AsyncLabs Forums

[ajaxjones]

Hey,
well the YJ is looking good. I've fitted one to a Pololu RP5 chassis and an Trex Jr motor controller and no I have a wi-fi controllable rover. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qozrfDLv5IQ (ive also fitted an onboard 2.4ghz video link, but the interference from neighbours is so bad I have to upgrade to 5.8GHZ)

In anycase, what I'm looking for is a battery charger circuit. The type where I can leave all the batteries in situ (Ni-Mh) and just plug in a charger without having to switch anything on or off. prety much like a mobile phone charger?

[GregEigsti]

Seeedstudio used to have a solar battery charger which, if I remember correctly, would fit the bill nicely. I don't see it on the Seeedstudio web site any longer but it seems to be available here. I'm sure that there are tons of schematics out there for a simple trickle charger circuit - which would likely fit well on a protoshield.

Greg

[mengineer]

Seed Studio's solar battery charger was pulled because it was found to be unstable and they offered to send you the parts to fix it if you had it already or if you could wait they'd send you out the replacement model when it's finished. I started to follow their forum a while ago and I actually have a free accelerometer on the way from them that I'm going to test, out as they went with my, and a few other people that gave them feedback, advice and changed over to a I2C accelerometer. Back to the point thought I wouldn't pick up the solar charger shield until the new one is released.

[GregEigsti]

Good stuff, thanks! I think it was you who pointed out the SS solar charger / battery charger - from what I remember it would fit pretty well with what ajaxjones is looking for (and I would not mind having a couple)

I think there are other shields out there that meet the bill; also would probably be pretty easy to find a good circuit online and stick it on a protoshield.

Greg

[mengineer]

Now that you mention it I think it was me, lol, they just recently dicovered the problem I forget specifically what it was. I think I've seen a few out there just cost a few more bucks if you don't want to take the time to do it yourself.

[GregEigsti]

SeeedStudio definitely has some cool stuff; its a good place to keep an eye on. I actually had a bit of fun making my Darlington array + power regulator proto shields; the Adafruit shields are well thought out and nicely priced.

Greg

[ajaxjones]

Thanks for the link, I'll see what I can rig for the arduino. I'm now powering the tank itself from a li-po pack so have the individual leads to the cells that I can charge on for that. I'm going to see how much running time I can get from a 2.6A pack before I hook it up to the internet

[ajaxjones]

In the end I went for a 11.4V LiPo pack and used a 78L06 to drop the voltage, although going to look at something else to cut down the power consumption. In addition I needed a 5V supply for the 5.8Ghz video camera and just put 4 or 5 diodes in series to drop the voltage to 5V for that. Works well now and can drive it around remotely using the onboard camera via its own internet webpage. I've also got a secondary camera hooked up to get an overview. Now I'm looking for a cheap self-contained video encoder to stream the onboard video rather than have to use a PC to encode the video. Any cheap alternatives?