Electronics > Projects, Designs, and Technical Stuff

Home-made battery tester

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GadgetBoy:
I'm thinking of building a battery tester (for household cells, AAAs, AAs, Cs, Ds, 9V) from scratch, using an analog volt meter and load resistor, while also making it look kinda retro and steampunky.

What are your opinions of what size of load resistor(s) I should use to get an accurate reading of battery strength?

jeroen79:
That will depend on what kind of battery you want to test.
Which chemistry? What capacity? What current? Single cell or battery?

Sceadwian:
Use a Mosfet and opamp driven from a sense resistor fed from a DAC so you can program a constant current load instead of a fixed resistance. Then you can sweep the current draw and monitor the voltage curve to fully characterize the cell.


--- Quote from: GadgetBoy on March 10, 2019, 12:38:25 am ---I'm thinking of building a battery tester from scratch, using an analog volt meter and load resistor, while also making it look kinda retro and steampunky.

What are your opinions of what size of load resistor(s) I should use to get an accurate reading of battery strength?

--- End quote ---

GadgetBoy:

--- Quote from: jeroen79 on March 10, 2019, 01:10:46 am ---That will depend on what kind of battery you want to test.
Which chemistry? What capacity? What current? Single cell or battery?

--- End quote ---

Excellent question, I should have been more specific (and have edited my original question). I was thinking for general house-hold cells, AAAs, AAs, Cs, Ds, 9V, etc. Nothing fancy like LiPo's or what have you.

GadgetBoy:

--- Quote from: Sceadwian on March 10, 2019, 01:26:37 am ---Use a Mosfet and opamp driven from a sense resistor fed from a DAC so you can program a constant current load instead of a fixed resistance. Then you can sweep the current draw and monitor the voltage curve to fully characterize the cell.

--- End quote ---

That's quite a bit more complicated than what I was planning for (although, couldn't I pretty much accomplish the same thing with a pot?).

Also, OpAmps and DACs are something I have basically no experience with, so I'm interested in the idea, just wouldn't even know where to start.

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