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This is a battery box I got from red Odo sometime back, and it's neat. It's similar in style to the auto dunk box that I did a review on one from Amazon a while back, which I think the price on that one's dropped also, although I think this one's cheaper, but there's a reason this one's cheaper. The ports on it are not great, and I've sent this information to red Odo and I think they've updated the ports on the later ones, although I looked on Amazon
today and maybe not. I'm not sure. But anyway, this one, unlike the Auto dunk botch has box has these latches on the side that hold hold the lid down so you can kind of hold it like that. Now you get a lot of weight in it, and it might not be enough. It still has a strap that goes around it, but the auto dunk has the strap and nothing else. Every time you pick it up, it feels like the lid moves a little bit. So those extra latches on the side, I really think is a good idea.
But what I don't like about this box is it came with two ports right here that ared cigarette lader style ports. I took this one out. It had one there and the same one there. It has a port here for USB A and USB C, and it says right there. On the USBA it says QC three dot zho and on the USBC it says QC four DA Do what other world is QC fourdado. That's not what we call it. We call it PD. I think, you know what, Maybe it's not a power distribution USBC port.
I don't know, okay. And then it comes with a switch to switch everything on right here, And it comes with a power meter right here, and there's nothing at all on this side. Underneath it here you've got a power positive pretty good sized cable. Maybe I don't know. I'm guessing a six or eight gauge, probably eight gauge right there, pay positive and negative. Nothing over here on the negative side at all, and then the positive side is wired up with basically what feels to me like
twelve gauge wire. So there's no power poles in it, there's no shunt in it, there's no solar charge controller in it. There's a lot of wasted space over here. I could put two more sockets here, two USB sockets and two power pole sockets or whatever. I could put another a better, larger meter up here if I wanted to something like that. And so it's a large box with a lot of wasted space in my opinion, So what am I gonna do. I'm gonna hack it up,
That's what I'm gonna do. So I'm gonna change out some ports and put some power poles in it, and put a couple of other things in it. And today I'm not gonna add a solar charge controller, although I probably will later. In fact, I might add it to the top right there. I haven't decided yet. We're gonna hack it up, and I'm gonna show you what i'm gonna do. I've done some modifications to this box, as I was
talking about. First off, there's no fuses in here. And some of the more expensive and better built box will have like a fuse block or inline fuses perhaps something like that. There's no fuses in this box at all, So rather than trying to install a fuse box or something extravagant, I got one of these BoJack fuses and you can get these different current ratings. This is a fifty amp fuse. It just obviously attaches right here to
the positive port. You could put one on the negative port too, I guess if you wanted to, And then you tie all your peripherals down to this post and it acts as a fuse in between whatever you tie to the battery. Kind of tight to get on there, but there we go. So whatever you tie to the bat he goes here, and then the negative obviously goes over there. So this will fuse everything in the box.
Rather than having an inline fuse for the posts or for the power poles or something like that, this will fuse everything in the box as long as you tie it to this side and not this side.
So that's my fusing system for now.
We'll see how that works. Got to make sure you put it and you can turn it three hundred and sixty degrees on this post. I put it right there so that it wouldn't interfere with what's what's up here. So since the last the first part of the video, I've added these power poles. I got these off of eBay. They are three D printed like this, and they I got one set that came with the power poles themselves, and then I got like four sets that were just kind of blank like this. I have a ton of
power pools. I didn't really need any. I was trying to try two or three different varieties and see what, you know, which ones I like the best.
These are fine.
I got these also, and these sit kind of flush mount like, they're still round in the back, so you'd still drill a round hole. I used my step down bit on my drill to drill the two holes for this one, so you can do various sizes with that bit, so I could drill holes with that and then flush mount. And then these wouldn't be flush mount. They would they have a lip that sticks off of them like that.
But these do too. Honestly, same thing, but these are just kind of like a different form factor or whatnot. I like the I did not use these on this build, but I think I'm going to on a future build on another box. I like these because they come with they're kind of flexible back here. These are three D printed also, so you can fit the power poles in
them pretty easily. But then they come with these little pin, these little screw pins Hack's headed screw pins that go in the top right there, and those go between your power poles like this right here. You put this inside of here, and there's this tiny little hole right there, and this will go betwe clean it like that, and then of course this will be inside the case at the time. This goes in the case like that like that.
This pin right here goes down through the top here, and it holds the power pole in place so that when you plug something into it like that, it doesn't push it out the back. So these did not come with any such pin. There was one again, there was one that I got, and I think it was this one. Here's no, it's this one here. It's one of these. The same manufacturer makes these. These didn't come with power poles. This came pre assembled and it had a little wooden
dowel pin that went through it. But then the rest of these didn't come with any pins at all, So I'm curious to see if you guys have ever built anything like this. I'm curious to see what pins you're using to go through these casings to hold the power poles in place. I figure I go up to Low's or home depot and get some kind of like really small roll pin or something like that and push it through there. But I'm wondering if there's a better option available.
The video today is sponsored by red Odo Power, who makes this box. They have a brand new twelve one hundred and forty amp hour bluetooth battery. It's a group thirty one sized battery with forty percent more capacity than their one hundred amp power battery, and during the month of November of twenty twenty four, they have their Black Friday Sale going from November first to the eighteenth for an exclusive discount of six percent sidewide and a free
gift with purchases over five hundred dollars plus. On their Black Friday Sale from November nineteenth to December third, they'll have an even bigger discount with the same free gift with purchases over five hundred dollars. So I saw two double power pulse sets. Oh yeah, one more thing. I have this power Works one. These you can buy fully
assembled and whatnot. And these have a screw type connector that goes in the back that holds them from the backside that have this nut that goes around These don't have a nut or anything that goes around them. But I drilled the hole just barely enough to kind of press it through there, and right now that seems like they're fitting just fine. So we'll see how well that holds up.
But I got those too.
But these Powerworks ones are great, but they're more expensive than all these other ones, so I was trying to see what the best option was for that. So anyway, I installed two of the doubles, and that's on the side here. This was a blank side that didn't have anything at all. And then I removed this voltage meter and was gonna put one of these one of these on the top. But it didn't really fit very well. I didn't feel like it was I don't know, I
just I didn't feel like it. It looked kind of weird and it sunk down in there a little bit too far. Because this is this hole is actually bigger than this voltage meter. So I went ahead and just put the voltage meter back in This section right here had two of these twelve volt cigarette laighter adapter plugs. I took one out and I installed a double USBCPD plus QC three point zero port. This is stock. This one is stock. This is a sixty five widely is
that one stock? I actually might have traded that out too, because I think it had a it might've had a smaller one than that. I can't remember right now if I traded that one out or not, but I know I traded this one out because there were two of these in here, So I increased my number of USBA and USB B or USB C ports. So I've got that there, and then you could trade that out and get rid of that whole thing if you wanted to.
I kept it because I got a couple of things with cigarette lighter adapters on it, so I figured I'd just leave it there because I've already got it. And then this right here is the underside, and of course this goes to the battery, and this goes to the battery. Now these and I went back and forth on what to do about these. I could have connected them here and then they would have connected, you know, through this to the battery and the been fused at the battery
like that. I decided to go ahead and connect these, but I haven't done it yet. Obviously. I got these connectors with the built in heat trinket AutoZone connected that on. Oh. I bought a new set of trippers because somebody on YouTube that I was watching on the Fishing and Stuff channel, he recommended these. And these are really cool because you can see they have red, blue and yellow for the
larger side, the larger and smaller sized crimpers. So these were incredibly helpful to crimp these on nice and tight right there. And then of course they just use the heat gun, activate the heat shrink on those and make them nice and tight like that, installing the housings first and then pressing the Yeah see there's not a pin in that one, so I can kind of pull it out of there like that. I found a nail that would fit in there, and it fits in there, but
it keeps falling out because it's not very tight. So again i'd like to know what kind of pens people are using. But I made this pressing the wire after crimping the powerful connector onto it and pressing the wire into the housing was easy after you mount the housing in the box, so that kind of held it all
in place. So what I'm gonna do is, I'm going to take this main wire on both sides and I'm going to take these four red wires to the four power poles, four red power poles, and I'm gonna put them all on this port right here, and I'm gonna do the same with the black black all on this port right here. So that will enable me to have I think the most amount of current up to fifty amps. Really, because this is a fifty amp fuse, that will enable me to pull the most amount of current from these
that I can. I got this I Greeley wire. This is a oxygen free, pure copper wire. I had some ironclad copper wire kind of leftover from something else I did. I decided to scrap that and get some good wire because I've been a lot of the videos I've been watching on YouTube, and I talked to Mike Kate Emberdee and he was like, yeah, the pure copper wire is the best stuff to do, and that's what will Prowse says as well. And I just wanted to. I didn't.
You may not need that high quality wire for a project like this, but this is my first one hundred amp hour battery box with a fifty amp fuse, So in theory, I could be pulling some amps through it, charging stuff for USB, a radio key down, doing ftaight
at the same time, and all that's running. So I decided to just wire this directly to the battery or that's how it will be here in a second, and then that'll give me the best option rather than going through a bunch of connectors that might decrease the current capacity and not allow me to pull as much current at one time. Not that I really think I will need that, but this is just how I did it.
This is the first battery box I've ever hacked and quote unquote built by myself, even though I didn't really build it. I just kind of like modified it. So future projects I might change my mind, but that's how we're doing this one. Okay, got everything wired up, got it put together. You can see we've got thirteen point three volts. That's another reason to wire these directly to the battery. They're not regulated by this switch, which I don't know what the voltage or ampage rating on this
switches that came with the box. This switch right here in this meter, but I didn't want to be restricted buy them. Presumably my power poles are going to be pulling more current than USB will. But you can see that turns on right there, so we're good. This one turns on here, Oh it was on.
Yep, there we go.
Turn those both off. Okay, good, those are good there. Now let's test and see how well my wiring may or may not work to the power poles. I'm going to take my MPPT solar charge controller here and plug it in to one of the power poles. Now there's one of these that I didn't plug up because I ran out of ring terminals. But I'm just gonna put this in here like that and then yep, okay, it's working. It's not got a solar panel hoop to it. I just wanted to see if it would light up, and
of course it does E one. Yeah, that means actually I need to change it to Life four. There we go.
There we go.
Okay, just like that. Yeah, it's not gonna do anything right now because it's not got any solar panels on it, but plugging that in, Okay, that's probably the one that doesn't have connections. There's that one's good, okay, And then this is the one without the pin, and it I gotta get. You see how it's pushed back in there. That's why you want to put the pin in between, but through the casing and through the powerful connectors so
they don't push back in like that. So I'm have to take that one off and find out what kind of pin goes through them, because these three D printed connectors did not come with a pin, so I need some sort of pin to go through there, some roll pin or like I said, that one had a woulden the one that this one came with the inserts already in here and it I took the pin out to look at it, and it had a wooden dowel in it. I guess that's like a toothpick almost, So maybe a toothpick would work.
I don't know.
Might check that out and see. But that is the hack of the red Odo battery box. Again. Red Odo is sponsoring this video. Ham Radio will save you a six percent discount on everything on their website, and I'm pretty sure that's a permanent code They said they were going to leave that code, but I think they have an eight percent discount going on their website right now for Black Friday, so check the links in the description below.
Check out their website and which is also linked below, and check out all the different sales they're having during the month of November. This will not be the last red Odo battery video that I make. I've got at least two more planned, so we're going to see how well that goes. Let me know if you have one of their batteries, which you think about it, and if you have any suggestions on this battery box modification, this hack for this battery box, put them in the comment section.
Blow Thanks a lot, guys,