Dome Drive – Possible 24V Solution

It does look like I may end up trying running the Pittman Dome Motor at 24 volts as a test going forward. I can’t see adding a gear at this point in time.

This leads me to my next problem, my battery sub-system is all 12 volts. I’ve had no need for 24 volts in the body as my main drive motors the NPC-2212’s can only run at 12 volts, and everything else is stepped down from 12 volts using Dan’s distribution board.

I know how easy it is to create 24 volts from two 12 volt batteries, which I have and can do with what I have on hand, but configuring in series and then tapping off for 12 volts adds a level of complexity for charging the batteries w/o removing or rewiring each time. There’s also the problem of one battery draining faster.

For those unfamiliar with creating 24 volt from 12 volt batteries, this is a really good site explaining how and some of the problems.

One of the problems he talks about is charging unbalanced batteries in parallel and something called a “Battery Equalizers / Balancers” which can fix this problem. The unbalance comes from the 12 volt tap on a 24 volt system, and the two batteries discharging at different rates.

I’m hoping someone has tried an equalizer in their droid before. I’ve found a lot of information on equalizers, mostly large clunky boxes for RV’s and buses, but there are smaller version out the like this one.

What I’m hoping is to use the 3 12 volt 7amp batteries I’m using right now in parallel, and then combine two of these in series for 24 volts. For charging have a switch/circuit to disconnect/isolate them from anything in the droid and reconfigure just in the parallel state to charge all 3 batteries together.

Tall order I know without causing a short circuit or fire 🙂

Posted by Chris on December 5th, 2007 in Electronics | Comments Off on Dome Drive – Possible 24V Solution

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