Well, all this worked quite well - until the ancient triple relay (well, they're kind of like) volt regulator for the 12v system went south - and it overheated due to low volts for the fan and pump. That has since been replaced by a simple battery charger running off the lister itself (duh) - and the starter function still works - it's hard to mess up just tieing the field and armature of a DC generator to the battery with a key switch.
And then the main voltage regulator failed for the second time. First time it was the pot in the regulator - it simply disintegrated due to age and shaking. I'd replaced that with a nice 10 turn wirewound same value, and it worked again until a resistor in the mostly-potted VR board shook off - it was the one in series with a triac gate that switched the excitation winding into (or not) the field winding via a bridge rectifier. Replaced that, and it's still dead, Jim.
So ensued a scramble to find another - this is way not beyond my capacity to design myself, but
it is more complex than it first appears - edge and corner cases abound here (stored energy in the field, what if the frequency goes way off - a problem for more than one thing, what about when it's slow and starting up - and so on) - and there are thousands of dollars worth of high tech gear wired to this - essentially everything I have that uses 220v (Xantrex inverter charger) - lathe, my car, the Spellman main fusor power and so on - not a place I want to make a mistake.
So I found a few places that deal with this kind of thing and ordered from the first guy to reply and a new different style one is on the way (and by all reports, it's a better one). Should be here tomorrow, and we'll see. Rather than make another long distance phone call, I kept a conversation going with the 2nd fellow to reply (from the UK), seems a very nice fellow - and without me having (yet) bought a single thing from him, he told me how to hook the new one up.
He will be getting my business now and in the future, that's above and beyond type service. That would be
Stationary Engine Parts. In this game, one gets spares in hand pre-failure as I've come to like and depend on this thing now that it works so well (at least once I've shaken out all the bugs). The Listeroid itself seems very reliable and economical especially now that it runs at a controlled temperature via the arduino sketch (which is the subject of another post, or will be, on the lan of things - it's in the nearby battery box and doing other stuff too, and yes, the source code will be there when I'm more or less done diddling it).
In fact, I can look at that stuff right now without even leaving this post of even this browser page, as I have a tight-VNC window open on it now - I haven't yet put in the web server for the batbox pi which is why I haven't made that set of posts describing it - it's not done by a bit. But it looks like this just running a test program dumping raw data from the arduino and other sources out. I've got a bit of coding to do yet on this one (and one that I've not even started for the machine shop and real weather station and water quality monitor).
![batboxpi.png (1.2 MiB) Viewed 5814 times batboxpi.png](./download/file.php?id=2062&t=1&sid=32d88b2924a02691b57b4da6ce7b1861)
- Remote screen from a pi in my battery box.
Coming along...always slower than I hope, but still coming. I should honorably mention
the guy I did get this VR board from, in Georgia. (or will when it gets here if you know what I mean) He DID ship instantly and it will be here tomorrow by USPS (so they say...). And he's a nice guy, too. The UK guy, however, also knows his listers (and variants which is what I actually have), and has tons of parts for them as well - he's not just a generator guy. So if you
go to Stationary Engines to buy stuff, tell Steve I sent ya!
Edit: OK, this is what's running on the arduino in the battery box, which I'm using the pi and perl to scrape up. Even though in this case I didn't need the long serial line and converter, and am just running off usb, there is no difference in how the protocol works, or how I talk to between them - same stuff, only the path under /dev changes. And now I can actually edit the arduino code on the pi from my comfy chair here, and burn the arduino from here as well...
This sketch also collects a few other bits of data, like battery temperature, box temperature (where the pi is, the thermocouple cold junction) as well as lister stuff - and I've yet to add the lister AC amp collection hardware/software, though I do have a tested current transformer. Soon!
Lister.zip
- Current arduino code for lister control and monitoring.
- (4.55 KiB) Downloaded 420 times
The code that turns the water pump and fan on in the arduino is autonomous, using tuning numbers that are #defines so I can fool around and find the "sweet spot" for best efficiency and lowest emissions. There appear to be two but I'm still rigging the gear to be sure of that conjecture.
Posting as just me, not as the forum owner. Everything I say is "in my opinion" and YMMV -- which should go for everyone without saying.