Battery charge monitor

[dennis roy]

I bought one of those "gizmos" lol. The first one was defective, it didn't read the right voltage. I called the place I bought it from and they took it back and sent a new one that worked fine......until I dropped it. Then the voltage doesn't read right until i tap it a couple times and the clock jumps ahead an hour anytime it feels like it. I wired it in with a plug so I can take it off the bike if it rains. Oh and then to add insult to injury, I put navigation on my bike...wired it in to the wires for the "gizmo" and wired it in wrong LOL the temp guage doesn't work now. Am I on a roll or what? I'll order another this winter now that the wiring is right and I won't drop this one. Maybe i'll try to laminate like someone said in an earlier post.

 

[bakalorz]

Tri-color LED's (RGB) make it easier to do this.

Hmmm ... thats a good idea ... :-D

I might try that after this one (since I already have the R/G led, I'll do that first)

 

[Gravity Tester]

Did this ever come to life for you , ! lamp would work great in my couling.

Hmmm ... thats a good idea ... :-D

I might try that after this one (since I already have the R/G led, I'll do that first)

 

[bakalorz]

Did this ever come to life for you , ! lamp would work great in my couling.

I made one on a breadboard, which worked ok.
I believe I just changed the indication with a pot rather than having it actually read the voltage, cause that was easier to pick the indication you wanted to test. But reading the voltage is the easy part.

I was kind of disapointed in the way the Red/Green LED looked.
Red was ok, and green was ok, but yellow looked kinda bleh ...
(you get yellow by "mixing" red and green, which looked ok from some angles, but appeard as a red and green "blotching" from other angles)

A different R/G LED might work better, and an RGB LED probably would.

In the end, I got it to work well enough to prove the concept, but I just lost intrest in finishing getting it from the breadboard to a printed circuit board and on the bike.

I also came to think the LM3914 based one from earlier in the thread would work better on the bike ergonomically. It gives an instant view of the voltage, and the analog interp is easy to get "at a glance".
With the "one LED" idea, to get more than an idiot light you need to have various flashes as described above, and to read them takes a bit more than a quick glance.

If you do electronics and can program pics, I'll send you my source, and recomendations on how to approach it if you want to take it further.

If you want a ready made solution, I'm sorry but I have too many other projects to really pursue this one much further.

Martin

 

[twiggy2cents]

here is the one i did. http://www.reuk.co.uk/LM741-OpAmp-Voltage-Indicator.htm
I too wanted a simple light instead of the bar gauge, after some fiddling i got it right, it was very sensitive to adjustments!