Hi,
I am a part of a design team at my school who is trying to create a smart battery pack for an electric bike that another team is designing.
We have a number of functional goal for the battery pack and are having a hard time figuring out how to achieve some of these functions. We are mechanical engineering students so our knowledge of electrical systems is fairly basic. None of us have ever dealt with Arduinos or any type of micro controller.
We have a 12 cell, 38 VDC pack that will be supplying power to a 36 V motor that will draw up to 22 Amps. The functions we desire include:
-The ability to measure voltage, and temperature for each cell.
-The ability to measure the current at at least two different points within the series of cells.
-We need the data to be recorded so that we can collect it and download it to a flash drive or SD card.
-We are integrating a GPS chip into the system so that we can see how the cell parameters are effected by different riding situations. We need the GPS data outputted in the same manner as the IVT data and we need to be able to match up the two data sets (through a timer?).
-We need a feedback controller that can allow us to protect the cell against overcharging and discharging
-The controller must also have the ability to balance the cells so that we can keep them all at the same state of charge
-Finally, the controller needs to have the ability to initiate charging profiles, such as pulse charging. One of our advisers is doing research on this so we need flexibility on the way we can recharge the pack.
We have seen posts about measuring voltages for battery packs with hall effect sensors, and some people have talked about using separate cell boards for each cell. We are looking for recommendations on how to set up the hardware for the system.
Which Arduino product will help us accomplish these tasks? Or is it even feasible? Please let us know your thoughts/suggestions. As I mentioned, we don't have much knowledge on this type of work so any help would be much appreciated.