Submitted by dubbleUJay (not verified) on Mon, 11/09/2009 - 16:01.
Hello, I'm busy with a similar project to monitor engines in a micro co-gen system and I discovered yours during my "net-travels" looking for cct's to do the monitoring.
It looks like you have made up your mind about using the non-invasive method, but I quite like this invasive one as it seems more accurate as I need to calculate actual power given for a known amount of fuel, WVO, WMO or diesel. I'm no coder, so I'm learning from yours here ;-)
What I might be able to help with is the following:
I think that the supply voltages to the 7520 is quite critical. You are using one from the Arduino (USB) and one from the plug-in power supply. It just seems that there are to many things that can go wrong, IE., voltage drop on the USB when using other stuff on the PC exec.
Somewhere in the future you will be needing a dedicated supply for the stuff you want to control from the Arduino, IE., relays or what ever, so why not start now by incorporating a PC power supply for all the peripherals on the board?
I plugged a spare ATX PC PSU into a cheap 400Watt PC UPS and I now have continuous "known to work & good" power supply with 12,5, 3.3 volt dual rails.
I'm just now looking at having 2 separate 5V rails with isolated grounds, but as far a I know one of the voltages going to the Motherboard is isolated from the rest, or, if not, I'll build a small cct.
Just my 2cents and what I'm busy doing at the moment that might help you. I believe if one have a steady power supply, a lot of problems are eliminated.
Great project BTW! I'm also waiting for some IC's to arrive before I can continue :-( They are few and far between here in South Africa!
dubbleUJay
FYI if interested, my forum link if I may: http://www.microcogen.info/index.php?topic=188.0
Hello, I'm busy with a
Hello, I'm busy with a similar project to monitor engines in a micro co-gen system and I discovered yours during my "net-travels" looking for cct's to do the monitoring.
It looks like you have made up your mind about using the non-invasive method, but I quite like this invasive one as it seems more accurate as I need to calculate actual power given for a known amount of fuel, WVO, WMO or diesel. I'm no coder, so I'm learning from yours here ;-)
What I might be able to help with is the following:
I think that the supply voltages to the 7520 is quite critical. You are using one from the Arduino (USB) and one from the plug-in power supply. It just seems that there are to many things that can go wrong, IE., voltage drop on the USB when using other stuff on the PC exec.
Somewhere in the future you will be needing a dedicated supply for the stuff you want to control from the Arduino, IE., relays or what ever, so why not start now by incorporating a PC power supply for all the peripherals on the board?
I plugged a spare ATX PC PSU into a cheap 400Watt PC UPS and I now have continuous "known to work & good" power supply with 12,5, 3.3 volt dual rails.
I'm just now looking at having 2 separate 5V rails with isolated grounds, but as far a I know one of the voltages going to the Motherboard is isolated from the rest, or, if not, I'll build a small cct.
Just my 2cents and what I'm busy doing at the moment that might help you. I believe if one have a steady power supply, a lot of problems are eliminated.
Great project BTW! I'm also waiting for some IC's to arrive before I can continue :-( They are few and far between here in South Africa!
dubbleUJay
FYI if interested, my forum link if I may: http://www.microcogen.info/index.php?topic=188.0