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Canada
Asked — Edited

Wireless Charger

Has anyone made a wireless charger yet. use / charge / use / charge is getting a little tiresome and it is just my first week with ez-b.

Logic is JD Humanoid (or your build of choice) looks around when battery is flat finds a Glyph (that points in direction to head) and then goes to the home Glyph and parks with coil on breast plate and wireless charges. Seems to be some rough instructables to make a wireless chargers and some pseudo professional solutions
element 14 wireless

I am not sure if anyone has built something like this , logic was a script that continually does a getVoltage() and then looks around for Glyph and returns home to charge when low. EZ-B continues to monitor until each cell of the LiPo reaches optimum level and when charged heads off to play again.



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PRO
Canada
#24  
@PTP Never tried to be honest, but can't see why not as long as you are not overloading the transformer. Lots of people take the balance charger and LiPo's out of the fat shark goggles battery and then use 18650B Li-ion batteries (holds double the charge per gram than LiPo's).

Is anyone using Li-Ions on their EZB's ?
#25  
@nink,
I’m not able to find any reed switches that handle more that 0.5A

@jeremie,
What is the fuse rating inside the Revolution robots?

To be safe, I think I’ll go with the microswitch idea you first mentioned. Small ones are raated at 15A

Frank
PRO
Canada
#26  
@Faengelm
No we haven't evaluated that battery in particular. The fuse rating in revolution robots is 20Amps.
PRO
Canada
#27  
@Faengelm how about a reed controlled MOSFET?
#28  
@Nink
Great idea. This is what makes the forum so great!

I’ll prototype this and let you know how it works out

Regards,
Frank
PRO
Canada
#29  
@Faengelm
From my measurements last night my battery went from 7.558V down to 7.554V in 12hours. From these calculations it looks like the charger would parasitically drain the battery from full charge to 6V in about 300 days.

I'm sure that it would actually be less days than that but I'm pretty confident that you are ok to leaving an unpowered Linkman charger attached to the battery in your design.
#30  
@jeremie,
Thanks for researching this

Frank
#31  
Honestly in my mind I would recommend making a " dock stand" for each robot. The robot would have a couple contacts on the bottom some where to make a connection to a charger. Plus, it could be a could stand / display for the robots too.
#32  
@jstarne1
That’s a good point.

I’m pusuring this with several levels of increasing capabilities:

Level 1 would still require turning off the power switch, but would just allow setting the robot on the stand... making the power connection

Increasing levels would handle the shutting off the power switch and determining the end of the charge cycle to disconnect the power

Frank
#33  
@nink
Here is an update on my prototyping.

I thought I'd start with the manual stand approach as described by @jstarne1. The first problem is how to make a reliable easy to connect power connection.

I chose a magnetic charging/data Android phone adapter with some micro USB breakout boards

If you decide to try this be sure to order a cable that has data capability as you need the D+ & D- pins joined together for the center tap on the LiPo cells. You need both pins as the magnetic connector does not care about orientation



Of course this approach still requires you to turn off the robot power switch and monitor charging to later disconnect

Now I'm off to work on the suggestion from @nink and @Jeremie


Frank
PRO
Canada
#34  
Very cool love watching the progress. Your magnetic android charger idea seems to work well. Robot only needs to get close enough to the charger to connect. Great work. (looking on ebay for magnetic charging plug)
#35  
Here are a couple more Revolution Robots with the quick-connect charger

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Frank
PRO
Canada
#36  
Cool I ordered half a dozen micro USB and breakout boards and some magnetic charging cables, some USB female breakout boards and some ballance cables from China. About $20 total should be here in a few weeks. Will try and catch up.
#37  
@Nink
Just be sure the cables support data transfer instead of just charging

The next step in my project is to add @jeremie’s idea of using another robot to provide the charging station

It is powered by a wall adapter instead of a battery and will contain the version 3 charger for the dockable Revolution robot connected through the magnetic connector

Regards,
Frank
PRO
Canada
#38  
Yes I did thanks @Frank I ordered a 2.4 amp charge and "Data Sync" cable. My only concern is the data lines (that it looks like you are also using for power) does not have the correct gauge wire to support the required amperage so they may get a little toasty and burn out. Looks like yours are working fine. Worse case I just grab 4 diodes and make a quick bridge rectifier so the + and - are always correct irrespective of the way you join the connector. This would also free up the data wires to talk to say a circuit or even perhaps just a relay and disconnect power to the robot during charge cycle.
#39  
@Nink
I need the D+ D- wires because the charger requires 3 wires to charge the battery

This is because there are 2 cells in the battery that must be balanced charged


Also, I don’t think you need to worry about the orientation of the connector switching polarity as these cables are more the the USB C design where they don’t care about orientation


regards
Frank
PRO
Canada
#40  
ok understand sorry I forgot about the balance charging. I am using the ballancer on battery I mentioned before so only 1 positive and 1 negative terminal.

Here is a picture of the 2.4 amp cable I purchased. There is 15 cores for data line and 35 for power.






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#41  
Ah, I forgot you were adding the charger into the robot... I might try that too as you mentioned that frees up some lines for possible power control of the robot


Frank
PRO
Canada
#42  
@Frank 2 months later my magnetic cable turned up. (Just love ordering parts from China).

Works well. I will add them to all my EZ-B great idea! Thanks


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