linux-works
DIY: Li-Po Battery Charger with Remote Sensors
Smart battery 'pods' that have individual temperature sensors in them. Using IDC style 2x3 keyed connectors to send charge power and 'control' from the charger base to the pods (there can be many pods and many ports on the charger).
The magic happens due to a side-effect of the sensor design. I happen to be using Dallas ds18b20 one-wire sensors and each sensor has its own hardware serial number (like a MAC address, sort of). If you have one sensor on its own GPIO line, you can query the sensor for its address and 'do different things' based on what addr you see coming back.
This will let me 'discover' what kind of battery is inside the pod and have the charger auto-set its ports. The charger must first learn the association of the address/serial with the charging parameters but that's a one-time setup and I have a plan in mind for this.
Note, this is, what my previous boss would call a 'works-like' and still needs more development before I can go to the custom PCB and chassis route.
The tl;dr is: each pod is a type of battery and once its configured, the charger auto-sets itself and the user won't have to worry about over or under charging their different SIZE batteries.
DIY: Li-Po Battery Charger with Remote Sensors
Smart battery 'pods' that have individual temperature sensors in them. Using IDC style 2x3 keyed connectors to send charge power and 'control' from the charger base to the pods (there can be many pods and many ports on the charger).
The magic happens due to a side-effect of the sensor design. I happen to be using Dallas ds18b20 one-wire sensors and each sensor has its own hardware serial number (like a MAC address, sort of). If you have one sensor on its own GPIO line, you can query the sensor for its address and 'do different things' based on what addr you see coming back.
This will let me 'discover' what kind of battery is inside the pod and have the charger auto-set its ports. The charger must first learn the association of the address/serial with the charging parameters but that's a one-time setup and I have a plan in mind for this.
Note, this is, what my previous boss would call a 'works-like' and still needs more development before I can go to the custom PCB and chassis route.
The tl;dr is: each pod is a type of battery and once its configured, the charger auto-sets itself and the user won't have to worry about over or under charging their different SIZE batteries.