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Remote power/battery management.

A project log for "Tenacity": Yet-Another-Sawppy-Project

Inspired by Roger and others, I'm making a SAWPPY-Alike rover, adding my own tweaks and mods.

steveSteve 08/01/2020 at 10:260 Comments

One important thing for a rover, esp. one that is capable of moving beyond line-of-sight is management/tracking of power. I've known I wanted some sort of networked, data-reporting battery and power management system. I feel like I have the software side of things down pretty well and electronics is sort of where I come up short. Fortunately, digging around on the Intercats for "Open Source battery monitor" or "ROS Battery monitor" or something similar, led me to this ROS-aware Battery Voltage Monitor.

The circuit itself is a big network of voltage dividers, which even I know how to put together, so not too horrible to put together over a weekend.


Here's what that looks like when put down on a breadboard:

and the final realization installed on Tenacity, complete with readings off an 11.1V 5000 mAh LiPO battery shown as a ROS topic.


My hat's off to Duncan Iglesias over at Instructables for the neat circuit!
Now I can send Tenacity roving near and far and keep track of when it's time to bring it home for a charge :)

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