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!
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