2017-07-09 Microcontroller For Monitoring Solar And Leg Power

I’ve thought about using a DC motor as a generator to charge a super capacitor or battery, using human (leg) power.  If I get an exercise bike, I would like it to do some useful work.  Say, connect the capacitors or battery to a DC to DC converter to make 5V to charge my cellphone.  This might take up to 2 amps, or 10 watts.  This seems to be a reasonable amount of power to generate with my legs for a half hour or more.

But I would like to have the capacitors or battery able to be charged from another source, for example a solar cell or during nighttime from the AC line.  What I would like to have is an ammeter that has multiple inputs, one for my generator, one for the solar panel, one for the AC line, and possibly one spare input for a fourth source, possibly another solar panel or wind turbine.  I might even add a fifth input to allow the battery to charge the capacitor bank. 

I have several stud mount 35 amp Schottky diode rectifiers that I can bolt to a heatsink to ‘wire or’ all of the inputs to the capacitor bank or battery.  That seems to be the easy part.  But I would like to monitor all of the inputs and battery and/or capacitor bank for their voltage and current.  This can be displayed on a few lines of an LCD.

I could do this easily by using a half dozen cheapo DMMs all mounted side by side, with all of them powered by isolated DC to DC converters from any of the sources.  But I think it would be much nicer if all of the Vs and Is were monitored by a microcontroller, and saved to a flash drive periodically for review later.  The uC would be able to automatically switch between the inputs and display them, along with labels like bike or solar.

Also, the uC would save set points for the capacitor or battery and possibly the inputs, and if the charge drops below a certain set point, it would be able to turn on a charging source such as the AC line.  Additional optional functions:  If the charge source isn’t available, it could set off an alarm.  It could also notify remotely by SMS, Bluetooth, etc.  Getting even more capable, it could be accessible online for all the charging information.  

I’m looking for similar projects online.  Hopefully both hardware, and open source software.  I’ve found some similar, just for a single battery and source.  It may just need to add inputs for the additional sources.

Here are some links with related information:

A single board uC

http://www.rlocman.ru/shem/schematics.html?di=107038

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

© RustyBolt.Info/wordpress
CyberChimps