What's he building in there?

[starletkid]

man when i seen this thread, it reminded me of this song..

it made me laugh how much it reminded me of this....

http://youtu.be/nMqxNPsfN50

[Crazy2287]

Blinkies! It's good to see these little squares working. Are you going to add temperature monitoring for the test pack before you use it?

[mauswerkz]

Today's progress:

Description: "A quick demonstration of my prototype battery management system (BMS) polling the cell voltages of a pack of A123 lithium batteries. There are 18 in series and 4 in parallel. This is approximately 1/5 of a larger high voltage battery pack that I have built to test my 3-phase motor controller at high loads. At the moment, it takes about 7mS (that's 0.007 seconds) to read each cell's voltage. Lower value pull-up resistors on the optocouplers will allow this to be increased significantly. The system is also capable of reading cell temperature, but it is not implemented on this test pack.

Bypass capacity is 1A @ 4V.

The modular design allows the BMS to be used on any type of lithium cell so that pack replacement and/or upgrades in the future do not require a new BMS to be purchased. Only appropriate adapter boards would be needed."

[mauswerkz]

I am very impressed at the work you're doing here. Are you an EE?

Studying mechatronics engineering at Wollongong Uni. It's sort of half EE and half mechanical. Been working on this project since well before I started there though so most of it I've been learning as I go.

[Bad Bird]

I am very impressed at the work you're doing here. Are you an EE?

[Crazy2287]

cocaine? =P



***edit: This might be more your style though XD

http://www.goodbadjuicy.com/wp-content/uploads/chuckecheese-cocaine.jpg

[mauswerkz]

Woah, just marathoned this thread. Excellent work here M. I'm going to call you M. from now on.
Starting something at such a tiny level and building it up to what it's going to be, taking such a long time. and keeping motivated? Dose it ever feel like your going to be 60 years old before you see the completion of this project?
I had trouble making a simple thermofan (via relay not the actual motor) controller, felt like i spent fooorrreevveerr on it and it was a spec in comparison to this.
My hat goes off to you sir, respect.

Thanks mate. Motivation can be difficult to come by at times, but I have tricks to keep it.

[Bobodahunk]

I bet this would be awesome if i knew what ya guys were talking about ha

Sent from my MB855 using Tapatalk

[Crazy2287]

Woah, just marathoned this thread. Excellent work here M. I'm going to call you M. from now on.
Starting something at such a tiny level and building it up to what it's going to be, taking such a long time. and keeping motivated? Dose it ever feel like your going to be 60 years old before you see the completion of this project?
I had trouble making a simple thermofan (via relay not the actual motor) controller, felt like i spent fooorrreevveerr on it and it was a spec in comparison to this.
My hat goes off to you sir, respect.

[Celticbhoy]

All I see are a bunch of hieroglyphs. That's very impressive.

[mauswerkz]

That's a really solid effort... I know just how long those fiddly, little SMD components take to solder. It's not a quick process when done by hand. Looks awesome though!

The SMD was done in a reflow oven, but putting down the paste and placing the components took me and a mate 9 solid hours of work! I don't think I'll use 0603 resistors next time. TOO TINY!

[Jenga]

Finally finished assembling my battery management boards! Much more work than I was expecting. When these go into production, it'll probably be worth having them assembled in a factory. Doing it by hand would make it too expensive.

That's a really solid effort... I know just how long those fiddly, little SMD components take to solder. It's not a quick process when done by hand. Looks awesome though!

[Marty]

true dedication to the mission as you are posting this on a saturday night

guaranteed success..

[mauswerkz]

Finally finished assembling my battery management boards! Much more work than I was expecting. When these go into production, it'll probably be worth having them assembled in a factory. Doing it by hand would make it too expensive.

[mauswerkz]

Spent 9hrs today installing all the SMD components on 100 of my battery management boards. Once these are done and installed, I'll be able to charge my monster battery pack. I'll also be able to test the interference immunity of these boards in a very noisy environment (high power, high voltage, high frequency unshielded switching). At the very least, the boards will work stand-alone. If there is an interferrence problem, it'll only affect communication between the boards and the master unit, and then only while the motor is running. I'm hoping this isn't an issue though. I'm using a somewhat unique strategy to (hopefully) avoid noise problems that others have encountered when designing similar systems. Anyway, here's a pic of a pile of boards!