Archive for the ‘Battery Regulator’ Category

Back in Action

After having the last couple weeks of my life stolen by first illness, then jury duty, I’m finally back in control and ready to get the stuff that needs to get done done to make the projects that need to happen happen- like the car and the kart. I didn’t shave until I was booted […]

Posted on July 10, 2010 at 12:48 am by Henry · Permalink · 3 Comments
In: Battery Regulator, EV Miata, Life and Times

Making progress on Loose Ends

I’ve got three big areas that need work on the car: Overloaded suspension Plug-n-Play chargability Amp-hour/range remaining instrumentation

Posted on August 28, 2009 at 11:39 pm by Henry · Permalink · Leave a comment
In: Battery Regulator, EV Miata

Massive update

A lot has happened since June 8th, when I wrote the last post- Let’s get all that out of the way and move move on to what’s new- I visited ohio and drove my great-uncle Cal’s tractor on the old family farm: The semester ended, I got good grades. As I have hinted, I drove […]

Posted on July 2, 2009 at 1:11 am by Henry · Permalink · Leave a comment
In: Battery Regulator, EV Miata

How to Charge Your EV’s AGM SLA Batteries

This is a work in progress- I am working on planning how the battery regulators for the car are going to work. One key part of that process is deciding on the actual optimal charging procedure for the Optima-type AGM battery. One often-seen charging procedure is the “three-stage charging” process. It consists of three distinct […]

Posted on May 22, 2009 at 2:14 am by Henry · Permalink · Leave a comment
In: Battery Regulator, EV Miata

Battery Regulator- the OTHER part of the project

I devised a workable fix for the circuit FAIL previously described and finished assembling a set of four battery regulator boards- their relatively small size belies that they have a LOT of parts on them! They are a pretty involved assembly project! I haven’t tested everything about every board, but as far as I can […]

Posted on March 30, 2009 at 10:11 pm by Henry · Permalink · One Comment
In: Battery Regulator

Circuit FAIL

First- the good news. The circuit boards came in from Gold Phonenix, it really is very easy to order from them, and I am pretty happy with the quality. I first contacted them on March 13th (Friday), asking for quote confirmation for a 155 in^2 “Special Price” order, including the gerbers in a .zip file […]

Posted on March 24, 2009 at 10:33 pm by Henry · Permalink · Leave a comment
In: Battery Regulator

Battery Regulator- The Next Step

I finished the new board design a few days ago- I don’t think I’m an expert or anything, but definitely did a better job this time than I did on the prototype- Just to begin, I checked my schematics and footprints carefully. That in itself will make a big difference! I also got the overall […]

Posted on March 14, 2009 at 1:08 am by Henry · Permalink · Leave a comment
In: Battery Regulator

Battery Regulator- part 4

I finished testing the battery regulator board over the last two days, as I planned I did a full-current “burn” test and tested the MCP2551 (CAN transciever) based communications circuit. Things went mostly according to plan. I had planned to burn in the power circuit for ~2hrs, but I got all the information I needed […]

Posted on March 6, 2009 at 7:11 pm by Henry · Permalink · Leave a comment
In: Battery Regulator

Battery Regulator- part 3

I have confirmed that the board programs and communicates correctly via serial with the Arduino environment. Almost everything is working as planned. The timer that drives the PWM on pins 11 and 12 (ATMega168) or 5, 6 (Arduino), OC0A and OC0B, is used for system timing stuff too, so it doesn’t ever go completely “off”. […]

Posted on March 3, 2009 at 11:22 pm by Henry · Permalink · Leave a comment
In: Battery Regulator

Battery regulator- part 2

I continued troubleshooting the board yesterday, and came to a few conclusions- The gain of the power transistor is indeed high enough to be driven directly from the optocoupler. In order to get the C-E voltage drop nice and low (.35 v or less) I am driving the base with about 20 ma- it’s definitely […]

Posted on March 1, 2009 at 12:25 pm by Henry · Permalink · Leave a comment
In: Battery Regulator