Post by thread:[ee:] pc battery charger, was New PIC related site

hey, this looks very nice! looks like you are an expert in accessing pc ports. ...but there are negative things about it, from user's view: it makes not a lot of sense, to run a desktop pc all the time, just to charge some batteries. if you have kids, playing with battery powered toys, you are charging batteries 24hours a day, i.e. you need a dedicated pc to do this. the best solution would be to use an old notebook for this...but they usually do not have a standard soundcard. so why don't you use the serial or parallel port to control the charger, instead of using the soundcard? you might need some additional components like buffers, a low pass filter for da conversion and a comparator for ad conversion, but for a 'port control expert', it shouldn't be a big thing to modify the software in this direction. btw: what happens if the pc gets hanging? does charging stop or does the battery get 'cooked'. tino >{Original Message removed}

> hey, this looks very nice! > looks like you are an expert in accessing pc ports. > ...but there are negative things about it, from user's view: > it makes not a lot of sense, to run a desktop pc all the time, Well, I have my home desktop PC on all the time without even the reason of charging batteries. I think the point is that it's a neat thing. From a cost perspective, I have a Triton battery charger/discharger that will properly charge NiCads, NiMHs, SLAs, and Lithiums. The cost for this with a 12 V battery supply was under $200. If you really want to go low-ball, you can build a charger yourself from a Maxim chip and a power supply. -- D. Jay Newman ! spam_OUTjayTakeThisOuTsprucegrove.com ! Xander: Giles, don't make cave-slayer unhappy. http://enerd.ws/robots/ ! -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The list server can filter out subtopics (like ads or off topics) for you. See http://www.piclist.com/#topics

well, i use such maxim chargers too. the negative point of these is that you don't get any battery diagnostics, i.e. you have no idea, if the battery is in good condition. beside this, I use a processor controlled charger, which also has a pc interface, but the software, I got with this, doesn't work really stable. tino {Quote hidden}>> hey, this looks very nice! >> looks like you are an expert in accessing pc ports. >> ...but there are negative things about it, from user's view: >> it makes not a lot of sense, to run a desktop pc all the time, > >Well, I have my home desktop PC on all the time without even the reason >of charging batteries. > >I think the point is that it's a neat thing. > >From a cost perspective, I have a Triton battery charger/discharger that >will properly charge NiCads, NiMHs, SLAs, and Lithiums. The cost for this >with a 12 V battery supply was under $200. > >If you really want to go low-ball, you can build a charger yourself >from a Maxim chip and a power supply. -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The list server can filter out subtopics (like ads or off topics) for you. See http://www.piclist.com/#topics

> well, i use such maxim chargers too. > the negative point of these is that you don't get any battery diagnostics, i.e. you have no idea, if the battery is in good condition. I think some of the chips give you more information than others. It is also possible to use a small PIC to do some current monitoring (displayed on a small LCD or via serial connection). > beside this, I use a processor controlled charger, which also has a pc interface, but the software, I got with this, doesn't work really stable. I don't think my Triton interfaces with my PC, but I'd rather run it stand-alone. The only PC in my basement was just taken apart so that I could use the power supply and CD-ROM to install Linux on my new VIA M 10000. -- D. Jay Newman ! .....jayKILLspam@spam@sprucegrove.com ! Xander: Giles, don't make cave-slayer unhappy. http://enerd.ws/robots/ ! -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The list server can filter out subtopics (like ads or off topics) for you. See http://www.piclist.com/#topics

> why don't you use the serial or parallel port to control the charger, instead of using the soundcard? The initial idea was to keep the "hardware" part as simple as possible. I just wanted to have a working charger with minimal expenses in time and parts - that was the goal. By using a PC sound card, as I hoped, I could avoid lot of soldering in favor of programming, focusing on the "intelligence" of the charger. These expectations did not prove to be quite correct since the circuit came out rather complicated anyway, and even worse thing was that the it needed to be tuned every time to meet the parameters of any given sound card - audio driver combination. On the positive side I can say that once finally assembled, debugged, and mated with one appointed computer it worked very nice for me for quite a while now, showing no problems at all. > what happens if the pc gets hanging? does charging stop or does the battery get 'cooked' The program sends data packets to the audio driver one at a time, so if the program hangs the driver just finishes to play current data packet and the signal on the 'OUT' line of the sound card vanishes to the ground level effectively stopping the charge. Arkady. -- http://www.piclist.com#nomail Going offline? Don't AutoReply us! email listservKILLspammitvma.mit.edu with SET PICList DIGEST in the body

> why don't you use the serial or parallel port to control the charger, instead of using the soundcard? The initial idea was to keep the "hardware" part as simple as possible. I just wanted to have a working charger with minimal expenses in time and parts - that was the goal. By using a PC sound card, as I hoped, I could avoid lot of soldering in favor of programming, focusing on the "intelligence" of the charger. These expectations did not prove to be quite correct since the circuit came out rather complicated anyway, and even worse thing was that the it needed to be tuned every time to meet the parameters of any given sound card - audio driver combination. On the positive side I can say that once finally assembled, debugged, and mated with one appointed computer it worked very nice for me for quite a while now, showing no problems at all. > what happens if the pc gets hanging? does charging stop or does the battery get 'cooked' The program sends data packets to the audio driver one at a time, so if the program hangs the driver just finishes to play current data packet and the signal on the 'OUT' line of the sound card vanishes to the ground level effectively stopping the charge. Arkady. -- http://www.piclist.com#nomail Going offline? Don't AutoReply us! email .....listservKILLspam.....mitvma.mit.edu with SET PICList DIGEST in the body