Battery Temperature via CanBus
Chris Jones
Al Thomason
Chris,
Yes: You can set up the regs so that the one near the battery can be used to remotely send information to the far one.
The near regulator should be configured to be an RBM and let the far one enter ‘slave’ mode. To do this make sure to configure the near regulator to be: ‘Able to be RBM’, but also select the ‘Shunt is At Battery’ flag as well. Then with the far regulator, de-select the ‘Able to be RMB’. Doing this will assure that only the near regulator will try to ‘take charge’. (Else you could end up with a kind of random situation given both regs are the same priority).
FWIW, once you do this you can also use the CAN to communicate battery current and voltage as well. Ala, you could connect the VBAT+ and VBAT- sensor wires on the far regulator to its ALT+ and ALT- vs. sending them all the way over to the battery. For shunt, just leave the far regulators shunt unconnected. This will work AS LONG AS both engines are running! Obviously, if you expect to run with ONLY the far engine, then you will likely want to run all the sensor wires over.
Now. If you do indeed do the above, then the near regulator should be fully configured with your desired charge profile. In operation, it will take command and make sure both regulators work towards that goes. However for the far regulator you should consider what you want it to do if something happens to the near regulators, ala if at some time the far regulator has to work in isolation. Some choice might be just configured it to just enter a fixed voltage mode, something like 13.2v. Enough to make sure the battery will not die, but not really give it a proper charge.
Of course, if you run all the sensing wires over you can have the far reg also follow a proper charge profile.
One last comment: If you intend to use the ‘active regulate to 0A’ during float mode – then I would suggest you run the VBat and Current sensing wires from all regs to the battery, vs. using remote sensing via the CAN for the far regulator. Reason is: Though Voltage remote sensing works very well, buy the nature of current sensing – you might get into some funny interactions trying to use remote sensing and actively regulating the acceptance current.
Hope this helps, ask if anything is not clear and let us know how things work out!
-al-
Viking Star
45' Monk Sr. / McQueen
Chris Jones
Al Thomason
No problem Chris.
If you are indeed ping-ponging, then really the only choice is to install dedicated sensors to each regulator. Sorry.
(Yes, a prime case for a dedicated RBM – it is something we are looking at, but no firm date yet. )
Oh, and make sure to update the firmware to the latest version . . hand-offs between port and starboard regs was one of the areas I worked on in that release.