After reading all this I feel a whole lot better about just buying a new charger for ever voltage I got. Which so far is 12s,16s, and 20s. If each charger is around 120 then that’s $360. I’m imagining this system would (at the end) cost more than $360?
What’s the size of the potential market? How many people have this really cool problem lol
If you implemented the arduino based solution I described, it should only cost you one 20S charger and less than $50 in other components.
Eh, if you were DIYing it all you’d probably need is a 120V adjustable DC power supply and an arduino which would add up to about $120 if you bought a cheap power supply. Messing around with 120V power supplies is not something I really like though as they’re actually dangerous. On both ends and just about everywhere inside assuming you get one capable of any reasonable current.
What about big squishy buttons with S counts on them. And we can just go BLOOP BLOOP BLOOP…BLOOOOOOOP
and then it does magic science stuff and we can ride moar sket.
The cycle satiator is $330, so savings! I currently run 12, 13, 16, 18, and 20s depending on the EV, so an adjustable was the best play financially
This reminds me of the charger to end it all thread, still haven’t gotten around to making one though
FYI
I wanted to post that it would be awesome if the satiator could be modded to have a DC input as well as AC.
I have a smart charger that goes up to 12S and if there is no balance cable connected it just asks after detection if the guess S-count is correct, and if not, you can adjust it.
After reading all this I feel a whole lot better about just buying a new charger for ever voltage I got.
It’s gonna suck when you bring friends for a ride and you’re stuck carrying a 10s, 12s and 14s charger on you because autosensing is hard.
Just like a 4 pin charge connector should be capable of this, right? Lp20-4 or gx16-4?
Not to rain on your idea but that sounds like proprietary bullshit.
Nobody here (AFAIK) likes proprietary bullshit.
Give us Lego or give us death.
Well yeah, something similar to that. In electric cars they use something called a Control Pilot signal, which is basically a pulsing square wave that encodes what the charging station is cable of delivering. Ex 10% duty cycle = 10amps, etc… They also use switching resistors to drop the voltage of the control pins to indicate the vehicle charging status and whatnot.
My spontaneous idea for low voltage PEVs was to use CAN combined with smart BMS to exchange data, but this is all theory talk.
I think it would be difficult to rain any harder on someone’s idea. 
What open-source charge-control protocols would you recommend they use? 
DC + and - only with no fancy communication protocols. That kind of thing is exactly why people hate Evolve.
People hate evolve because their overpriced shit breaks.
repeat after me, its a feature
Just DC power connections on the charger? How is the charger to be controlled (to set different charge voltages)?
Or you you mean using different voltages on two extra pins to tell the chargers what voltage to set itself to?
What about charge current settings? Another pin, also using voltage to indicate charge current level?
Naah just a normal charge plug. I like your idea of a physical switch on the charger, it’s precludes the need for any extra proprietary-style connections. Nobody wants proprietary.
If offers some fool-proofing and ease-of-use benefits though. Done well auto-setting of charge voltage and current can be a great feature.
It might be used by just one company at the start but most open-source protocols started that way. 