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Comment by Syonyk | Hacker News Reader

The problem with him, and people like him on YouTube, is that about 90% of what they say is fine, and 10% ranges from "iffy" to "This is a good way to burn your house down - at some unknown point in the future." The average viewer of that sort of material can't tell the difference, and by the time you can, you're not in need of handwaving entry level information, because you can read the design documents, spec sheets, NEC, and do things yourself.

YouTube is simply the wrong medium to try to teach detailed, "can kill you" things like electricity. It's especially wrong when you try to make it about personality, humor, etc moreso than hard technical truths.

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sounds a bit gate-keepy to me. People tell me that I shouldn't repair my own car for similar reasons. Instead I should go to the OEM and have it serviced there for 1000,- a pop. This assures I'm getting genuine OEM branded parts with a 800% profit margin while also reducing the time spent on diagnosing the issue because now whole modules get replaced since cost of human labor is expensive. If I would heed that advise, I'd still have no clue about how a modern diesel engine worked, how to reverse and flash a new ECU firmware, how to find and fix any problem without a mechanic ripping me off, or generally engage in things that (in the eyes of the vendor) are "very dangerous" to myself, my family, or others.

Yet I still make this choice because the alternative is a "John Deer no right to repair" future where we're ruled by chuckeducks and awful people who can't help but quote "rules and regulations" or can't wait to be up in everyone's shit. There is no way I could be convinced otherwise because this is the nature of those who fiddle and tinker in the first place. I'm sure many of the viewers on this channel think likewise because it's not about safety but about my own freedom to spend my weekends in the garage building something and being rewarded with self reliance. And also the freedom to make mistakes big enough to kill myself by accident without somebody going "uhm well ack-shually".

He has a point, but there is a thing you can do to offset some of this: read all of the comments. Plenty of times there will be someone in the comments pointing out what's wrong in the videos.

The problem with Lithium Ion installations of any size is that the batteries are inherently dangerous and mistakes can easily set you back more than you saved on the whole thing. Unlike say your car where as long as you stay away from suspension, brakes and steering the worst that could happen is that you end up stranded by the road side.

Another issue is that when it goes wrong with Lithium Ion it can go wrong fast and it isn't easy, or sometimes even possible, to stop a thermal runaway once it gets going, especially with densely packed cells, besides the fact that you likely won't be watching your batteries 24x7.

There are some people on youtube that advocate for extremely unsafe practices (Jehu Garcia, for instance) and that have a huge following, so Will Prowse is certainly not the worst that you could run into there. It would also be good if he indicated more clearly what his sponsorship relations are and how that relates to the advice that he is giving, quite a few of his videos feel like thinly disguised ads.

very much with you and GP on this. the route I personally take is to learn with small trials and error of what comments and advise is good and what is silly or outright dangerous. Places I frequent for such advise though aren't YT videos but forums where it's easy for others to call out silly ideas (which isn't always the case on YT). YT is at best a gateway to deeper content such as explosion-charts, repair and maintenance manuals, etc. I think batteries here are not too different than breaks, steering or suspension (all components I've grown comfortable to touch although not on my very first DYI project but years into messing and learning about the same vehicle).

I would highly recommend battery university, they have excellent content:

https://batteryuniversity.com/

Another very good resource is http://www.arrl.org/news/new-book-energy-choices-for-the-rad.... The author is more well known for inventing http://www.aprs.org/

His whole thing is no sponsorships...

He had a couple of sponsored videos in the past around building all in one systems, but it's not something he does anymore.

I've zero objections with people learning about power systems and such.

My objection is with people learning it from YouTube, because the ratio of "good, safe, correct information" to "absolute crap" is horrible, and until you're quite solid in the field, there are people very confidently spouting exceedingly wrong and dangerous information (tip: If you ever see anyone soldering to an 18650, assume everything else they're doing is wrong as well, because that's such a huge violation of every manufacturer datasheet - it dumps radically more thermal energy into the cell and plastic separator than they're designed for).

There are plenty of better sources for information on how to do things energy related than YouTube.

It seems that you are approaching Sturgeon's law there.

"It's especially wrong when you try to make it about personality, humor, etc moreso than hard technical truths."

Have you spent any time watching Will's videos? Your quote doesn't match up at all with what I've seen at all. I found his videos dry, technical, and pretty good with regard to safety.

"YouTube is simply the wrong medium to try to teach detailed"

YouTube is literally just humans talking, so you are basically saying you don't think humans can teach complicated subjects?

That's an absolutely absurd characterization of both YouTube and actual teaching.

YouTube is dominantly entertainment/personality based "edutainment" at best, based on what seems to percolate to the top and be promoted. There's zero feedback outside comments (standard warnings about comment sections apply here).

The right way to teach complex subjects is a more interactive process with hands on material/learning/actually solving the problems yourself. In the case of solar and energy systems, you can do this, but if you don't have some basic EE background, it would be wise to go get that first before listening to some slick talking huckster selling their wares. WHY do we size wires the way we do (either for temperature limits or for voltage drop, depending on the application)? What's wrong with a 5000W 12V inverter (500A or so, and the I^2 components of resistive losses, paired with the voltage drop from those)?

I don't think a human lecturing blindly into the void optimizing for "engagement" (whatever metrics those are based on this week) can competently teach any real detailed material, no. That doesn't mean that people can't teach complex material. It just means YouTube is not the place or medium for it.

A lot of educational content on YouTube is made by people who have no idea (or interest in) how to optimize for engagement. I'd be willing to bet there is fairly competent basic EE instruction on YouTube that includes lab instructions, working with simulations, problems, and pulling in other exogenous resources to aid in understanding. Its not just a wasteland of pop science like Veritasium, et al.

This is true, but there are definitely positive exceptions to this rule.

YouTube encourages generating content that rates well, i.e. is entertaining. I agree that learning should be fun, but I don't want to learn about life threating topics from videos that are designed foremost to be entertaining.

There is plenty of non-entertaining yet informative and detailed educational content on YouTube. The "entertaining" videos are usually just a gateway to more dry and traditional lectures and courses that are provided by universities and other content generators that see YouTube as a general resource and not an income stream.

"YouTube" can mean at least two things:

1. A theoretical space for someone with good ideas and good intentions to share those with the world.

2. The actual experience that viewers will have on YouTube if they were to open it today.

1. and 2. would be almost diametrically opposed these days. If YouTube provided ways for viewers to honestly and fairly discover, rate, filter, and share videos and channels, then the people in case 2 would be able to reliably find the people in case 1. And if YouTube didn't force video makers to pervert their personality and format into algorithm-pleasing parodies, then people in case 1. could continue to produce the content they actually want to produce as long as they were able to. But it's not possible today.

This is the dumbest take I've read in a long time. From him I've learned which lifepo4 batteries won't burn my house down, proper wiring for stuff, etc. I've got a 144ah battery pack sitting right next to me as I type this I built from learning from him. Are you sure your comment isn't about the youtuber Electricboom?

I rebuilt large (500Wh) lithium ebike batteries professionally and shipped them around North America for a couple years, and have torn down more than my fair share of ebike and tool batteries for analysis.

I've yet to see a "YouTube Trained" pack build that I would be remotely comfortable leaving unattended in my house. Though LFP is an awful lot more forgiving than a mix of random recycled 18650s of unknown chemistry, service life, and internal damage history that makes up the bulk of that stuff.

If you've got some good high res shots of the build process, I'd happily take a look and see what I think of it. My standards of comparison are the professionally built packs I've torn down for analysis and often enough rebuilt for people.

As for who my comment is about, honestly, I apply it generally to that entire class of person on YouTube no matter who they are. I know solar, and off grid solar, fairly well (with a focus on flooded lead acid). I know lithium fairly well, having done quite extensive work on them. In areas I know well, most of the people showing stuff off or trying to teach other people hit the 90/10 split, and as this is a topic of conversation in the quiet off grid backwaters circles I frequent, other people usually agree about which 10% is the problem.

Therefore I'm happy to ignore that entire class of person and go do something useful. It's not that education can't be funny, it's that when "personality" and "laughs" and "BIG O FACE I NEARLY BLEW MYSELF UP" style thumbnails are what matters, the really deep (and often quite important) technical details get lost in all that.

I was giving you the benefit of doubt, but this comment shows that you've never watched any of Will's video and you are just painting with a very broad brush.

He's the kind of Youtuber that keeps repeating that you should place a low temp sensor on your cells, not the kind doing sketchy spot weld on old 18650s.

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