Oooooo Shiny!  SunRover Solar Power Mux Charging System Test

Today we did the first set of tests on the Solar Power Mux on SunRover.   We hooked up a 6V DC power supply to the Solar Panel input (we wired an identical waterproof plug for the 6V supply to match that coming in from the panels themselves) to provide power for the test.  SunRover has six solar panels (3.4W Voltaic Systems panels) running into a set of Quad Power Management Boards that provide a multiplexing system so the six panels can be shifted to any of the three SunAirPlus based charging and power systems (Motor batteries, Raspberry Pi2 batteries and the Arduino Power Management batteries).

SunRover is a solar powered robot designed to be semi-autonomous (SunRover Robot Philosophy: Yes, I will move around by myself until I get confused or find a cliff.  Then I will ask for help from a human.  Or at least a cat).

The Block Diagram

Here are two block diagrams showing the full SunRover robot system and more specifically, the SunRover solar power panel multiplexer.

 

Results

We programmed the Arduino to set up the solar panel mux to set 4 panels to the motor system (SAP0 – SunAirPlus 0), 1 panel to the Raspberry Pi2 (SAP1) and 1 panel to the Arduino Power Management system (SAP0).  Note that there is one solar panel that is hardwired to SAP0 so the Arduino will always be charging, no matter what is going on with the software and multiplexer.  This allows the SunRover robot to recover from a complete solar power brownout.  The LEDs in the picture above show the robot programmed for the 4,1,1 mux as described above and it also has the motor batteries unstacked for charging (when running the motors, the QPM boards stack the LiPo batteries to get ~12V).

Here is the Arduino serial output showing the serial command “SETSOLARMUX” being received from the Raspberry Pi2.

----------------
FreeMemory=1688
----------------
Serial2.available:16
commandState=0
BUFFER Read- char=FFFFFFFE | ?
BUFFER Read- char=FFFFFFFE | ?
BUFFER Read- char=53 | S
BUFFER Read- char=45 | E
BUFFER Read- char=54 | T
BUFFER Read- char=53 | S
BUFFER Read- char=4F | O
BUFFER Read- char=4C | L
BUFFER Read- char=41 | A
BUFFER Read- char=52 | R
BUFFER Read- char=4D | M
BUFFER Read- char=55 | U
BUFFER Read- char=58 | X
BUFFER Read- char=0 | 
BUFFER Read- char=33 | 3
BUFFER Read- char=FFFFFFEE | ?
COMMANDSTATEB - char=FFFFFFFE | ?
Command Received From Pi2:SETSOLARMUX
0:01:13 1 1 1970
Compass heading=340.93
QPM GPIO Readback
QPM0=11
QPM1=5
QPM2=7
QPM3=0
QPM4=3
--------
displayMode=4
returnString=4,1,1

displayMode=4
SETSOLARMUX Command=4,1,1
setSolarMux: motor, pi, arduino = 4, 1, 1
Panel configuration accepted
setting Power Channel=  QPM, Channel Number, State: 2, 1, 1
setting Power Channel=  QPM, Channel Number, State: 2, 2, 1
setting Power Channel=  QPM, Channel Number, State: 2, 3, 1
setting Power Channel=  QPM, Channel Number, State: 3, 0, 1
setting Power Channel=  QPM, Channel Number, State: 4, 2, 1
QPM GPIO Readback
QPM0=11
QPM1=5
QPM2=14
QPM3=1
QPM4=4

Solar Panel Charging Results

The power supply is turned on to ~6V and here are the results from the SunAirPlus solar power controller/data collection boards that show the ~5.9V present on each solar panel input of the boards. Note that only SAP2 currently has a battery connected and so only SAP2 shows any battery charging.

--------SAP0--------
LIPO_Battery Bus Voltage:   4.16 V
LIPO_Battery Load Voltage:  4.16 V
LIPO_Battery Current:       0.00 mA

Solar Cell Bus Voltage:   5.94 V
Solar Cell Load Voltage:  5.94 V
Solar Cell Current:       7.20 mA

Output Bus Bus Voltage:   4.98 V
Output Bus Load Voltage:  4.98 V
Output Bus Current:       1.60 mA

--------
--------SAP1--------
LIPO_Battery Bus Voltage:   4.13 V
LIPO_Battery Load Voltage:  4.13 V
LIPO_Battery Current:       0.00 mA

Solar Cell Bus Voltage:   5.94 V
Solar Cell Load Voltage:  5.94 V
Solar Cell Current:       6.00 mA

Output Bus Bus Voltage:   5.94 V
Output Bus Load Voltage:  5.94 V
Output Bus Current:       -0.80 mA

--------
--------SAP2--------
LIPO_Battery Bus Voltage:   4.17 V
LIPO_Battery Load Voltage:  4.16 V
LIPO_Battery Current:       -83.60 mA

Solar Cell Bus Voltage:   5.90 V
Solar Cell Load Voltage:  5.88 V
Solar Cell Current:       208.40 mA

Output Bus Bus Voltage:   4.96 V
Output Bus Load Voltage:  4.97 V
Output Bus Current:       109.20 mA

Next up?

We hook up the batteries from the SunRover track base to the Solar Power charging system.  And then, we start testing the motors.