By connecting to two banks of batteries the Battery Input Module in effect provides uninterrupted power to the robots systems. Only one bank of batteries is in use at any one time and when the active bank is switched between the two, it is done in such a way as to maintain a consistant level of power.

A bank can be a single battery or any number of batteries connected in parallel to provide depth of charge. The batteries can be any chemistry as long as they are all the same type. This is a 12 volt system and expects to be connected to 12 volt batteries.

The Battery Input module has a special filtered 12 volt supply for ATX style computer motherboards. The ATX breakout will have will have to be done by a third party component. The board also has a regulated 5 volt supply to be used by microcontrollers. You could step down the 5 volts to 3.3 volts on your own if you need that voltage.

Any number of Motor Power Modules can be connected to the Battery Input Module as long as the total amperage does not exceed 20A. The Motor Power Modules are filtered and will not let noise from the other systems back into the Battery Input Module.

Your onboard processor can have complete control over the power system. You can find the communications documentation on the downloads page.

Features

• Off the shelf solution - Spend your engineering effort on the more interresting parts of your robot.
• Hot swappable battery banks - Your mobile platform has no downtime or charging state.
• Host controlled - Your onboard CPU has almost full control of its power system.
• Manual controls - Onboard and remote buttons allow you to manually control the power for less sophisticated applications.
• Host shutdown - Your onboard processor can shut down the power system.
• Sleep mode supported
• Fuse protection
• Reverse polarity input protection
• Isolated DC motor power
• Isolated CPU Power (30W, 12VDC@2.5A & 12.5W, 5VDC@2.5A)
• Isolated Host communication serial interface
• Host CPU battery monitor (Voltage & Current)
• Thermal overload warning & protection
• Anderson Power Pole interconnects
• Highly optimized motor noise filter
• Screw terminal block interconnect between boards
• Use with all varieties of 12V battery chemistries