're 99% charged. Battery shows that we're 99% charged. We've got plenty of power going in. You can see our temperature settings. No errors, no emergency alerts. It shows that this battery has four cells. We know where our battery status is. We need to put a load on it and see if we get any additional info. We have a refrigerator. We're going to go into the dedicated CPAP. We have a complete portable 12-volt power system. Ready for expansion, ready to add a 110 power or a 110 inverter. This is a perfect solution for my needs. It could very well be a perfect solution for your needs as well. All of these items are available on Amazon. Being the gracious host that I am, I'm going to give you the opportunity to go check them out on Amazon so that you might be able to make a purchase. If you do make a purchase, earn a little bit of money. That helps support the channel so I keep creating content such as this. Also, I'll provide you with a link in the cards above that Friday's Finds 2026 shopping list. It shows all of these items that have been reviewed in 2026. I'll also provide you with direct page links in the description below. Click the more button that opens up. I am an influencer and I do earn some money. Your business is most appreciated. I like this battery. I feel very confident. I personally had some issues with it in the beginning because I didn't understand about waking up the BMS. I ended up going down a rabbit hole and found it on another app. Anyway, I got it all sorted. Finally, customer care. Their customer support. There's no investment in it for them. I didn't buy it from them, but they were so gracious. They helped me get it all back on flight. Their customer support is awesome. That's what I'm trying to tell you. I'm trying to tell you their customer support really works. I've actually worked with their customer support and they're good people. All right, we're done. Hey, I'm rambling. I appreciate you watching up to this point. Expect to see more of the Dude RV black box showing up in future adventures. I'm actually going to be doing an RV build and doing a playlist for the RV build. Some of it is not going to be Friday's finds. You're going to want to subscribe and hit the bell. Remember to hit the bell as well. That way you don't miss any of those RV build videos. I got a unique thing I'm going to assemble. With that being said, I got to go. Hey, thanks for your time. I appreciate it. Thanks for your support. For our patrons, your generosity is most appreciated. You got to rock. All right, y'all come back now, you hear?