My DIY Journey from Childhood Electronics to Victron Power and Custom Projects

Steps

1. 1

   Step 1: Explaining my self-taught electronics background

   People often mention in the comments that my use of the word voltage instead of potential can be confusing. I never studied to be an electrician and electronics became a runaway hobby for me because I loved taking apart old radios and computers as a child. I learned basic programming in Q Basic at a young age and controlled radio-controlled cars via the LPT printer port.

   Because traditional schoolbook learning and sitting in a classroom never worked for me, I taught myself everything by reading up on what I needed for specific projects. That is why I naturally talk about how many volts are on a cable or how many amperes go through it, as that practical reasoning has always been easier for me to understand.

2. 2

   Step 2: Building small Arduino projects and custom furniture

   Around the age of 15, 16 or 17, I started working with Arduino to make small circuit boards with blinking lights and eventually built small robots. Some projects included walking robots that dance and animate, as well as an 18+ rated Evil Twin version with strong language and movements. I also built a coffee table for my daughter's bedroom that plays a complete Tetris game on Neopixels.

   Making things myself gives me a much greater sense of pride than buying them, and I use 3D printers and laser cutters to design and create custom housings and parts from scratch.

3. 3

   Step 3: Building a LED cube, an Apollo rocket, and a Doom game console

   I love building all kinds of projects, ranging from small creations to large setups. Behind me, you can see a LED cube and a large Apollo rocket with flame effects around it. I also built a custom Doom game console.

4. 4

   Step 4: Creating a Droomvlucht dark ride in the porch

   After visiting the Efteling and the Droomvlucht ride, my children asked if they could have something like that at home, so I spent the following week drawing and building one. Four weeks later, a full-scale Droomvlucht dark ride was finished in my veranda with painted walls, stone textures, and a ceiling covered in artificial greenery. It features 11 houses that move up and down controlled by a Google Home, and 8 butterflies in the roof.

   The butterflies use a stepper motor driver and a tiny chip soldered chip-to-chip on their bodies so all electronics fit inside the tiny butterfly body to make them flap in a natural and random pattern.

5. 5

   Step 5: Omroep Brabant visiting the Droomvlucht porch

   The Droomvlucht porch became such a popular chill space that Omroep Brabant noticed it online and wanted to make a reportage. They visited with their Brabants Busje to film the entire setup.

6. 6

   Step 6: Transforming the garden into a subtropical paradise

   I wanted a high challenge for my garden, which started as a brick wasteland with an above-ground pool. With the help of family and a small digger, we dug a hole, I masonry-built an in-ground pool, laid flagstones, built a veranda, ran underground pipes, covered fences with artificial plants, and planted banana and palm trees. It took me about a year and a half to complete, but coming home now feels like stepping into a tropical vacation.

   I also plan to move my pool heating PVC pipes from the small shed roof to install 6 solar panels for maximum efficiency, joining the 12 solar panels already on top of the Droomvlucht veranda.

7. 7

   Step 7: Building a fairground claw machine and customizing cars

   I built a fairground claw machine using multiple Arduino Nanos working in parallel to handle sound effects, lighting, game logic, credits, and the X-and-Y axis claw mechanism with a heavy servo. It has run for three years and remains a huge hit at parties and family birthdays. For my vehicles, I like working on older cars rather than driving expensive ones.

   In 2022, I restored an old Opel Corsa 1.2 that my girlfriend crashed twice, spraying it in full metal flake paint with tribals. I also took an inherited Peugeot 307 with paint and dent damage and sprayed it matte black with a plastic dip and a chameleon color shift that changes between bright blue, purple, and grey-gold depending on the light.

   What I used

   Item	Amount	Notes
   Arduino Nano	Multiple	Used in parallel for the claw machine
   Opel Corsa 1.2	1	Restored and sprayed in metal flake paint in 2022
   Peugeot 307	1	Sprayed in matte black with chameleon color shift

8. 8

   Step 8: Creating LED festival suits and Crazy Cross vehicles

   I made custom LED suits for carnival and events, starting with a white one and later a blue one with color-shifting vertical bars and white chest lines. My most advanced suit used an Arduino Nano running 500 RGB Neopixels across my trousers, upper body, and arms to create plasma effects and scrolling text. It was powered by stacked gel batteries in a backpack hidden under my clothing, lasting 6 to 6.5 hours of nonstop maximum power.

   For the Crazy Cross event in Bergeijk, we enter every year with creative modifications on old cars like our Suzuki Alto. We built a foam machine in the trunk to blind drivers behind us, added diesel injection smoke, fireworks, and mounted a 2.30 meter long confetti cannon on the roof to shoot sweets and streamers into the crowd.

   What I used

   Item	Amount	Notes
   Arduino Nano	1	Controlled 500 RGB Neopixels on the LED suit
   Gel batteries	Multiple	Stacked in a backpack to power the LED suit
   Suzuki Alto	1	Used for Crazy Cross with a built-in foam machine and confetti cannon

9. 9

   Step 9: Building an electric go-kart and organizing Rebel Rally races

   Three years ago, I built an electric four-wheel-drive go-kart by mounting parts from two hoverboards onto a skater frame and building a large battery pack from old e-bike lithium batteries. It reaches about 30 km/h with 40 Nm of torque, and once successfully towed a 1300 kg Mazda station wagon. We also organized the Rebel Rally, setting up popup race tracks on asphalt areas and converting children's electric toys and 6V or 12V tricycles with hoverboard wheels, brushless motors, and lithium batteries.

   We even ran indoor races in an empty 1100 square meter shop in Valkenswaard with neon lighting under the vehicles.

   What I used

   Item	Amount	Notes
   Hoverboard parts	2	Used to build the electric go-kart and converted tricycles
   E-bike lithium batteries	1 pack	Used to power the electric go-kart

10. 10

    Step 10: Halloween mapping, duct tape canoes, and quirky inventions

    We have done 3D mapping projection on houses for Halloween to make them look like they are burning down, and built canoes out of PVC pipes, household plastic wrap, and duct tape. My brother, daughter, and I successfully navigated an 8 km trip in the tape canoes on the Dommel river. Other quirky projects include a 3D printed Holle Bolle Gijs trash bin with an infrared sensor that yells thank you and goes wild when you put trash in its mouth, a laser-cut plexiglass shower head, a desktop shawarma maker heated by soldering irons, a Red Bull fridge, and a transparent PVC potato cannon fired with hairspray or deo fuel.

    What I used

    Item	Amount	Notes
    PVC pipes	1 lot	Used to build the canoe and potato cannon
    Household plastic wrap	1 roll	Used for the canoe hull
    Plakband	1 roll	Duct tape used to seal the canoe

11. 11

    Step 11: Building a shock pen game and designing a 4K Unreal Engine PC game

    I built a party game using modified shock pens containing tiny flyback transformers connected to an adapter and an Arduino. Four players hold aluminum-handled controllers and press buttons as fast as possible when a random beep sounds, and the last player gets a shock of up to 900 volts at under 1 mA. I am also designing and building a 4K Unreal Engine PC game from scratch featuring my family as characters after a plane crash in Cambodia, where my daughter plays the lead role exploring mountains and solving puzzles.

    The game is 90% finished and fully playable, and building it helped me apply my C++ and Python programming knowledge.

    What I used

    Item	Amount	Notes
    Shock pens	4	Modified with flyback transformers for the party shock game
    Arduino	1	Controlled the timing and voltage for the shock game

12. 12

    Step 12: Addressing viewer feedback and safety corrections on the Victron battery setup

    I make videos to share my hobby experiences and inspire people to build things themselves rather than relying entirely on companies. However, viewers often judge quickly without watching full videos, such as when a 20-second clip of my 16 kWh battery pack with 16 EVE 31 lithium iron phosphate cells received panic comments about thin red wires. I explained that those thin wires are just BMS balancing wires carrying a maximum of about 2 amperes to measure and balance cell voltages, not high power currents.

    At the same time, valid feedback pointed out that the mega fuse I used has an AIC rating of 2,000 amperes, which is inadequate for the 10 to 13 thousand ampere fault current of the battery pack. After checking, I admitted the viewer was right and began researching AF3 fuses as a drop-in replacement with a much higher AIC rating to handle high fault currents safely.

    What I used

    Item	Amount	Notes
    EVE 31 lithium iron phosphate cells	16	Used in the 16 kWh battery pack
    Mega fuse	1	Had a 2,000 AIC rating, which was too low for the pack
    AF3 fuses	1	Identified as a safer replacement with a higher AIC rating

13. 13

    Step 13: Building a custom per-cell temperature monitoring system with Arduino

    A standard BMS only has two thermistors to monitor battery temperature across a large pack, which can miss localized overheating in a specific cell. To solve this limitation, I am designing an upgraded monitoring system for my 16 kWh battery packs using an Arduino Nano and a multiplexer to read 16 individual thermistors. I will use small 100 kohm glass-head thermistors like those in 3D printers, placing one on every single battery cell to check temperatures multiple times per second.

    One original BMS thermistor will remain as a backup, while the Arduino will emulate the second thermistor input to the BMS. If any single cell reaches 60 degrees Celsius, the Arduino will feed a 90-degree signal to the BMS to force an immediate system shutdown before any overheating spreads.

    What I used

    Item	Amount	Notes
    Arduino Nano	1	Used to read individual cell temperatures via a multiplexer
    Multiplexer	1	Connected to the Arduino for reading 16 thermistors
    100 kohm glass-head thermistors	16	One placed on every single battery cell

14. 14

    Step 14: Takeaways

    • Practical self-taught experience can take you just as far as formal education when building complex projects.

    • Always listen to valid technical feedback from viewers and be ready to admit mistakes and upgrade safety components like fuses.

    • Balancing wires on a battery BMS only carry low balancing currents rather than high power loads.

    • Adding an individual thermistor to every single battery cell provides much better thermal protection than standard two-sensor setups.