Further update on battery testers

If you have been reading my blog you will have noticed I made two Arduino based NIMH AA battery testers around 2 years ago. One was the first Arduino project I made but it needed some improvement and as I had mentioned in one of my previous posts I’m really running out of things to make; I don’t want to end up with a load of gadgets I’ll never use. So I decided to revisit some of my earlier projects and either scrap / repurpose them or improve them. The second tester I made does not really need further improvement as I have already done that and it only gets used once in a while. It is sufficient for my needs so I’m not that concerned about it’s shortcomings. This one however I have plans to turn it into a 12V lead acid battery tester but for now I decided to improve the display layout and make better use of the limited 16×2 LCD.

I had already changed the voltage reference from the inaccurate voltage divider method to a TL431 2.5V reference IC so in preparation for the conversion into a 12V SLA tester I have released an updated version of the NIMH tester code with the improved display layout I plan to use for the 12V version. The project page is here.

So next update I will probably show the completed 12V SLA battery tester although I have also been working on a 24V LiFePO4 version of it too which is complete and working but again needs further improvement. That will be shown in a future blog post when I feel the code is release ready. The pump control timer I mentioned before will get a full project page too when I get round to it. The priority now is to convert the AA tester into a 12V battery tester as I have a ton of them to test.

One Reply to “Further update on battery testers”

  1. The 12V version is now complete and has been tested with an 17.5Ah SLA battery. Not going to bother posting a full article but the schematic and code can be found on the project page in the text above.

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