Charging the 12 v battery

[Rose bud]

I just saw a video on the channel…Electric van man…he said he charges his 12 v battery with a solar panel hooked up to his OBD port. He does not have a lightning. Can this be done with a lightning? If so does it need a specific OBD brand or capacity?

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[joshtb86]

i tried this - there was no voltage being produced at the battery, so i dont think it works

 

[djryan13]

Seems like a strange way to connect directly to battery. I would not put unnecessary power into the OBD. Just hook up a quick connect terminal to battery terminals. But why you want to charge it anyway?

 

[RickLightning]

I just saw a video on the channel…Electric van man…he said he charges his 12 v battery with a solar panel hooked up to his OBD port. He does not have a lightning. Can this be done with a lightning? If so does it need a specific OBD brand or capacity?

There is no reason to do this.

With a gas vehicle, the 12v battery cannot be charged by the motor since the vehicle is off. With the Lightning, the 12v battery is charged, when needed, by the high voltage battery.

I setup both vehicles with 12v charging cables to use my trickle charger. Since Ford updated the BMS software, the only time I use them is when I go on a long trip, I charge the one I leave, since I can.

 

[blb228]

I'm not sure about electric van man and creating an OBD friendly solar charger: but I picked up this dewalt obd2 maintainer: https://amzn.to/4haM9Fo and I feel it's worth. I have had significant less electrical glichi-ness since using this overnight about once every ~2weeks. I used to have weird dings and dongs occurring at random times, extremely slow bootup on my sync system pretty often, heck - my truck is even staying in Sport Mode more now than it ever has before and I don't think it's because of a Ford OTA update. I already had several 4 and 5ah dewalt batteries so ~$40 for this was worth a try and I'm glad I did.

 

[chl]

Seems like a strange way to connect directly to battery. I would not put unnecessary power into the OBD. Just hook up a quick connect terminal to battery terminals. But why you want to charge it anyway?

Be sure to be down stream of the BMS:

 

[chl]

I'm not sure about electric van man and creating an OBD friendly solar charger: but I picked up this dewalt obd2 maintainer: https://amzn.to/4haM9Fo and I feel it's worth. I have had significant less electrical glichi-ness since using this overnight about once every ~2weeks. I used to have weird dings and dongs occurring at random times, extremely slow bootup on my sync system pretty often, heck - my truck is even staying in Sport Mode more now than it ever has before and I don't think it's because of a Ford OTA update. I already had several 4 and 5ah dewalt batteries so ~$40 for this was worth a try and I'm glad I did.

All the weird behavior usually turns out to be 12v battery related based on all the posts here and elsewhere.
Some kind of 12v battery maintainer will likely solve them.

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