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Compatibility and selection guide
Five factors decide whether a board fits your pack and your equipment. They are listed in the order they eliminate options — the first one alone rules out most wrong choices.
This page is not finished
This page gives you the questions to ask, not a pairing table. A pairing table is a set of factual claims, one per row, and each would need its own documented source before we would publish it.
Blocked by: Verified SKU data and reviewed compatibility rules — RISK_REGISTER R-002
We publish this page in its incomplete state rather than filling it with plausible-looking detail. If you need an answer now, ask us directly.
What decides compatibility, in order
Read them top to bottom. Each one is a filter: if the answer is wrong, everything below it is irrelevant — that is why the order matters more than the list.
Series count and chemistry
The board must be rated for your cell count and for your cell chemistry. LiFePO4 and NMC have different voltage windows per cell, so a board rated for one is not automatically correct for the other.
AskWhat is the rated series range, and for which chemistries?
Charge and discharge path
Common-port and separate-port topologies change how the charger connects and whether charge current can be limited independently of discharge.
AskIs this board common port or separate port?
Protocol and physical layer
CAN, RS485 and UART are not interchangeable, and matching the protocol is not the same as matching the connector. Baud rate, pinout and message set all have to line up with the counterpart device.
AskWhich protocol, at what rate, with what pinout?
Accessory relationships
Displays, current sensors and communication modules are designed for particular board generations. A physically compatible connector does not imply a compatible data format.
AskWhich board generation is this accessory designed for?
Firmware behaviour
Two boards with identical hardware can behave differently across firmware versions — particularly in how charge is inhibited at temperature limits and how the low-voltage disconnect recovers.
AskWhich firmware version, and what changed in it?
Answers that should make you stop
Each of these sounds like a confirmation. None of them contains a parameter you can check — which is the point.
- It works with everything
- No single board covers the full range of series counts, chemistries and protocols. A universal claim usually means the limits were never stated, not that they do not exist.
- Same as the 16S version
- Series count is a hardware property — a different count usually means different hardware, different protection thresholds and a different manual.
- The connector fits
- Physical fit says nothing about protocol, baud rate or message set. The plug matching is the easiest part to get right and the least informative.
- Just try it
- On a BMS, trying it means energising a pack. If a supplier will not put an answer in writing, the answer is not known.
Send the counterpart, and we will check it
Compatibility is decided by the pairing, not by the board alone. The fastest route is to send what the board will talk to — we will tell you what the documentation covers and what it does not.
We will not answer from memory
If a parameter is not in the current document for your exact revision, the answer is “not confirmed” — not a best guess. A wrong compatibility answer is discovered after the pack is energised, which is the worst possible time to find out.
Compare the verified specifications side by side
For the inverter side of this decision — the protocol lists, the physical layer and where the check usually fails — readwhich BMS works with your inverter.
Do you have CE or UN38.3 documents, and who issues them?
Short answer: no documents are archived, we are not the issuer, and we cannot give you a date. The three questions below are the ones EU installers ask before a project is signed off — each is answered directly rather than routed to a sales page.
- Can I get CE or UN38.3 documents with an order?
- No. We do not supply CE or UN38.3 documents with an order, and no certificate for any model listed here has been verified and archived. We do not state that a board holds a certification, because a document we cannot produce is not something a seller should claim. If a document is required for your installation, tell us which one and we will tell you plainly whether it exists.
- Why a Bluetooth board raises a separate certification question
- Who issues the compliance certificates for these boards?
- Not the seller. Documents of this kind are issued by the manufacturer or by an accredited test house or notified body, and their scope is tied to the exact hardware and firmware revision rather than to a model family name. We are the reseller, not the issuer, and we have not archived any certificate, so we cannot name an issuer, a covered model or a validity period for a specific board. The features that decide which documents apply are listed in PRODUCT_COMPLIANCE_MATRIX.md §1.
- How document requests are handled on trade orders
- Ask us to check with the manufacturer
- When can I get the compliance documents for an EU installation?
- No date can be given today. With zero certificates archived, any delivery date would be a guess, and a date you plan an installation around is exactly the kind of claim we do not publish. Send the models, the destination country and the document your project requires; we will check with the manufacturer and reply either with the document and its holder, or with a written statement that it is not available.
- Request a document check
Why a bare BMS board is not exempt
UN38.3 is a transport test for cells and battery packs. A bare BMS board is not a cell, but a board fitted with a coin cell or RTC battery can still fall under battery transport rules. A BMS is electronic equipment, so the EU framework considers EMC emissions, RoHS substance limits and — where a radio is fitted — radio equipment rules and their cybersecurity assessment. Whether the low-voltage directive applies depends on the DC working voltage and has to be confirmed per hardware.
Which obligations apply must be decided by a qualified test house or compliance adviser from the actual hardware and firmware. This page is not legal or certification advice; the feature checklist is in PRODUCT_COMPLIANCE_MATRIX.md §1 and the current document status is RISK_REGISTER R-006.