Re: (ET) How NOT to check your batteries... Battery Charge / Monitor / maintainer

[JBR <reinharj frontiernet net>]

Chris' solution still requires that we have an available human to look at 
that 
little bulb ...

I would like a controller I don't have to look at for a month - preferably 
one 
that could alert me.

I guess I could run long wires from Electrak shed into house, to see those 
bulbs he mentioned.  It would take much less time than programming a 
microcontroller - so his suggestion actually has a chance of being 
implemented in my lifetime ... <grin>

I also would connect up opto-isolators instead of the bulbs (or maybe in 
parallel) so that I would not have those long wires I mentioned interfere 
with accuracy of the charging measurement.

John

Chris Zach Wrote:

> Or we could put a zener diode (try 6.2 volt, 5 watt for starters) on the
> table, attach it to a PR2 bulb with solder, and attach one end to b+ and
> one to B- on each battery.
>
>
> B-   Diode  Bulb   B+
>
>
>
> Really. Since we have big T105's we could attach two per battery.
> -------|>----O------
>
> -------O----|>------
>
> B-   Bulb  Diode  B+
>
>
> That's it.
>
> Chris

On Tuesday 07 August 2007 11:14:34 pm you wrote:
> JBR wrote:
> > We need to find an 'inspired' Microcontroller Engineer (meaning EE & CS
> > skills) who wants to design PIC (or similar) microcontroller into a
> > charge controller with real time clock, alarm (piezo buzzer, etc),
> > voltage readout, and maybe temperature and current monitoring.  [adding
> > more features adds some cost in hardware, and tedious software testing]
>