Well my wesite is up and can be viewed here http://tac-net.homelinux.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=SmartUPS.Homepage

I plan to put most of the info there as it is eaiser for me to work with there however i will still be updating here when there is a new occurence

keep in mind that the website may be down due to connection problems at my end, i hope to have it all working latter on in the week without outages

Well its time for an update,

still waiting on hardawe but that is a minor thing at the moment. i aw currently working on the wiring of this thing and how best to integrate it with the rest of my equipment so i can selectivly turn anything off. it looks like a slightly modified 12c bus will be used to talk to any power plug and enable/disable

this means a bit of auto discovery majic so i can expand it easily and working out what i need to send (are on/off signals the only thing i will be sending). for the power sockets i am looking at microchips 12F675 as its cheap, fast and has everything you would need in a 8 bit package. for the ppc board to the rest of the network i am thinking of a 16F877 as i have several lying around its 40pin so it has the output and input i need. i fuigure with this attached to a parrelle/serial port i can move all the data i need

i also currently have a website up for other projects i am working on. when i have more info up i will provide a link

I havent been updating in a while due to lack of hardware and other projects going on (a VT100 terminal in an 68HC11 chip over a serial port that connects to a LCD screen and keyboard/mouse) however i have got more of an idea of how the project will work, basically i am going with power rails that i can connect to various inputs and outputs using mosfets or RELAYs (i like the idea of the power clicking over)

this should make it easy to connect the battries to a rail or enable/disable an output as well as quickly switch between supplies, if i use multiple rails then i can also link common devices together in a group and handel them in the same way

eg if power goes off on the input i can have only one rail that is automatically protected while the others switch off imediattlly, if i have the one rail then i have to detect the change and then switch over which will be on the order of several miliseconds and would cause a huge dip in the rails voltage which could reset some devices

2 updates in a day, must be working overtime

after looking in the forums it looks like there will be a wait however there are a couple of VERY nice supprises, while many are happy to see a graghics card i am happy to see a FPGA included in the design, this should give me some nice IO that would eliminate the pic entirelly AND allow me to have an excellent switch mode design that i can update that also has CPU intervention due to the high speed bus (i am assuming it is hannging off the PCI bus) as the PIC was going to be a quick and dirty serial port or USB to serial port device

this definatly changes alot of things as most people on the fourmns have overlooked the fpga, i dont think many know what they are or relise that you can make a video card in the chip itself (http://www.fpga4fun.com/GraphicLCDpanel.html), TCP offloading, USB2.0 (http://www.opencores.org/browse.cgi/by_category) or a high speed encryption engine (http://openciphers.sourceforge.net/openciphers.php), suddenly this device has alot more grunt than mearly the CPU, it could even implement a basic hardware switch for ethernet given the right amount of IO (see bit banging an ethernet device on fpgas4fun

the posibilites are endless, and i do intend to make full use of the extra hardware

After looking at doing a switch mode power supply i had a thoght, why not just use a simple PC power supply thats already nice and efficent and has a low ripple voltage and good surge capabilities

at the moment i am hitting my head on the desk because of this, if only i thogt to do it that way in the first place.

anyway down to bussiness, it looks like the project will be split in to 4 parts, input, output, power storage and processing.

input is fairly easy and can mostly be controlled in software (its bassically a whole lot of on/off switches), this allows for solar, the PSU and everything else, expected input is 12V and mabey 3.3 + 5 as well (see outputs) nice and simple and includes monitering to dutect when the power has failed

processing does all the calculating for the switching as well as handels user input (buttons, ssh, web) because as much of the control algorithims are in the Main CPU and not the PIC it allows you to swap out policies and charging algorithms as you wish allowing you to swap an SLA for a litium ion by pulling the battery, updating the config files then plugging the new battery in.

storage, alot harder, i am thinking of having diffrent 'rails' so that i can attach to any battery, 1 lot for input and 1 lot for output each comprising of 3.3 5 and 12 volts so that you can use mixed battery voltages in the system (eg 12v sla 6v sla and a 3.3v litium) the voltages for all rails may be a minimum voltage or a regulated, i have yet to decide. regulated means more rails and solderin/work/cost

output, this is dificult and as yet undecided due to the other problems i have to solve such as where dose the regulation occur

the problem in my design so far is where i do the actual regulation, it may make sense to do it at the output but some battries will need a spcific regulated voltage and some inputs may provide multiple voltages that are both regulated and unregluated, at the moment i am using a rail design but i think i may need to change to a grid of switches with all the resoureces around the edges allowing me to route power to and throgh devices

more info soon

Well it looks like i have been aproved, i hope to flesh out some of the details of the high level design on paper over the next couple of days however it wont take that long

expect a pic or two next week while i wait for the hardware.

at the moment it looks like a pic will be doing the time critical stuff and IO stuff such as getting analog voltages and and generating PWM signals as well as battery charging, however i plan to have the EFIKA do the heavy lifting and tell the pic what to do

ie turn that on, change that voltage, i also plan to have the pic run an interpreter so you can add needed commands or 'patch' the exsisting ones without reflashing to suit your setup (got 12 battries instead of 2, no problems, just update the correct byte and youre done)

however i picked up a comercial UPS the other day and it has given me some ideas about what i can do better, for one thing i plan to have 12v out instead of having circuitry to step up the voltage only to have it stepped down by the 10+ power supplies i have sitting in frount of me, in fact i plan to replace them all with this ups and just provide 12v and 5v outputs :)

that shuold clean up some clutter

well enogh rambelling and more designing