Kickstarter – Quad Power Management Board Video Demo

July 9, 2015 8 GPIO I2C Board, Products, Quad Power Management I2C Board, SunRover, SwitchDoc Products
10 Ohm 10W Load Resistor

Kickstarter – Quad Power Management Board Video DemoIMG_5048

Here is an off-the-cuff video done by Dr. John Shovic on the use of the Quad Power Management (QPM) Board in our new robotics project, SunRover.  SunRover is a solar powered semi-autonomous robot designed to be jointly software and remotely operated.

Our new kickstarter for the QPM board is “Really, Really Useful Breakout Boards – Arduino/Raspberry Pi” and is located here:

www.kickstarter.com/projects/sunair/really-really-useful-breakout-boards-arduino-raspb

The Kickstarter contains two boards that are useful in Raspberry Pi and Arduino projects for robots, power supplies, solar powered systems and more.  These boards are an inexpensive I2C 8 GPIO Extender and a Quad Power Management I2C Board.

The QPM board can be thought of as an I2C controller quad solid-state relay very useful in solar powered projects and robotic projects.  The SunRover robot project uses 5 of these boards and will add a 6th for optional external sensors.

Come pledge and get a great discount on these new products.

SunRover Battery Stacker/Unstacker

Here is the video.  Application description is below the video.

 

Quad Power Management Board and Battery Stacker/Unstacker

The Quad Power Management Board (QPM) is a fabulous addition to our product line.  We have needed one of these for a long time.  Back when we were building Project Curacao, we were continually needing relays (mostly latching relays) to switch power on and off to computers and devices, to switch from solar to wind and a variety of other chores.  What a pain!  Now we have developed and designed a Quad Power Management board incorporating I2C controlled 4 Independent Solid State Relays each with LEDs to show what is going on with the board.  Each solid state relay is able to switch 20V and 2.3A.   You can switch DC signals and analog signals (with proper conditioning – you need to add a DC Offset for analog signals).
We use a total of 20 solid state relays in SunRover (5 QPM boards), and they are all controlled by an I2C bus!  No more massive use of GPIO pins for latching relays and other devices.
QPM Board Block Diagram
QPM Board Block Diagram

Applications of the QPM Board

 

SunRover Motor Compartment
SunRover Motor Compartment

Battery Stacker

To get the ~12V we need to run SunRovers motors, we need to stack 3.7V LiPo rechargeable batteries.  It takes 3 batteries to get up to about ~12V.

The problem is that all of our Solar Powered Charging system is designed to charge 3.7V LiPo batteries.  Our solution?   Use two QPM boards to switch the batteries from a series to parallel connection and then charge the batteries from SunAirPlus.  The QPM board even has two inputs per device.  One with a protective diode and one with our.  Perfect for our application.

Battery Stacker - QPM Board Application
Battery Stacker – QPM Board Application