• Issues/Improvements

    Tim Savage • 02/15/2017 at 12:41 • 0 comments

    As with any project there are things you could do better. Many of the issues are related to the firmware, notably:

    • Current sink level needs smoothing to provide a more stable value
    • Related to the current sink level, the fan just turns on and off when the current goes above or below the hard limit of 0.5A rather using a high point to turn on and a low point to turn off to prevent this.
    • Display isn't well utilised

    And with that comes possible improvements!

    • Add thermistor to heat sink for fan control (I have one also obtained from the power supply)
    • Utilise a 4.096V regulator for micro controller power (and hence the analog VRef)
    • Add incoming voltage measurement (much of the electronics is already in place for this)
    • No support for timing load (eg detect a sudden drop caused by an over loaded power supply)

    However for now the unit does what I need it to do (sink a fixed amount of current). Unless I find some of these issues annoying (fan maybe) I'll leave this project as is!