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Can any Anduril drivers measure or estimate battery or LED current? (Hardware question) (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Being able to measure open circuit battery voltage is great, but it would also be useful to measure current while the light is running. That in turn can map to battery runtime and/or lumens. I wonder if any existing boards can do this, e.g. if they have adc pins connected to the relevant sense resistors. If not, it could be a cool feature in future boards.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Thanks both of you. It was intended as a pure hardware question since I can make the software changes myself in principle. So I wanted to know if there were adc inputs on usable places for this on existing boards, and it sounds like there are not. Oh well.

As for the FET in turbo mode, good point. I'm mostly interested in the lower levels though.

I guess tailcap current measurements with a DMM are good enough for my purposes. It would just be cool if it were built into the light.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I guess tailcap current measurements with a DMM are good enough for my purposes.

Only as long as you use a clamp meter.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Hmm is that to avoid voltage sag at high current? I think I'm satisfied with just low current, say below 0.5 amp at 1.2v (SP10 Pro on Eneloop) if I can do that with a DMM. I think a DC clamp meter that goes that low is quite expensive. Maybe someday.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

if you have an emisar light and can disassemble it, then you can try soldering an airwire from the sense resistor to the button LED pad (sacrificing it for that) or a free ADC pin, but that's more difficult. If that cause problems with the current regulation, add a 10k resistor or the likes.
with a linear driver Iout=Iin so it's simple, with a boost driver Iin=(Vout x Iout)/(Vin x efficiency), thankfully Vin is already bein measured, Vout and efficiency need to be guesstimated.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Thanks, I do have a d4v2 but that's a level of modding that I wouldn't want to do for this. I s hoping enough capability might already be in the hardware, to make accessing it into a matter of programming. Maybe I'll just go with lux measurements.