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.
@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
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)
Here are a couple more Revolution Robots with the quick-connect charger
Frank
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.
@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
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.
@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
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.