Ismael’s Status Update for 02/29/20

This week I mostly focused on component selection. I’ve selected all of parts we will need and have an idea of what all of the hardware work is going to look like moving forward. I think the majority of the electronics work is going to be with the battery management system. Once we get the power tool battery converter I am going to take it apart and reverse engineer the circuit. What I expect to find is a small micro controller responsible for communicating with the battery and some voltage converter. I will spoof this communication with a logic analyzer and then replicate it with a small micro controller. The power output from the battery will then go through a 5V 10W regulator for the jetson. I am thinking about adding some serial communication between the jetson and the battery manger which would allow us to control the other regulator for the servo motors. The idea behind this is that we will be able to control the voltage that we run the servos at by just sending a simple command to the battery manager. I am hoping to be able to use this little battery hack for other project so I am making it as flexible as possible. This should be a cool little component and I am excited about the possibilities. Stay tuned for more details on how the battery hacking goes.