Leons'
Junk
Drawer

An assortment of things that I want to keep around, say or show. May help others or it may be something they find interesting, or things they’ll read and go “Why did I read that ?”

Battery Charge Multiplexer – Version 2

I’ve made a few changes the the first version of the multiplexer. The wiring diagram has not changed. (Here’s a link to version 1)

Update/Change 1:

The display has been changed – there are three screens. The first screen shows on line 1 which batteries will be included in the charge rotation. Line 2 shows which battery is currently charging and the its voltage.

The second screen shows the current voltage of batteries 1 and 2 on line 1 and then batteries 3 and 4 on line 2.

The third screen line 1 shows the voltage of batteries 5 and 6 and then on line 2 it shows the current count of charge_time_counter. When it reaches charge_time_max the multiplexer changes to the next battery in the list and resets charge_time_counter to zero. Charge_time_counter is in seconds give or take the variation of the Arduino system. On the right side line 2 shows the voltage coming into the 5v supply to the Arduino.

Update/Change 2:

The second major change to the code is a change to the timing of the system. I found out that the “smart” charger from Harbor Freight worked better if there was a small delay between connections of one battery to the next. I’ve found that 3 seconds between swtiches worked out OK. When the system switched directly from one to the next the charger seemed to get confused, the delay fixes that.

Here’s a zip of the code for version 2: BatteryMultiplexer-Version2