If the point of this was charging batteries it would have been much more effective to use a hobby charger with proper temperature monitoring, variable current and voltage, cell monitoring, balance charging, and all the other important stuff that you should have in a charger.
Charging batteries by just sending constant current at their peak voltage to them is a 20th century way of crappy charging. Old and outdated.
Not for battery charging, that’s just one possible use, gauss directed that way. :person_facepalming:
I can use it to power individual boards on equipment for fault diagnostics at remote sites where mains may not be useable.
Loads of reasons, if you can’t see a use it doesn’t make it a bad idea, others might find it helpful although it’s hardly likely lots of people have an application.
meh. $36 for cables and boards and then you need to buy a SMPS to connect to it too? No thanks. It’s not portable at all with all that raw PCB and cables dangling. And building a box for it all would be time consuming and huge. I don’t have a use for it.
^ You didn’t build the required SMPS into it. And if you used a laptop power supply or similar you would not have the watts this thing is capable of. For $55 you can get a 30v 8A power supply on ebay that plugs into the wall and has a case. CC and CV.
You might want to do some research on how a (good quality) hobby charger adjust the voltage and current when charging a lithium battery.
It is not “just send it x voltage and y current and wait until full”
If the final product is useful to him, then the cost is justified.
If it would not be useful to you then you are right, it would not be worth it to you
ImA4Wheelr knows me all too well. He zeroed in on that topic when he posted this:
He realizes that this build will cost me nothing other than the price of the DPS5015. The case is from an old battery charger and the power source, the yard tool battery, I already had and have other uses for it.
When I first opened up this Ridgid dual bay charger and I saw this sweet power supply, it crossed my mind that I could possibly use it as is and connect 2 of the DPS5015’s. I did mention that I intended to check out that power supply, and while I am waiting for my shipment, I will do just that. I will post voltages and current capacities later.
Perhaps what I could do is use one half of the dual power supply and have both a plug in Bench supply AND a portable one.
I think it would be as simple as a DPDT switch on the input of the DPS5015 to make it work.
Of course it would all have to fit in the case and all.
I do know this, starting right now I will be scrounging around for another one of these Ridgid chargers.
What I was saying was that after I finish my portable supply using the DPS5015, I may order 2 more DPS5015’s to build another plug in supply if I can find another old Ridgid battery charger.