julian on February 24th, 2010

The purpose of the charge controller is to fill the battery with charge as quickly as possible without causing any damage.
Letting the battery voltage rise to 13.5 volts, then holding it there using PWM is fine, but the battery saturates (fills with charge) slowly. Allowing the voltage to rise initially to 14.4 volts, then dropping [...]

Continue reading about Saturation Charge and External Influences

julian on February 17th, 2010

At the moment, battery voltage measurements are not synchronised to the 122Hz PWM switching frequency. In fact, an analogue to digital conversion is carried out just as soon as the previous conversion is completed. This results in dozens of samples being taken throughout the PWM cycle.
In the current firmware version, these voltage samples are written [...]

Continue reading about The Pros and Cons of Synchronisation

julian on February 8th, 2010

This is the finished PWM5 Solar Charge Controller

Continue reading about Finished