Hi guys,
I've got this robot I'm building:
It has two NiMh batteries, one powering the bus, and the other powering the electronics (gumstix plus cameras).
I have a crossover cable I put together that I use for powering both sides at once, from a wall power supply (the bioloid kit comes with a 12 volt, 5 amp power brick).
I came up with a technique they could use to do that, and at the same time this technique will allow them to run the robot off an external power supply when they are working on the bench and don't feel like running down their batteries.
Basically, I would include a second set of power plugs, hooked up to the existing power plugs on the board. They could plug in the crossover cable, which effectively hooks the two battery packs up in parallel. They would then remove one pack, plug it into the crossover cable socket, and then remove the second pack. The robot is running off the first pack they removed at that point. Then they can plug in the two fresh packs, and unplug the crossover and they're ready to roll.
I think that should work fine. The problem comes in when they want to run it on the bench. I can tell them until I'm blue in the face to remove the battery packs before you run it off a wall supply, but you know and I know eventually that isn't going to happen, and they're going to have a 5 amp supply plugged in with both batteries also plugged in (in parallel, because of the crossover cable).
I'm assuming that's going to cause problems for the batteries... What can I do that will allow me to have the crossover cable in place, the 5 amp power supply plugged in, and the batteries also plugged in?
Thanks, Jon
-------------------------------------------------------------- Jon Hylands snipped-for-privacy@huv.com