Just in case you didn’t know, the DPS displays the input it receives down the bottom of the screen. Not a very obvious display so I understand if you want a seperate larger display.
So you can carry one battery and have any voltage you want avalible, with current limiting, at any place you want, miles from any mains power if need be.
Float charge is useful for some batteries, however the use of the DPS as a battery charger whilst powered from batteries itself is kind of limited. It may have some uses as a portable charger but it has many other applications and these I would argue are more relevant for many.
This is a great idea, a portable “bench” power supply!
That 40V battery is nice as well, it should give you some good runtime as well.
FYI, they also sell a buck/boost version of the DPS now that allows for it to both reduce and increase the voltage. So you could set it up to work with a lower voltage input such as a 12V car battery and it could raise the voltage up to 50V. It has less current abilities though but I am sure it has uses for someone. I would use it to work off of a 12V ATX power supply for example as they are cheap and easy to find.
So you’re doing this because you need a portable power supply?
Ok, cool.
I just charge all my stuff at home, where there is wall power.
If I need power elsewhere instead of going battery -> charger -> battery I just connect the first battery to the device and save a bunch of conversion/charging losses.
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 Old and outdated.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.