S
Steve
- Jan 1, 1970
- 0
After a career as a electronic design engineer and software author I retired
a while back and recently took up R/C model flying. I've become frustrated
with the available battery chargers I can find for my hobby and decided to
look at designing my own universal solution. There are some units around
providing some of these abilities, but none that I know of that provide them
all. Anyway I can have some fun designing & building it during the wet 'n
windy part of winter.
And yes I'm well aware that I can't build something for the price I could buy
- if it were available!
I'm looking for design/topology suggestions and possibly some component
selection advice from the mass of new available devices out there. I'd also
like to find some better/lower parts count solution than the brute force one
of just building several identical programmable current sources.
Requirements:-
1. Input from 12v leisure or car battery for field use or a 13.8v mains
supply for domestic use.
2. Capable of handling varied cell chemistry such as NiCd,NiMh,Pb,LiPo.
3. Six programmable current sources capable of 100mA to 2A using
step-down/buck technology.
4. One programmable current source 0.5A - 8A for 1 to 15 cells (say max
28v) using buck/boost technology.
5. Micro controlled voltage & current monitoring/logging and setup via
an LCD display.
6. Smart enough to provide timed or automatic charging (delta peak etc)
control for those cell chemistries that allow it.
7. Capacity determination on-demand by charge/discharge cycling so you
can tell if you should buy new cells.
A PIC or AVR with a reasonable code space could easily supply the smarts to
handle it.
I suppose I could just use a bunch of the National SMPS regulator chips set
up as current sources for the 6 channels. But then I have to provide some
way of programming charge current as well which may be harder than just
monitoring it and making micro on-the-fly pwm adjustments.
I even considered just using the pwm outputs of one of the micro variants to
drive discrete switchers, and changing the effective charge current with a
fast loop in the micro. There could be complications in providing fast
enough s/c protection though. I haven't really thought that through.
Having a micro there could offer a lot of flexibility in handling different
types of cell and could provide handy float charging for some cells so
they're always ready during the flying season.
If I get anywhere with this, I think I'll put up the circuit and source code
for others and perhaps arrange for a supplier to provide kits or assembled
units for those who don't want to build. I've spoken to a number of folk who
have similar needs to my own and I'm not looking to make any money out of it.
a while back and recently took up R/C model flying. I've become frustrated
with the available battery chargers I can find for my hobby and decided to
look at designing my own universal solution. There are some units around
providing some of these abilities, but none that I know of that provide them
all. Anyway I can have some fun designing & building it during the wet 'n
windy part of winter.
And yes I'm well aware that I can't build something for the price I could buy
- if it were available!
I'm looking for design/topology suggestions and possibly some component
selection advice from the mass of new available devices out there. I'd also
like to find some better/lower parts count solution than the brute force one
of just building several identical programmable current sources.
Requirements:-
1. Input from 12v leisure or car battery for field use or a 13.8v mains
supply for domestic use.
2. Capable of handling varied cell chemistry such as NiCd,NiMh,Pb,LiPo.
3. Six programmable current sources capable of 100mA to 2A using
step-down/buck technology.
4. One programmable current source 0.5A - 8A for 1 to 15 cells (say max
28v) using buck/boost technology.
5. Micro controlled voltage & current monitoring/logging and setup via
an LCD display.
6. Smart enough to provide timed or automatic charging (delta peak etc)
control for those cell chemistries that allow it.
7. Capacity determination on-demand by charge/discharge cycling so you
can tell if you should buy new cells.
A PIC or AVR with a reasonable code space could easily supply the smarts to
handle it.
I suppose I could just use a bunch of the National SMPS regulator chips set
up as current sources for the 6 channels. But then I have to provide some
way of programming charge current as well which may be harder than just
monitoring it and making micro on-the-fly pwm adjustments.
I even considered just using the pwm outputs of one of the micro variants to
drive discrete switchers, and changing the effective charge current with a
fast loop in the micro. There could be complications in providing fast
enough s/c protection though. I haven't really thought that through.
Having a micro there could offer a lot of flexibility in handling different
types of cell and could provide handy float charging for some cells so
they're always ready during the flying season.
If I get anywhere with this, I think I'll put up the circuit and source code
for others and perhaps arrange for a supplier to provide kits or assembled
units for those who don't want to build. I've spoken to a number of folk who
have similar needs to my own and I'm not looking to make any money out of it.
