Mainboard V1.4 Ladestrategie

[Siegmund]

Hallo,
soweit ich das verstehe, kann der Ardumower nur geladen werden, wenn er eingeschaltet ist und die SW läuft. Ansonsten wird das Relais zu Ladung ja nicht angesteuert.
Aber damit verbraucht der Mower natürlich permanent Strom. Und ich kann den Mower bei Problemen (SW stürtzt ab, Tiefentladung) gar nicht mehr laden, sondern muss dann an den Akku ran und getrennt laden.

Wäre es nicht besser, das Relais als Öffner statt als Schließer auszulegen? Ein Verpolungsschutz scheint ja auf dem Board zu sein.
Oder gibt es spezielle Risken, die ich übersehe?


Grüße
Siegmund

 

[senil]

Hallo Siegmund,
Ich stimme dir vollkommen zu.
Das passiert mir manchmal, weil es manchmal nicht andockt und nachts entlädt, sodass ich es nicht aufladen kann.

Ich habe darüber nachgedacht, alternativ den Anschluss neben dem Einschaltknopf zu verwenden, da mein Akku über ein doppeltes Ladekabel verfügt und ich den Rover daher nicht öffnen müsste, wenn es passiert.
Aber ich nehme an, Ihre Lösung wäre viel logischer und eleganter.
Grüße.

 

[WhatATest]

The charging logic could use a redesign.

Something else I was thinking about is making the mower take power from the wall while docked and fully charged, instead of taking it from the battery and charge/discharge constantly overnight.

 

[bernard]

Hi.
For pcb1.3 , so certainly 1.4 also.
Relay is not powered when mowing to avoid unusefull power consumption
At end of charging if mower stay in dock pcb use the charger power and not the battery power so no issue to leave mower into station for many week.
Certainly your battery setting is not OK.
increase undervoltage shutdown and check battery idle duration to avoid empty battery.

 

[WhatATest]

Hmm, then I guess its the ACT board since that connects directly to the battery.
Would it be possible to connect the ACT board to the pcb instead? The wiki says to connect it directly to the battery, but doesnt specify why.

 

[Siegmund]

Relay is not powered when mowing to avoid unusefull power consumption
At end of charging if mower stay in dock pcb use the charger power and not the battery power so no issue to leave mower into station for many week.

I understand this approach.
But this also means that the Ardumower has to be switched on during the whole charging process.

So, is the additional power consumption of a relay during operation a stronger argument compared to keeping alive the whole system during charging?

 

[bernard]

I understand this approach.
But this also means that the Ardumower has to be switched on during the whole charging process.

So, is the additional power consumption of a relay during operation a stronger argument compared to keeping alive the whole system during charging?

Certainly Yes .
The main goal is to have a full autonomous robot mower with the largest possible mowing area using scheduler.
In all case In the last Azuritber firmware (i don't remenber if i include this in the DUE code, but it's into the teensy one) :
if there is no timer active ,then the PCB is powered OFF at the end of charging process, so no power consumption

 

[Siegmund]

OK - I understand the argument, even if I am not completely happy with it.
Typical systems are able to be loaded even if switched off (also Alfred Mower), so this by default is kind of expected. And if you switch off the mower after charging, you could have done also before...
The advantage I see is

• safety (but I am not sure how good the input circuitry before the relay is protected)
• charge control (you can protect your battery against bad power supplies)

But thinking of a system to be really autonomous, you are right: it makes sense not to switch off the mower at all. In this case maybe I have to think of shutting down of the RPI while the MGC/DUE keeps running.