Monday, January 23, 2023

Solar Shed - Final Testing

The Solar Shed thing is almost done.  Instead of trying to debug the final issues in the shed on the wood pile and me all twisted in a pretzel, I built up  an environment in my office.  Instead of the Solar panel I used a 24VDC power supply I had.  This allowed for testing most of the different voltage points that control the relays  and the battery charging.  Here is a summary of the voltage decision points

  • If the Solar panel voltage falls below 14 VDC, charging is disabled.  No sense in charging at this point, the panel is providing very little current.
  • If the battery voltage rises above 14.6 VDC, charging is disabled.  Don't want to over charge the battery.  Also a five minute backoff timer goes into effect.  That way the charger won't be connecting/disconnecting at the main loop revisit rate. 
  • If the LED light switch is turned on, charging is disabled.  I want only the battery to supply the LED lights.

Got the coding done.  Now over a few days of monitoring the setup in the shed, I have needed to only change some constants.  Much easier to just take the laptop out to the shed and program the board, than try to step thru code.  Between the development board base and the PCB add on I built, there are some crazy ground currents that are effecting the A/D readings.  Thus the constants needed some updating.

  

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