Battery Self Discharge Monitoring

For the last couple weeks, I have had the car charged, and then parked it, monitoring the battery voltages by logging the current voltages after charging, (and making a note in my notebook log, as well as using the SD Card Data Logging function of the enhanced display), and then checking it and logging a few minutes every few days.

Today I moved the car back to the building for a while, to nake a parking spot avaialble while I was working on my aerocap project on the Dodge Dakota Pickup. The pack was showing 100% before moving, and dropped to 95% from the move, so it shows there is some power loss to self distribution over the last couple weeks, because the move was only about 50 feet.

Now that might just be the effect of Battery Number 2, which goes dead first on a driving run, or the cold weather, or both, or the actuall battery state of health. As of yet, State of Health (SOH) is something I don't have and hard monitoring on, just inference from the total or part pack State of Charge (SOC), and individual Battery Voltages at rest or under load, in comparison to the others.

Woodward Enhanced PakTrakr Logging Display Now in for Testing

Got the display last week, before the big Propane Explosion in the area near Downsview, caused a mess in any kind of regular plans! Have got the PakTrakr now installed, the Serial Interface installed, and the Woodward enhanced Display installed in a test position also (like the PakTrakr Display!).

At first glance - it seems like it would help reduce the abuse on the batteries, and - using the logging function - of the Woodward Display - gives a record of the trip or day or month - depending on the duration I leave the SD card in and it's size! currently - I have been pulling the card after each trip to grab the data and save it as a different file so as to work with it.


Tonight I put in a clean 256 MB SD Card, while charging up the batteries, for an all night run. It will be a big file (since - it logs a line of data each second, which - I understand - is a fixed rate, and that is 60 x 60 x ~ 6-8 Hours overnight, so a lot of lines to look at!!