Alt-BEAM Archive
Message #01633
To: 'beam@corp.sgi.com' beam@corp.sgi.com
From: Feser, Jason jfeser@ea.com
Date: Friday, March 19, 1999 4:19 PM
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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