Testing the current (multimeter was used for accurate uA measurments)
One sensor that’s been incredibly useful to me is the radar sensor. Over the past few years I’ve made quite a few different versions with great results and many improvements especially in power consumption. One of the most useful features is the ability to place wood or plastic over the entire sensor effectively covering the entire unit from sight. This allows the device to be placed covertly in very effective positions. The biggest issue is ensuring the alarm signal can be transmitted from these locations and that’s where LoRa technology comes into play.
My first wireless Radar prototype used a 12V 23A battery and used a lot of power
RF 2.4GHZ and 433MHz,Wifi and LoRa are some of the most well known and common low bandwidth digital wireless communication methods, of course we could use a classic analogue radio to send digital square wave signals like the very early alarm systems but that tends to make the device a power hog and increases the size of the device however more power can also have great pros like increasing the transmission and, having less interference affecting the signal and even some level of immunity to jammers.
My second radar sensor rechargeable uses less current and made use of deep sleep but still not good enough for me…
However I always focus on low power and low current applications I want my sensors to do the job in remote areas with solar power or hefty batteries running them for years without breaking the bank.
During my journey I started with basic breadboard projects moved to more permanent perfboard and strip board projects and eventually started creating fully fledged PCBs for these devices. I encountered various problems like matching antennas to increase the transmission effectiveness, waterproofing and powering the devices with solar and batteries, the effect the blazing hot African sun has on enclosures outside for years, consuming the least amount of current and running the microcontrollers in the most effective configuration suited to their purpose and I can go on.. there’s always something new to learn and I bet there will be even more advancements in Radar technology assuming solar flares or nuclear war or maybe even aliens don’t destroy our electronic and electrical technologies. we have our ancestors to thank for creating and sharing this power with us over the many many decades and hopefully we will eventually evolve to colonize the stars… well ahem I guess that’s a bit ironic coming from a South African but ideas are stronger than any country government or religion I can only hope we keep moving forward.
Front view of my 3rd radar sensor uses 100uA when in deep sleep mode and about 600uA when running and around 10mA when TXing for about 1.2s. Uses HC7333 regulator and a rechargeable LiPo battery. SYN1115 used to TX ASK alerts. Rd-04 Module Ai-Thinker X-band radar is used.
Why do some South Africans have to scrape the bottom of the barrel reconditioning old batteries?
Opening themselves up to potential health concerns and pollution of the environment?
Maybe I can explain.
We’ve had load shedding for years now and with the recent shenanigans for almost half a decade it’s got exponentially worse with even the ultra wealthy feeling it a bit.
You’d think these clever a wealthy men would have come up with a solution by now… but it’s seems as if they have either found a way to get comfortable or they just don’t care… As long as they are making money from their diabolical cadres and corrupt hand shakers why should they care? After all they can run their water, washing machine, stove and medical equipment because they either don’t get loadshedding in their public servant mansions or they have installed million rand solar systems using taxpayers monies it’s a win-win “we fail upwards in life”.
All this while endorsing terrorist activities blatantly with no recourse or accountability using South Africa’s past to manipulate the current population into submission for the “election year” the audacity is unbelievable.. but yeah with the 30% pass rate these guys have dumbed us down and are extremely comfortable in the current climate they have designed. They really set an honourable bar to pass. I could go on but this is article is about a battery.
Seems bleak and it’s hard to ignore or be patriotic and loving towards your county and fellow citizens when there’s so much negative energy being pumped in by the guys we are supposed to trust in looking after us.. giving our data to, trusting their banks… No wonder there’s so much crime and hate.. these guys flourish in it like bacteria fueled by glucose eating a tooth. Even when the tooth is rotten the bacteria continuous to eat and will.. if not treated get into the bloodstream infecting the entire body. The bacteria doesn’t take into consideration that in future it will die along with the tooth it just consumes indiscriminately.
With that being said lets get into battery reconditioning.
Recently I got hold of an old 12v lead acid 100A battery. This battery was bought 20 years ago and stored in a corner for a rainy day.
The battery was never charged and never used.
Upon inspection the battery was at around a measly 1.95V.. this did not look good but luckily I have a DC MIG/MMA welder and decided to use the good old crude welding trick on this big boy.
I removed the MIG setup and installed the stick clamp to the + terminal and the ground to the – terminal. see the photo.
Welder settings:
I set the welder volts to about 21V and the amps to around 25A. Make sure you are using a DC welder AC will NOT work.
Make sure you do this outside or in a well ventilated room. It’s VERY important.. battery acid is no joke to organic materials.
First I did 21v at 25A for 5 minutes then let the battery rest for a whole day to observe it.
Once I concluded it seemed like it was fine my formula was 21v at 25A for 5 minutes then a 10 minute cooldown in between.
I did this 6 times and measured the battery in between times.
Times:
cycle: 1
9.17 V
cycle: 2
9.50 V
cycle: 3
10.97 V
cycle: 4
11.41 V
cycle: 5
11.75 V
cycle: 6
11.77 V
Once this was done I let the battery rest for a day.
Battery at 9V
Now comes the patience part… The battery could hold a charge but ever so slightly would drain and it was supper thirsty.
So I setup a dumb charger at 5A and let the battery charge up for a few days checking intermittently.
Next I setup my recondition charger and let it do it’s thing for a week and what do you know the recondition charger reported great values.
However the battery was still thirsty so I switched back to the 5A dumb charger and let it run for another week..
Fast forward about 3 weeks of low current and recondition charging and the battery seems to be doing fine
Holding a rock solid 12.6V and running my LED lights.
So my conclusion is that it is possible to desulfate and recondition a 100A lead acid battery that has never been used. The initial welder zapping was only the start I needed at least 3 weeks after that to “recondition” the battery to a useable state and I still don’t know the long term potential issues.
It really was just a patience game and also don’t do anything like messing around with the acid weights.
I would still like to figure out how to balance acid and water plus all the battery chemistry stuff but for now this welder trick is good enough.
UPDATE:
About a week later the battery began acting up again seems the internal resistance is high and there is a constant draw bringing the battery voltage down.
Overall I can say that this was a temporary solution and at the moment I don’t have all the fancy battery tools or chemistry knowledge to experiment further.
Also though the battery has issues it can still be somewhat used for low voltage applications now. So I guess I’ll view this as a feature instead of a bug 🙂 cheers
Delay_IP5306_Heartbeat_Led=Delay_IP5306_Heartbeat=millis();//set to current millis at start
PORTA.OUTCLR=IP5306_HEARTBEAT_PIN;//write low, do this after setting output and pullup
}
voidIP5306_Heartbeat()
{
/*
# If button is pushed longer than 30ms but shorter than 2s, IP5306 will identify the action as short push. Short push will open SOC indicator LEDs and step-up converter
# If button is pushed longer than 2s, IP5306 will identify the action as long push. Long push will close step-up convertor, SOC indicator LED and flashlight LED.
# If button is pushed shorter than 30ms, IP5306 will ignore the action.
# If two short push is detected within 1s, IP5306 will open or close flashlight LED
While load shedding continues to plague the average south African citizen I noticed that some of the well off citizens were not that phased out with the power going off and water running dry. Upon further investigation I found out that “big surprise” they had proper solar infrastructure and water tanks coupled with the right political connections they don’t need to suffer for decisions made by people who bear no consequence if that decision flops.
There’s nothing new about the facts I mentioned above however it got me thinking about looking for cheaper efficient and longer lasting solutions using technology even if they are not ideal its better to have something rather than nothing… what a shameful thing I had to say taking into consideration its the 21st century and governments are still using their governmental privilege to mess things up without facing a tar a feather spectacle such a shame..
Well unfortunately I can’t control things on a national scale but I can make a review of some affordable LED lights and hopefully that can help someone make a well educated effective decision to mitigate some of the frustrations and pain.
While browsing Takealot I noticed some prices fluctuate quite often but if you keep a price you are willing to pay in mind you can create a sort of mental filter that helps. So for this article I decided to search for LED lights containing these parameters:
Affordable
Rechargeable
Li-po or li-ion
LED light
5v to charge
Have an enclosure
Easy access and battery replacement
Decent circuit with charge protection
LED’s must not get too hot
I managed to find a product that came as a value pack (the so called emergency LED tube) and passed all my requirements. The product came as a value 3 pack of generic LED lights each light is about 32cm long and very light with magnetic discs.
I got mine at R210.00 for 3 emergency LED tubes that’s R70.00 for 1 so definitely affordable since I can’t get any 18650 battery for under R100.00 anywhere I have searched online in South Africa. I might just purchase these lights and harvest the battery in future just because it’s cheaper than purchasing the li-ion battery by itself.
Transistors
The lights come with 1x unmarked 18650 battery and a charge controller chip with 1 button and a female micro USB port to allow charging via 5v
The button allows the light to function in 3 modes: bright, dim and strobe.
Even though the listing claims these lights are 18w when I tested them at a theoretical max of 4.2v (li-ion battery max) I only got around 10w and the LED strip got hot.
4.2v running at 10.4W though box claims 18w (LEDs super hot burns skin)
Mystery chip
A few cons I noticed are:
Solder wires soldered directly on to the 18650 battery
Cheap solder
Some joints were not soldered sturdily
Blue end caps can come off easily sometimes
All in all the lights did work out of the box however I touched up a few joints and glued one end of the blue cap just so it doesn’t come out when hanging the light via the plastic loop.
Once fully charged the light has lasted through 2-4 hours of loadshedding with a few hours of charge time.
Overall the light does its job and is affordable and the battery can be swapped or cascaded for longer lifetimes.
The only major concern I have it the lifespan of the LED chips and the mystery chip but only time will tell.
After setting up a CCTV system consisting of multiple WiFi cameras placed over my property I noticed that certain cameras were located in areas far away from AC outlets covered by my backup electrical system.
In this project I used some an old 18650 (LG makes the LGABD11865 ) from a laptop power supply. Also I upgraded my 5v charger to a 1.5A to provide enough charging and running current for the camera. The camera I am using is the EZVIZ C3W 1080p WiFi camera
Since Load-shedding has been increasing dramatically I had the need to find cheap simple and reliable power sources for there cameras (12v DC). One important requirement is that the backup system needs to fit into a small area E.G an electrical box on a pole where the camera is located.
While researching I came across the so called mini dc ups device mainly used for backing up WiFi routers at either 9v, 12v, 15v, 24v. however these devices seemed a bit overkill electronically wise and also price wise.
So I decided to opt-in on a cheaper smaller sized DIY version the components consisting of:
The components are all soldered onto a 50mm x 70mm 1 sided PCB board.
I noticed that the 4056 IC gets quite warm but doesn’t burn my fingers. The same goes for the coil. The specification is max 1A and the load I was applying was around 0.33mA – 0.670mA
After testing this particular LiPo charger PCB I noticed a few major problems the first being that the 8-pin 4056 LiPo chip is a copy of a copy… the next critical problem is that there is no protection circuitry besides the overcharge/discharge function in the 4056 chip.
This is a big problem since the chip does not switch off completely when low voltage occurs and as a result the load will periodically switch on and off unreliably before finally switching off completely. This oscillation can damage the load.
A solution will be to use a separate LiPo PCB with protection mosfets and a separate booster board.
The XH-M603 module is perfect for building a battery charging station, offering a range of protection features and easy to set min/max charging voltages. As soon as the desired battery float voltage is reached, the charging circuit is disconnected.
Input Voltage: DC 10-30V
Display Precision: 0.1V
Control Precision: 0.1V
Output Type: directly output
Voltage Tolerance: ±0.1V
Board Size: 82 x 58 x 18mm
Example of usage:
Plug into battery in order to power the pcb board.
Don’t connect the charge input yet…
–Start charge setting (left button)
Press and hold the left button until the LCD starts flashing.
Now press to choose the desired voltage.
Leave the button until flashing stops and the chosen voltage will be set.
–Stop charge setting (right button)
Press and hold the right button until the LCD starts flashing.
Now press to choose the desired voltage.
Leave the button until flashing stops and the chosen voltage will be set.
