Alt-BEAM Archive

Message #01632



To: "'beam@corp.sgi.com'" beam@corp.sgi.com
From: "Feser, Jason" jfeser@ea.com
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 1999 13:14:39 -0800
Subject: [alt-beam] Solar charger for NI-CAD walker...


Hey gang,

I was going through my 1000 Circuits book from none other than Forrest
Mims and found a circuit for a solar charger. I was thinking that I could
implement a solarize my walker by trickle charging a NICAD with a solar
cell. My question is this - can you be charging a nicad and drawing from it
at the same time - I think that NICADS have memory, so would this damage the
battery's ability to store its maximum power level? Also, the circuit I
have doesn't seem to have any protection against overcharging - anyone know
how to implement this?

I was also thinking that when the power level of the NICAD got below a
certain threshold, say about 3.5v, it might at that point use a IR recieve
to get a signal from a IR transmit mounted to a wall wart and then head the
walker in that direction. Then when you saw your bot scrabbling against the
wall near the trasmitter, you would know that it was time to juice up. Is
this a do-able thing? Would it require the use of a microprocessor? I've
never played around with an IR setup before so I'm not too sure if this is
something that is easily done.

Just a few brain-farts, so thanks for taking the time to consider them.....


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