I was wondering if it was possible to harness the pulses generated by an electric fence to charge up a 12v battery for use with arduino projects. I see things about fence monitoring but what if you could actually power the arduino from an electric fence without having to install a seperate power grid? Imagine the possibilities on the farm..
syphex:
I was wondering if it was possible to harness the pulses generated by an electric fence to charge up a 12v battery for use with arduino projects. I see things about fence monitoring but what if you could actually power the arduino from an electric fence without having to install a seperate power grid? Imagine the possibilities on the farm..
It's possible. It will depend on the energy available from the fence vs. the energy usage of the Arduino. The voltage would have to be dropped quite far thouh.
You might be better off with a solar-powered Arduino, using a battery charged by a panel.
I suspect that electric fence pulses are high voltage but very low total energy so that they can't kill anyone. And (as far as I know) a key feature of the design is that current is NOT normally drawn from the wires - in other words there is only a pulse when an animal touches it.
I suspect that trying to draw power off to charge a battery would effectively disable the fence.
...R
Robin2:
I suspect that electric fence pulses are high voltage but very low total energy so that they can't kill anyone. And (as far as I know) a key feature of the design is that current is NOT normally drawn from the wires - in other words there is only a pulse when an animal touches it.I suspect that trying to draw power off to charge a battery would effectively disable the fence.
It depends on the fence design. There are those that only supply power when an animal contacts it, but there are many that do so on a timed basis. The former are more expensive, and therefor more common, at least in the my area. These less expensive ones will supply a small amount of charging current once every second or two, though as you say, the total energy is low. Solar power is usually better. for outdoor operation of low current requirement devices.
My electric fence is around 60m long. The energizer unit consumes around 1W I think. Even if you draw all of its power, making the fence useless, you would probably only get 50% of that at best. Then you have to convert that from several kilovolts for a fraction of a second every couple of seconds, down to a constant 5V, loosing most of the remaining power. A the end of the day, you would get a few tens of milliamps at best, and a useless fence.
A separate 12V SLA battery and solar panel would be a much better solution. Don't use the Arduino's power regulator, get a DC-DC convertor to get your 5V and feed the arsuino via the 5V input.
Paul
good idea lots of fences however have a battery as power source. however if you use a transformer in the line you can get enough energy from one line. keep voltage below 24 volts.
a very simple transformer in the pulser is good enough.
look at the marklin digital train even code is over this line possible.
If you draw power from the line there will be none to deliver to any animal.
Boardburner2:
If you draw power from the line there will benoneless to deliver to any animal.
PeterH:
Boardburner2:
If you draw power from the line there will benoneless to deliver to any animal.
The critical question is "will there be enough?"
...R
Probably not
Drawing power in any useful amount is likely to reduce the available voltage to an unusable degree.
Fences give out very little power , just a lot of volts, intermittently.
Only simple circuits i can think of would present an impedence which would reduce the voltage from kv to a few v on the fence.