Plant Receiver Battery Charging

Here’s the layman scoop on the battery charging on the plant setup. I hear you. You don’t have the insight, and know how that i have. I mean, when i’m confused, i just look at the lines of code and use a voltmeter to really see what’s going on.

Let’s hope i can type out in a clear way in this tutorial a few things you can do to alleviate any questions or concerns that may come from charging the receiver.

Ok, scenario #1: You charged all night and through pinging the receiver, it still shows 0%. Don’t worry quite yet. That digital readout 0% is my 0% and its not actually dead. if it was dead, it wouldn’t tell you anything. It’s like a car gas tank. They tell you its zero but its not actually zero. So not having access to measure it with a voltmeter, you can do these steps:

Read the last note at the end of the tutorial then come back here

Step#1 ensure the hand remote and receiver are on showing number changes with dial movement. plug it in if you have to.

Step#2 you will go into the submenu (the one you go to do a calibrate) But instead of entering say 4 and 5 for calibration, you are to enter 122 and 369. 122 and 369 is called “Bat ADC”

Step#2 in the function Bat ADC, your receiver will be stuck in a endless loop sending out a raw adc bat value three times a second to the hand remote. This value is averaged out on the receiver side but suffice to say that number should creep up as charging continues.

Wanna see the math behind Step #2. Here it is:

Say you activate 122and369, the receiver will measure the battery value in the following way. say the battery is 3.75vdc. It will divide that by half because i can only shoot 3.33vdc into my microcontroller. So we have 1.875vdc. 1.875 is divided by the analog reference of recent versions of 2.490 = 0.753. 0.753 is multiplied by 1023 which is the level of precision i can measure a whole something. like 1023 slices of one pie. i get 0.753x1023 = 770. So, if your receiver has a analog revision of 2.490 and a battery of 3.75vdc, your hand remote readout will show 770. fun right

All i’m saying is if you have 770, you could come back one hour later and see an increase of number to indicate charging.

When your done with this type of test, just to be friendly to the code, turn off both and let it charge, or restart both to get back into normal function

Note: 122and369 is a debugging menu not normally used. I’m saying if you use it and leave it on, only away from work because it crowds the airwaves.