Battery monitoring

Grievousfish

Is there a simple way to allow the microcontroller to monitor the remaining charge in a battery?· Also, is anyone familiar with a controllable three position switch that would allow a solar power battery charger to (1) be off, (2) flow to battery pack #1, or (3) to flow to batter pack #2?

Sorry for the newbie questions.

Tom C

Grievousfish,

You could attach a single channel serial A to D converter to the microcontroller and monitor the battery voltage. Since the battery voltage is proportional to the remaining charge, you should be able to get an approximate idea of the remaining battery charge by measuring the battery voltage at any given time.

There are microcontrollers that have built-in A to D converters which simplifies the task of measuring an external voltage without having to add additional hardware. If you do a search on the web you will come up with microcontrollers with built-in A to D converters.

Hope this helps.

Regards,
TCIII

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If you are going to send someone to save the world, you·better make sure that they like it the way it is!

Mike Green

There's an application note on using a Stamp to directly monitor its own battery voltage (here: www.emesystems.com) using the RCTIME statement. The Propeller and the SX can do the same kind of thing. None of them need an external ADC although that's certainly a reasonable way to do it.

SN96

Click this link http://www.emesystems.com/BS2rct.htm#B_voltage it will tell you how to monitor batt voltage usig a stamp.

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Mike



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