KU4BY
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Remote Battery Voltage Monitoring
Yes Stu, there are solar chargers out there already that do what I am trying to do but I am being cheap about it as the sole purpose of my solar system at this point is to power my kiwisdr.
I opted to go with my Raspberry Pi B model and an MCP3008 ADC. There is a ton of information online showing the many different types of sensors. I've got it running now and when I run the python script I get output like this:
***********
Battery Voltage: 0.00V
Solar Input Voltage: 0.00V
Sensor 3 Voltage: 0.00V
Sensor 4 Voltage: 0.00V
Sensor 5 Voltage: 9.47V
Temperature Reading: 1023.00
Sensor 7 Voltage: 3.09V
Sensor 8 Voltage: 2.82V
***********
Sensor 5 and 6 are the only 2 sensors in use right now. 5 is hooked to a 9V battery and I haven't figured out the code for the temperature sensor yet. I'm no programmer. Channels 6 & 7 are open pins not connected to sensors and I suspect that is why I am seeing bogus info on those pins.
Eventually I might even figure out how to send the data over to a self hosted webpage but for now I'm gonna get a few current sensors, figure out the temp sensor, and maybe even try to learn Python...😂
Steve