Most people who have a Speedster know that when you leave it standing
for a while, the battery drains pretty quickly. I often forget to
disconnect the battery. Or, when I do remember it usually turns out that
I want to drive it shortly afterwards. A while ago I ran into the Battery Brain, a device that monitors the
battery and when it reaches a specific voltage (11.8V) it disconnects
the battery. Intruiged, I decided to order one. [box-thumb.jpg box.jpg placement-thumb.jpg placement.jpg test-thumb.jpg test.jpg bb-testbench.mp4]
 Before trying to fit it to the Speedster, I decided to test it, with the
test setup below. [box-thumb.jpg box.jpg placement-thumb.jpg placement.jpg test-thumb.jpg test.jpg bb-testbench.mp4]
 In the video below you can see the blue Watt meter box. That measures
the supplied voltage to the Battery Brain. I turn it down to below
11.8V. Then the Battery Brain takes a while before it decides to shut
off the supply to the voltmeter. Resetting the Battery Brain by pressing
the button restores power. Your browser does not support the video tag.\ To make sure the Battery Brain doesn't shut off the power while
driving, it has an input signal which can be linked to a switch 12V
source. I used the signal from the fusebox, from fuse 7. This seems to
work well. After moving parts around a while and trying different configurations I
ended up with the configuration below. [box-thumb.jpg box.jpg placement-thumb.jpg placement.jpg test-thumb.jpg test.jpg bb-testbench.mp4]
 During a testdrive I didn't run into any problems, everything seems to
work well. Now I'll have to wait and see what happens when I leave the
car for a couple of weeks :) |