UC4H PowerBrick: Cell Voltage Support by using a FrSky MLVSS
23. Dez. 2018
One feature which was missing so far was monitoring of the voltages of the individual cells of the battery. I was actually pondering about this for a while, and how a solution could look like. I didn’t wanted to have the required additional electronics on the UC4H PowerBrick board, since it would make it bulkier. So I ended up thinking that if a FrSky lipo voltage sensor (MLVSS or FLVSS) is good enough for many it should be good enough for us here too. The advantage: It is readily available, relatively cheap, folks are used to how to use it, and anyone can decide freely if she/he wants to add this feature or not. Gladly, I had put a solder pad on the UC4H PowerBrick, which I now could use to connect to the FrSky sensor. Also, gladly, I had prepared the uc4h.GenericBatteryInfo UAVCAN message for cell voltage support. So, adding respective code to the PowerBrick firmware and the BetaCopter code wasn’t very difficult. And this is the result:
One disadvantage of the FrSky sensor is that it is very slow. For a 3S/4S cell it provides a new data set only every 0.6 s. However, it’s main purpose is to detect battery issues, and this should be good enough, right? And after all, this is the same sensor everyone is using so happily
I am of course planning to design a new PCB for the UC4H PowerBrick, which offers a FrSky S-Port port. I in fact started already, but this will take time LOL.