[Linux-aus] ArkPak 12V/240V Battery Box hacks

[Kevin Maciunas]

On 13/01/14 08:08, Peter Lawler wrote:
> Hi!
> Friend of mine has an 'ArkPak'
> http://www.arkcorp.com.au/p/3231/arkpak-12v240v-battery-box which is
> made by an Australian company out of NSW http://www.arkcorp.com.au/t/aboutus
>
> My mate was asking me if I could hack on some UPS type monitoring tool
> for them. It certainly doesn't seem to provide such functionality out of
> the box, although there's an LCD display monitor and powered USB ports.
>
> Just wondering if anyone's heard of, or even done, such a hack on the
> device?
>
>
Not on that device, but:

(1) It lets you select the battery.  So the "device" isn't actually "a" 
device..  It is many :)
(2) You'll need to get familiar with the lead/acid chemistry...

If this was me, I'd be looking at a simple uController with decent 
analogue and USB/Network.  You'll probably just need to look at the 
battery voltage and maybe put a current shunt in to see what happens 
when it is being sucked dry...  The cheapest source of suitable widgets 
is probably the Arduino form factor kit - the ATMega controllers are 
12bit analogue which is probably enough to figure depth of discharge.

Shouldn't be very complicated - the analogue signal conditioning side is 
the hard part!

/Kevin

-- 
Kevin J. Maciunas              Net: kevin at cs.adelaide.edu.au
Dept. of Computer Science      Ph : +61 8 8313 5845
University of Adelaide         Fax: +61 8 8313 4366
Adelaide 5005 SOUTH AUSTRALIA  Web: http://www.cs.adelaide.edu.au/~kevin
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