I did some research of some loose ends today on chatgpt and discovered that my .1mm x 4mm x 60mm sections of nickel strip on my bldc motor controllers that run from the battery to the motor controller mosfets and from the mosfets out to the motor are too high in resistance and at 30a they would within a few seconds get so hot that they would desolder my low temperature solder paste. So to solve this I will be placing two side by side solder wick braids hugging the underside of the nickel strips which will lower resistance so much that temperature will stop being an issue. They will be a combined .1mm x 4mm x 60mm. Then on future mosfets for this portion I will just use the solder wick braids for this section and not use nickel strips at all because they add too much resistance under this high of amp flow. The 2430 BLDC motors are rated to 25a continuous so my conduit has to also handle that easily without overheating.
Another really cool discovery I made today was on the topic of measuring current. I'd been putting this off till now but finally got around to deep diving it with chatgpt and discovered something shocking. So basically it was saying to use a shunt resistor inline with the ground side running from the motor controller to the battery. All the current of the motor controller (30a on the high end) will pass through this resistor as its only path. The special thing about a shunt resistor is that its resistance is so low that it doesn't affect voltage or amps a whole lot. I asked chatgpt if I can use nickel strips as my shunt resistor since a smd shunt resistor it said would overheat fast at 30a. It said yes! So I'll be using a .1mm x 4mm x 30mm section of nickel strip as part of my wire run going from the motor controller back to the battery on the ground side. This will act as my homemade shunt resistor. Now the way the arduino will read the amount of current is the analogue input pin will feed into the upstream side (closest to motor controller) of the shunt resistor section of nickel strip and the arduino ground will attach to the downstream side of this nickel strip shunt resistor. It will measure the tiny amount of voltage drop that occurs on account of the shunt resistor's resistance. What is really cool is that the voltage drop changes at this resistance and amp level are read granularly enough by the Arduino analogue input pins that I don't even need to amplify them to read them in meaningfully. Some things like strain gauges provide such tiny resistance changes that you have to use a OP AMP amplifier to be able to read the changes in with your analogue input pin of your arduino to detect them meaningfully but in this case, the resistance changes are large enough and the analogue input pins are granular enough to be able to read them in without any amplification. This means reading in the current for my motor controllers requires ZERO components! It's literally just nickel strip which I already had for the battery tab making and some jumper wire or w/e to take in the readings and that's it! No parts to buy. I had bought some hall effect based current sensor kits and they are not needed at all. I wasted my money on them in the past because I did not know about this shunt resistor option at all at the time. Had I known I would have never bought hall effect based sensor kits - a waste of money. Not to mention they were relatively huge whereas this takes up like practically zero space to measure a shunt resistor section of conduit between the battery and motor controller. So it's awesome news!
Note: the current sensing is meant to tell my control system anytime a new unexpected load has hit the motor so it can slow down the flow rate of electric to the motor to prevent burning out something for example or it can also detect any kind of snags or w/e anything getting stuck. It can also help monitor amp flow for the sake of holding the motor in place with stall current kept low enough to prevent overheating etc. It can also act as collision detection if trying to monitor its interactions with its environment and know if something has hit something - which is insanely useful for situational awareness. So it's extremely useful and basically not even optional frankly. To now know that adding this feature is free and super easy to implement and will take up practically ZERO extra space is very exciting to me.
Note: my diy shunt resistor (.1mm x 4mm x 30mm section of nickel strip) will have a .005 ohm resistance which is pretty much perfect for my use case it seems (unproven but chatgpt sounds sure of it). It will enable me to monitor the range of 5a to 30a and detect a change in amperage with like 1a granularity.
I did some research of some loose ends today on chatgpt and discovered that my .1mm x 4mm x 60mm sections of nickel strip on my bldc motor controllers that run from the battery to the motor controller mosfets and from the mosfets out to the motor are too high in resistance and at 30a they would within a few seconds get so hot that they would desolder my low temperature solder paste. So to solve this I will be placing two side by side solder wick braids hugging the underside of the nickel strips which will lower resistance so much that temperature will stop being an issue. They will be a combined .1mm x 4mm x 60mm. Then on future mosfets for this portion I will just use the solder wick braids for this section and not use nickel strips at all because they add too much resistance under this high of amp flow. The 2430 BLDC motors are rated to 25a continuous so my conduit has to also handle that easily without overheating.
Another really cool discovery I made today was on the topic of measuring current. I'd been putting this off till now but finally got around to deep diving it with chatgpt and discovered something shocking. So basically it was saying to use a shunt resistor inline with the ground side running from the motor controller to the battery. All the current of the motor controller (30a on the high end) will pass through this resistor as its only path. The special thing about a shunt resistor is that its resistance is so low that it doesn't affect voltage or amps a whole lot. I asked chatgpt if I can use nickel strips as my shunt resistor since a smd shunt resistor it said would overheat fast at 30a. It said yes! So I'll be using a .1mm x 4mm x 30mm section of nickel strip as part of my wire run going from the motor controller back to the battery on the ground side. This will act as my homemade shunt resistor. Now the way the arduino will read the amount of current is the analogue input pin will feed into the upstream side (closest to motor controller) of the shunt resistor section of nickel strip and the arduino ground will attach to the downstream side of this nickel strip shunt resistor. It will measure the tiny amount of voltage drop that occurs on account of the shunt resistor's resistance. What is really cool is that the voltage drop changes at this resistance and amp level are read granularly enough by the Arduino analogue input pins that I don't even need to amplify them to read them in meaningfully. Some things like strain gauges provide such tiny resistance changes that you have to use a OP AMP amplifier to be able to read the changes in with your analogue input pin of your arduino to detect them meaningfully but in this case, the resistance changes are large enough and the analogue input pins are granular enough to be able to read them in without any amplification. This means reading in the current for my motor controllers requires ZERO components! It's literally just nickel strip which I already had for the battery tab making and some jumper wire or w/e to take in the readings and that's it! No parts to buy. I had bought some hall effect based current sensor kits and they are not needed at all. I wasted my money on them in the past because I did not know about this shunt resistor option at all at the time. Had I known I would have never bought hall effect based sensor kits - a waste of money. Not to mention they were relatively huge whereas this takes up like practically zero space to measure a shunt resistor section of conduit between the battery and motor controller. So it's awesome news!
Note: the current sensing is meant to tell my control system anytime a new unexpected load has hit the motor so it can slow down the flow rate of electric to the motor to prevent burning out something for example or it can also detect any kind of snags or w/e anything getting stuck. It can also help monitor amp flow for the sake of holding the motor in place with stall current kept low enough to prevent overheating etc. It can also act as collision detection if trying to monitor its interactions with its environment and know if something has hit something - which is insanely useful for situational awareness. So it's extremely useful and basically not even optional frankly. To now know that adding this feature is free and super easy to implement and will take up practically ZERO extra space is very exciting to me.
Note: my diy shunt resistor (.1mm x 4mm x 30mm section of nickel strip) will have a .005 ohm resistance which is pretty much perfect for my use case it seems (unproven but chatgpt sounds sure of it). It will enable me to monitor the range of 5a to 30a and detect a change in amperage with like 1a granularity.
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I did some research of some loose ends today on chatgpt and discovered that my .1mm x 4mm x 60mm sections of nickel strip on my bldc motor controllers that run from the battery to the motor controller mosfets and from the mosfets out to the motor are too high in resistance and at 30a they would within a few seconds get so hot that they would desolder my low temperature solder paste. So to solve this I will be placing two side by side solder wick braids hugging the underside of the nickel strips which will lower resistance so much that temperature will stop being an issue. They will be a combined .1mm x 4mm x 60mm. Then on future mosfets for this portion I will just use the solder wick braids for this section and not use nickel strips at all because they add too much resistance under this high of amp flow. The 2430 BLDC motors are rated to 25a continuous so my conduit has to also handle that easily without overheating.
Another really cool discovery I made today was on the topic of measuring current. I'd been putting this off till now but finally got around to deep diving it with chatgpt and discovered something shocking. So basically it was saying to use a shunt resistor inline with the ground side running from the motor controller to the battery. All the current of the motor controller (30a on the high end) will pass through this resistor as its only path. The special thing about a shunt resistor is that its resistance is so low that it doesn't affect voltage or amps a whole lot. I asked chatgpt if I can use nickel strips as my shunt resistor since a smd shunt resistor it said would overheat fast at 30a. It said yes! So I'll be using a .1mm x 4mm x 30mm section of nickel strip as part of my wire run going from the motor controller back to the battery on the ground side. This will act as my homemade shunt resistor. Now the way the arduino will read the amount of current is the analogue input pin will feed into the upstream side (closest to motor controller) of the shunt resistor section of nickel strip and the arduino ground will attach to the downstream side of this nickel strip shunt resistor. It will measure the tiny amount of voltage drop that occurs on account of the shunt resistor's resistance. What is really cool is that the voltage drop changes at this resistance and amp level are read granularly enough by the Arduino analogue input pins that I don't even need to amplify them to read them in meaningfully. Some things like strain gauges provide such tiny resistance changes that you have to use a OP AMP amplifier to be able to read the changes in with your analogue input pin of your arduino to detect them meaningfully but in this case, the resistance changes are large enough and the analogue input pins are granular enough to be able to read them in without any amplification. This means reading in the current for my motor controllers requires ZERO components! It's literally just nickel strip which I already had for the battery tab making and some jumper wire or w/e to take in the readings and that's it! No parts to buy. I had bought some hall effect based current sensor kits and they are not needed at all. I wasted my money on them in the past because I did not know about this shunt resistor option at all at the time. Had I known I would have never bought hall effect based sensor kits - a waste of money. Not to mention they were relatively huge whereas this takes up like practically zero space to measure a shunt resistor section of conduit between the battery and motor controller. So it's awesome news!
Note: the current sensing is meant to tell my control system anytime a new unexpected load has hit the motor so it can slow down the flow rate of electric to the motor to prevent burning out something for example or it can also detect any kind of snags or w/e anything getting stuck. It can also help monitor amp flow for the sake of holding the motor in place with stall current kept low enough to prevent overheating etc. It can also act as collision detection if trying to monitor its interactions with its environment and know if something has hit something - which is insanely useful for situational awareness. So it's extremely useful and basically not even optional frankly. To now know that adding this feature is free and super easy to implement and will take up practically ZERO extra space is very exciting to me.
Note: my diy shunt resistor (.1mm x 4mm x 30mm section of nickel strip) will have a .005 ohm resistance which is pretty much perfect for my use case it seems (unproven but chatgpt sounds sure of it). It will enable me to monitor the range of 5a to 30a and detect a change in amperage with like 1a granularity.
I did some research of some loose ends today on chatgpt and discovered that my .1mm x 4mm x 60mm sections of nickel strip on my bldc motor controllers that run from the battery to the motor controller mosfets and from the mosfets out to the motor are too high in resistance and at 30a they would within a few seconds get so hot that they would desolder my low temperature solder paste. So to solve this I will be placing two side by side solder wick braids hugging the underside of the nickel strips which will lower resistance so much that temperature will stop being an issue. They will be a combined .1mm x 4mm x 60mm. Then on future mosfets for this portion I will just use the solder wick braids for this section and not use nickel strips at all because they add too much resistance under this high of amp flow. The 2430 BLDC motors are rated to 25a continuous so my conduit has to also handle that easily without overheating.
Another really cool discovery I made today was on the topic of measuring current. I'd been putting this off till now but finally got around to deep diving it with chatgpt and discovered something shocking. So basically it was saying to use a shunt resistor inline with the ground side running from the motor controller to the battery. All the current of the motor controller (30a on the high end) will pass through this resistor as its only path. The special thing about a shunt resistor is that its resistance is so low that it doesn't affect voltage or amps a whole lot. I asked chatgpt if I can use nickel strips as my shunt resistor since a smd shunt resistor it said would overheat fast at 30a. It said yes! So I'll be using a .1mm x 4mm x 30mm section of nickel strip as part of my wire run going from the motor controller back to the battery on the ground side. This will act as my homemade shunt resistor. Now the way the arduino will read the amount of current is the analogue input pin will feed into the upstream side (closest to motor controller) of the shunt resistor section of nickel strip and the arduino ground will attach to the downstream side of this nickel strip shunt resistor. It will measure the tiny amount of voltage drop that occurs on account of the shunt resistor's resistance. What is really cool is that the voltage drop changes at this resistance and amp level are read granularly enough by the Arduino analogue input pins that I don't even need to amplify them to read them in meaningfully. Some things like strain gauges provide such tiny resistance changes that you have to use a OP AMP amplifier to be able to read the changes in with your analogue input pin of your arduino to detect them meaningfully but in this case, the resistance changes are large enough and the analogue input pins are granular enough to be able to read them in without any amplification. This means reading in the current for my motor controllers requires ZERO components! It's literally just nickel strip which I already had for the battery tab making and some jumper wire or w/e to take in the readings and that's it! No parts to buy. I had bought some hall effect based current sensor kits and they are not needed at all. I wasted my money on them in the past because I did not know about this shunt resistor option at all at the time. Had I known I would have never bought hall effect based sensor kits - a waste of money. Not to mention they were relatively huge whereas this takes up like practically zero space to measure a shunt resistor section of conduit between the battery and motor controller. So it's awesome news!
Note: the current sensing is meant to tell my control system anytime a new unexpected load has hit the motor so it can slow down the flow rate of electric to the motor to prevent burning out something for example or it can also detect any kind of snags or w/e anything getting stuck. It can also help monitor amp flow for the sake of holding the motor in place with stall current kept low enough to prevent overheating etc. It can also act as collision detection if trying to monitor its interactions with its environment and know if something has hit something - which is insanely useful for situational awareness. So it's extremely useful and basically not even optional frankly. To now know that adding this feature is free and super easy to implement and will take up practically ZERO extra space is very exciting to me.
Note: my diy shunt resistor (.1mm x 4mm x 30mm section of nickel strip) will have a .005 ohm resistance which is pretty much perfect for my use case it seems (unproven but chatgpt sounds sure of it). It will enable me to monitor the range of 5a to 30a and detect a change in amperage with like 1a granularity.