Archive for the ‘Electronics’ Category

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

Battery Regulator- part 1

Background: So, I am building this electric car, using SLA batteries and a Manzinita Micro charger. Need battery regulators, have been unable to find a currently available solution, decided to build my own. This project is virgin territory for me in many areas- circuit design, board layout… but I thought it would be fun, and […]

Posted on February 28, 2009 at 12:39 pm by Henry · Permalink · Leave a comment
In: Battery Regulator