PCB Modification for battery measurement

[Jeff Gough]

Oops, turns out it does work! Sorry, assumed I wasn't a member on this email address and Google would reply with an invitation of some sort!

Anyway, I attach a question I received by email, and my answer, which details the PCB mod that is required to enable battery voltage measurement.

Cheers,
Jeff

On Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 11:05 PM, Jeff Gough <je...@warrantyvoidifremoved.com> wrote:

Hi Sofia Maria,

This is so embarrassing - I see we exchanged a few emails in January, and we _still_ haven't got round to making a kit, so you've given up and you're building your own! I commend your determination and regret our procrastination!

The robots that exist have undergone a PCB modification - we made a resistor divider of two 100k resistors between VBATT and GND, and connected the divided battery voltage to test point TP2 (MSP430 pin 23, ADC channel 15). Code to read this voltage and convert it to battery voltage is included in the released firmware, but the schematic modification hasn't been released.

The modification features in a revised design that we're working on (very slowly) for the kit. In this design, it's moved to pin 22.

Best of luck with your build!

Jeff

On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 9:36 PM, Sophia Maria <lila...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello Jeff,

trying to get the formica robots together I stumbled over these sentences, concerning charging:

"At the time of writing; the MSP430 cannot measure the battery voltage. This was an omission corrected post-assembly with a simple PCB modification. A correction will soon be made to the design."

I don't entirely understand the PCB (yet) and would be glad about some Information, especially if the correction has been made to the layout that is available on your blog at the moment.


Thanks in advance!

Sophia Maria

[Auke Booij]

so when will there be a kit?