Hi, I am currently working on a project with an interest in monitoring smart battery discharge characteristics for faultfinding purposes.
At present I have very limited tools for such tests and wish to acquire a method for logging these batter characteristics whilst in use.
What I need to be able to achieve:
- Measure battery voltage and current simultaneously.
- Log this data to a pc over a 48-hour time scale.
- A fairly fast logging rate as have noticed some strange pulsing at low voltage levels.
Please can you advise me as to which Pico products and software will most appropriately suit my needs and list all items I will need to purchase in order to create a useable system. Can you also clarify if the software needs to be purchased separately or comes with these modules?
In order to advise on the suitability of our products for your application, I would be grateful if you could tell me the size of the voltages and currents that you are looking at.
The Picolog software is supplied free with our products and is also available for free download from the website.
For what you are looking to do, I would recommend using an ADC-212/3 oscilloscope. This is a dual channel scope and will also enable you to log data using Picolog. It has a 3MS/s sampling rate, however if you use the unit in Real Time Continuous mode in Picolog then you are limited to using a sampling rate of 1 sample per millisecond. In Fast Block mode you can sample much faster than this.
To measure voltage I would recommend using the X1/X10 voltage probes and to measure current I would recommend using the 60A current clamps. The current clamps have a resolution of 10mA so would not be suitable for very small currents. You will also need to consider when logging for longer periods of time, that they are battery operated.