Archive for the ‘Projects’ Category
Impression: 2009 Mercury Grand Marquis
In Colorado over the weekend my Dad and I rented a car- since the rental car lot was out of subcompacts, they gave us an automatic “upgrade” to a “premium” level vehicle- a nearly brand new Grand Marquis. While providing useful transportation all weekend, the Marquis (pronunciation informally decided to be “mar-kees”) was also much […]
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 […]
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 […]
More CNC Thoughts
I’ve been thinking more about how I would I’m going to build a CNC mill. My earlier ideas have changed a bit, some a lot. I’m not going to try to use servos, it is worth more to me to get the machine usable quickly, and the HobbyCNC stepper boards are pretty nice. It would […]
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 […]
CNC Thoughts
Building a small CNC mill has been one of those projects I have thought about dozens of times over the years but have never initiated. It’s come up again now, and maybe this is the right time. I would really like to be able to cut parts out of acrylic and aluminum sheet, as well […]
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”. […]
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 […]
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 […]
In: Battery Regulator