THE HORROR! THE HORROR!

[Team23pitboss]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

Black Jags are serial controllable and have current control modes plus built voltage and current feedback. So all you would need for a battery tester is a serial port (or USB-Serial adapter), a serial to Jaguar adapter, a Black Jaguar that most every FRC team has 1 of, and a power resistor you can get at Mouser or your local electronics surplus store. Battery on the input side, power resistor on the output side, tell the Jag to dump X amps into the resistor, then record and plot your feedback. Primary difficulty is making the program to control the Jaguar. Either I'd need to figure out how to generate the FRC heartbeat, or you'd have to flash the Jag with custom firmware.

Wow, that is an absolutely brilliant idea I think that our electronics guys would probably be interested in trying something like this out at some point. It also give me something to do with all the ancient computers with serial ports I have floating around my house.