About Me Products Projects Toys Tools

This is the Professional Portion of my Webspace, If you have been directed here from my resume, please take note of this. All links (aside from the ones above) from this page maintain this professional nature albeit in a conversational tone. Thank You.

 

Over-Discharge Protection Circuit Boards for Lithium Polymer and Conventional Cell Chemistry Battery Packs

In collaboration with Terry (Gandolf) of Extreme-Fire.com and the forums at AirsoftMechanics.com, I have developed two plug and play battery monitoring boards for use with the SW-COMPUTER MOSFET Trigger for Airsoft AEG's.

The thumbnails to the left are links to dedicated pages for the LiPO and Conventional PCB's. The LiPO PCB is on top.

In addition to it's plug and play capabilities with the SW-COMPUTER, my Over-Discharge Protection Circuit Boards (PCB's) can be used with nearly any MOSFET Triggering Circuit by providing a switched pack voltage output, which is designed to be used for triggering current. This is application specific and must be addressed as a per board/MOSFET circuit custom modification at an additional charge of 5USD per board. Please contact me if this modification is necessary for your AEG.

Trigger Mod is now available for all PCB's

Pricing of each board can be found in the pages dedicated to them. Order forms are available here. All orders are handled on a first come first serve basis and I do this all by hand. I will answer all email in a timely manner but if it's a holiday please take the total non automation into consideration.

An Install Guide for MOSFET Triggers and my PCB's can be found here.

NOTE: In the event of loss of stock, the lead time for parts will be no longer than 2 weeks (Digikey ground shipping being the reason for the delay, I can get boards printed and delivered in 2-3 days).

 


Connectors for PCB's and General Purpose Applications

These are JST XH series connectors, each set is a matched male/female pair with one extra pin.

Pricing is as follows:

  • 2 Pin Set = $0.50 USD
  • 3 Pin Set = $0.75 USD
  • 4 Pin Set = $1.00 USD (Only Male Side in stock Digikey was out, next order will have both sides) For 3 Cell LiPO PCB users, I will make a female connector per board.
  • 5 Pin Set = $1.00 USD
Order forms are available here.

 

 

Project BlackBox

This is my Custom Developed Embedded Controller for use in monitoring Mission Critical Computer Components and Cooling Logic Monitoring.

Stated simply, this project functions as a supervisor for my personal PC (Project HeavyBlue) that is currently water and peltier (thermoelectrically) cooled, which is necessary for system stability in large scale number crunching applications, as well as for general personal use. Project BlackBox is responsible for maintaining the reliability of the cooling system and protection of core computer from catastrophic failure due to cooling system malfunction through constant monitoring and analysis of several custom developed sensors in real time. As of January 2008, Project BlackBox has a total runtime of 8250+ hours, with three system trips. These trips were of the following conditions:

  1. Loss of Coolant Accident - Low coolant level trip caused by a fitting on the coolant pump leaking for a sustained period of time. Prior to the coolant pump being unable to function due to loss of coolant, the system immediately shutdown the PC, thus eliminating the need for the coolant pump and preventing damage to the PC due to overheating.
  2. Low Temperature Alarm - Temperatures lower than -10 Degrees C were detected on the CPU core due to extremely cold local weather conditions which allowed for the coolant to drop to temperatures well below expected limits. The design Low Temperature Limit was reevaluated and the Low Temperature Limit was changed in software to reflect this number, additionally the air intake for the system was moved away from outside sources of air. Had this been an actual failure condition, the Low Temperature Limit serves as a check function to prevent condensation and icing in the vicinity of the CPU of the PC.
  3. CPU Overtemperature Alarm - The peltier the cools the CPU was in early stages of failure, while still pulling an appropriate amount of current, it was not producing the proper Delta-Temperature across it's plates and was thus not properly cooling the CPU. Had the peltier failed completely, without monitoring, the PC would have been damaged by overheating.

Each of these system trips were indicative of system threatening events. Except for the second event, these detected failures would have resulted in system overheat and the need to buy replacement components had Project BlackBox not initiated protective actions.

Detailed information regarding Project BlackBox can be found here or by clicking the thumbnail to the left.

Project BlackBox is available for custom development in any controls and monitoring environment. Feel free to contact me for details regarding your specifictions as well as an extimate of total cost to you. Due to the custom nature of this system I cannot give a blanket price, however if I were to make an exact copy of Project BlackBox it would be available for around 500 - 750 USD.

 

 

©2008 WolfDragon Contact