ElectronicLoad

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Revision as of 11:45, 8 October 2017 by Bertrik Sikken (talk | contribs) (Creation)
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Project ElectronicLoadV2
File:Whyunopicture.jpg
Software voor Electronic Load v2
Status Initializing
Contact bertrik
Last Update 2017-10-08

Intro

This page is about some software I'm writing for my brother who is developing an 'electronic load'. An electronic load is a thing that draws current from a power source in a well-defined way.

A likely use case for an electronic load is to discharge a battery with a constant current, while recording the voltage so you can make a nice discharge graph.

Hardware

For the hardware design, see TODO

The basic principle of operation is that the electronic load has a circuit with a mosfet controlled by a microcontroller to draw a configurable constant current. The mosfet is connected to a heatsink that dissipates the power as heat.

The microcontroller can set the desired current, measure the actual current and measure the voltage. This way we can also do other modes than just constant current:

  • constant power mode: from the voltage measured, we can calculate the current required to draw a constant power
  • constant resistance mode: from the voltage measured, we can calculate the current to emulate a specific resistance