Power Management Unit Build Part 1
This is the part 1 of my Power Management Unit Build. The purpose of this project is to create a power center for my homebrew Amateur Radio station so that I can control and monitor it directly from the unit or over an IP based network remotely.
I will accomplish this by employing an Arduino micro controller board that we sell at flatwatertradingpost.com. The components in the PMU are as follows:
A 40 amp switching power supply purchased off the internet. It features adjustable voltage from 10 – 13.8V, line and load regulation and Hiccup mode (recovers automatically after fault conditions).
I looked at building the power supply myself as I wanted a switching power supply due to is size and weight. I found some plans on the internet. The closest was a design by Manfred Mornhinweg XQ2FOD published in QST in the December 1998 issue. It looked like what I wanted, but you had to wind the transformer yourself, and I didn’t feel that I wanted to tackle that at this time. This project is modular in it’s design, so if I decide I want to build the power supply myself at a later date, I can then just drop it in place of the current supply.
The next major part of the unit is the Arduino Mega 2560 board. I will be using it to control the other components in the PMU. I have written most of the code and will post it as soon as I have finished it. There is also a Ethernet shield.
Then we will have a 5v power supply to drive the Arduino, 5v relay board and the back light of the LCD. There will also be a voltage divider to measure the output of the main power supply.
The front panel will consist of an on/off switch, LCD display, 4 momentary switches to turn the ports on and off and 4 leds to indicate the status of the ports.
The back panel will consist of a power cord receptacle, a fuse block and a set of power pole connectors for each port.
In the video I will show the panel parts and the bread board setup that has been completed so far.
In the next edition of this series I will actually cut out the front and back panels to start construction.