after a long cold and wet winter spring is finally here and our grass is turning green
I'm so excited it also means Backyard Barbecue summer vacation and all the rest today I got
something really cool I want to share with you this is the dapson DBS 2300 portable
power station now this main unit 2.3 kilo hours of storage in pretty good form factor added one
of these extra batteries you double that it actually has room for two of those but today
I'm going to take a little bit of time off do something a little bit different have some fun
in the backyard that bouncy house for the kids currently running on this battery we're also
going to grill up some food and have some good old-fashioned fun but this thing is
also really cool to be prepared for emergencies run all your critical stuff even the power goes
out be prepared with one of these and if you're a contractor or landscaper you can keep your tools
and stuff charged up in your truck there's a lot of really cool use cases we'll go through all of
them today huge thanks to dabson for sponsoring this episode
I'm Ricky this is Two Bit da Vinci
thank you
all right let's talk about what comes in the Box first of all when you buy the
DBS 2300 Main battery you also get the following things user manual of course
and a AC charger to the wall pretty standard you just plug it into the wall we can charge
then you get the cigarette lighter adapter so this plugs into the same port as the solar panels do
you can charge from your car while driving also pretty cool and finally you have your
xt60 cable which plugs into the back and these mc4 connectors go to any solar panel pretty
standardized and it'll work with any of them out there as long as the voltage Works within
the system voltage range for the smart battery we have the following accessories as well which
is pretty cool another solar xt60 connector so you can plug another solar panel to it
and this of course the trunk cable that connects the two now as I mentioned this can accept up to
two other batteries so you buy just the traditional battery and you have 2.3 gold
hours DBS 2300 of course but you need more the DBS 3000b the extra battery has three extra code
hours that's how you get to 8.3 total 2.3 for the main battery and then three kilo hours per extra
battery this can take up to two extra batteries give you a total of eight kilowatt hours which is
absolutely massive and the coolest part about the extra battery is that it can also take more solar
inputs it has two which means that this can charge on 600 watts of solar and then you can string up
some other panels on the ground during a picnic and charge 600 to 600 for a total of 1200 watts of
solar into this battery combined that's 1800 watts with these two batteries and even more if you have
an extra battery I've never seen that before typically all the solar input all the inputs go
into the main battery not into the extra batteries but this is a really cool feature but the coolest
thing about this adapson portable power system I think is how energy dense this is look at the form
factor typically batteries that I've seen in this size are one kilowatt hour around that range this
is 2.3 and 3 for the extra battery plus with the multi-dimensional tab construction they're able to
get these batteries much closer together giving you the high energy density these are they say
about 30 more energy dense per the form factor and I completely believe it in fact their chemistry
is the same lithium iron phosphate chemistry used in some Mercedes and Volkswagen electric vehicles
really high in chemistry really intelligent layout and all the fewer contact points between
the batteries means lower thermals and the BMS is more than up to the task in my testing I found
these to run really cool and really quiet which is one of the most amazing things so what makes
this special what's different about it honestly I think this farm factory it is really hard to beat
something in this size with this much power let's put this to the absolute test 500 watt
griddle bouncy house mini fridge at the same time start with the bouncy house I think here we go
okay that pull in
300 around 300 walks or so which means that's 2 260 and this is 40. and now for the cooktop we're
gonna Grill some burgers some hot dogs because it's warming up here in San Diego and why not
Fuji all right bacon cloudy yes bacon I want bacon
man all right here we go got some bacon going on okay we got
final hamburger
and we'll do a little hot tub yeah why not all right
let's see we're pulling 1740 Watts which means there's still 500 watts maximum left we could
power like a full-size refrigerator we could power a bunch of stuff cool and pulling this
much power we still have two hours of run time so at this rate we can power That Bouncy House
a 1500 watt griddle and this for over two hours but odds are you're gonna cook for
20 more minutes 30 more minutes turn that off and with the solar coming in this thing will
start charging again and power everything else all right let's put it to the test here we go foreign
's cooking let me tell you a little bit about what makes this really special first of all they have
electric vehicle grade battery chemistries and battery Management Systems it's really high-end
stuff and it shows the overall build quality has been really fantastic what I like about
it is for its form factor two nearly two and a half kilowatt hours of energy storage is really
really good typically these batteries will be a little bit bigger accounting for all those kinds
of factors and also when this thing is running like right now what you're hearing is that let
me do this I'm going to unplug the bouncy house okay we're still pulling 1500 watts listen to that
it is one of the quietest portable power stations I've ever heard a lot of the ones I normally use
have a really high pitch winding noise on the fan and with that lithium iron phosphate chemistry
they're saying around 6 500 Cycles before 80 degradation which means you could charge this
all the way up and down every day for almost two decades which is amazing all right so where are
we at 85 percent we're pulling 1500 watts making lunch and we're still at 85 that tells me if you
were going to the park just for a couple of hours maybe 30 minutes of grilling food and then bouncy
house or something you would need to bring this with you just bring one little battery and you
can power all of that especially if you take a solar panel that's awesome all right we've had our
fun we've made lunch pretty cool stuff but it's time to get serious and talk about something very
important ketchup or mustard on your hamburger and hot dog and on this I'm sorry but there's only one
answer it's not true sorry this might be offensive don't come at me but you gotta go mustard all
right so let's take a look at what we get here with the dapson portable power station first of
all up front there's a light and it even strobes which is really cool if you're camping out in the
dark or as the Sun starts going down I really like that feature it's actually really bright
too that's the higher brightness setting next up we have usb chargers and you have a plethora you
have three type c one of which is a 100 watt which means I can have my laptop fully charged
up running from that Port charge an iPad an iPhone other devices and there's two type A ports as well
all really cool you can control it with a little switch right there Then over here we've got the
cigarette port and Anderson port and that's the end of the DC side for AC if you swing around in
the back we have our port for solar input charging from the sun because just the coolest part about
this you can also charge from the wall and if you put the charge speed to custom on the bottom you
can set the charge speed in the app which is really cool let's say you just want to charge
very slowly overnight or you need a full charge 1800 watt maximum control that in the app that's
where that plugs into and then down here you have five typical AC ports and you can just turn the
whole Port system on or off right up here what's really nice too is it has a 12 hour timeout which
is probably more than you need because sometimes if the devices are turned off and this doesn't
detect any power they'll turn off automatically but with the 12 hour timeout and those settings
you can control that to your liking finally on the back this is the main battery and this is the
extra battery main battery 2.3 kilowatt hours you combine them together and it's almost five which
is pretty amazing that's how we can power all this stuff out here but with just one of these it's 2.3
which is pretty good size and you've got porks for two of these extra batteries again one of the
features that I love about these is modularity start with one of these if you want more you
can bring two to and they're you know decently portable you can bring three even you have another
battery and be near closer to seven and a half 12 hours and two solar inputs for the extra battery
as well and then just the parts to connect these batteries Together High gauge cable really nice
and uh yeah it almost acts like one big battery which is really nice how about for work what if
you're a landscaper or a contractor and you use power tools out in the field as a homeowner sure
just go to the garage and get a new battery but if you all you have is your work truck throw those
daps and batteries in the back and keep these batteries charged up this is an electric chainsaw
cool is that so I'm going to take a little little uh pass on this tree wish me luck
I'm not a lumberjack I'm sure I didn't do that at all just right but I do love
to get out and do the occasional little bit of yard work and if you do these things more
work it's amazing to keep them charged up in your truck while you're working
foreign
charging it back up in between jobs getting the batteries and just keep on working a lot
of people think electric is somehow inferior to gas it really isn't the reason that chainsaw is
so good 56 volt system which means that these batteries at 10 amp hours each means they're
about half a kilowatt each now this one battery by itself can charge these four times and odds are
with how long these last that might be an entire day for you but if it's not get the extra battery
as well and you can charge these eight times more than you'll probably ever need in a single day and
solar input you can throw a solar panel on the roof and keep them topped off while you're working
now imagine this is like a big Burly pickup truck and not my sedan but I think you get the point
what makes these portable power units so amazing is how smart they are which means the smartphone
app get the dab synapse from the App Store hit the plus button and you'll select the model type it'll
come up you'll push this button to pair it'll tell you all that on the screen join it to your
phone's Wi-Fi connect to the Wi-Fi and you're in business now this isn't the prettiest app
I've ever seen from a portable power unit but it works really well here's the light controls right
and you turn the AC on and off it'll show you the power being used and what's really nice
we're still running the the bouncy house behind us it'll tell you a projection of how much time
will remain based on how much power you're using right now so when I had the electric
cooktop turned on that was down to around two hours but now that it's off and I don't have the
added battery just this by itself and has shown me five hours of running that thing now the one
feature I wish the app had is the ability to set the charge point so for example I wanted to charge
to 80 most of the time but I can't set that here once you plug it in it'll charge to 100 now that
could come in a software update in the future I would imagine that it would but this lithium-ion
phosphate chemistry is so good and it lasts for so long that might be why it's not really that
big of a deal charge it all the way up have fun with it and don't worry too much about it because
like we mentioned 6000 plus charge cycles you're going to be good to go oh one other thing I have
had enough of these batteries and I've upgraded enough of them to know one of the trickiest things
is firmware updates it's really hard to do well this one came out of the box it's that firmware
update available I hit update and I was like let's see what happens it was Flawless it was one of
the most quick easy experiences it turned right back on I power cycled it was all good to go it
connected right back up and we were in business which is good because these things will come
with improvements over time the software on your phone and the battery will improve over time and
um overall it's just a solid thing it is seriously a pretty impressive little package the amount of
capacity to 2.3 kilowatt hours in this form factor is really really good now it is a little bit heavy
but it's something you can actually manage and because it has that added battery you can just
carry them one at a time compared to a bigger system that weighs 100 pounds which would be
beyond the scope of of most people to carry it that turns out really well and as we mentioned
you can have a lot of fun backyard parties taking out to the park before the age of the portable
powering systems like this what would you do with generator I guess those are a lot of headaches you
have to maintain them oil changes you have to you know keep them up to date the gasoline goes bad if
you leave it over Winter's flooding carburetors I mean it was those are challenging this is so
much more elegant just plug it in and it'll just charge and be ready to go and as we mentioned if
you're a contractor if you do work where you need power out in your truck or if you're a landscaper
you got to charge your tools in between jobs this is more than capable and like we talked about with
the added solar you can be charging in between jobs and then run entirely off solar how about
battery backup if you've ever been without power you know the things that always come to mind your
refrigerator right you want spoiled food your wireless modem access point those things if
you could provide Power to them yeah the power is out for so like get a couple of flashlights
you can still use your laptop you can connect to the Internet and get a lot of your work done for
us those are the things that all always jump out of the first things we got to back up and
this is more than capable and one other feature that we haven't really talked about is energy
Arbitrage you could program this to just charge at cheap times maybe your electricity from noon
to 6 a.m is cheap charge this up and then run certain things your laptops your monitors and
stuff right off the back here during peak times from the battery run a window AC this will run a
window AC for a couple of hours or if you have the extra battery maybe an afternoon our lives
are increasingly going to be electric soon we'll have heat pumps for heating and cooling
we are going to be installing that pretty soon air conditioning right refrigerators internet
all that stuff runs on electricity and while if you live in a place where you have hurricanes or
tornadoes deep freezes in the winter time for us it'll be wildfires you might have the occasional
power outage and trust me one of these things will be worth its weight if that ever happens and with
this much capacity you'll be amazed at how much you can power hopefully we've showcase that for
you all right that is a look at our Dobson DBS 2300 I gotta say we've been using it for a little
while now very impressed all right I'm Riker YouTube DaVinci foreign what we have a special
guest you've seen him in this episode my son Remy you want to do the outro say you've been watching
tuba DaVinci we'll see you next week you've been watching YouTube but we'll see you next week