Determining power remaining in the batteries

GoPiGo
1

Folks,

Is there any way i can run a test to see how much juice I have remaining in by battery pack.

Usually when I am programming with by GoPiGo and the batteries run out of juice the system will crash. I’ve already stuffed up one 64 GB Micro SD card.

Is there a way to monitor the Voltage/Temp and at what point should i consider replacing the batteries before the system crashes because the batteries have run down.

Cheers,
Trevor

2

Guys,

I figured out that the gpg binary (which I’ve renamed to gopigo) provides the following information -

| GoPiGo Found
| Firmware version: 1.6

Battery voltage : 4.24 V

I noticed that this value was hovering around ~4.5 a day before. Obviously as the batteries are being discharged the value is coming down.

At what point would I consider just replacing them with another pair to prevent the GoPiGo from crashing?

Cheers,
Trevor

3

Hey Trevor,
A battery voltage below 5 usually means that either there is no charge left in battery or the battery is not connected at all. The battery starts at ~12V when they are fresh and it goes down till 6V. You should replace them when they reach 7V.

-Karan

4

I get 4.26V when my Pi is plugged in via the micro USB power connection to the wall outlet, and not using the battery pack.
In that setup, the motors would run extremely slow and it’s just not recommended.

Also please note that the gpg binary is getting officially renamed gopigo. You would need to run a DI_update on your SD card. The original gpg is not getting removed though. They’ll co-exist for a while.

5

Thanks Karan. Much appreciated.

CleoQC - Yes, you might have a point. I might have checked the battery voltage while the Pi was plugged into the USB power. Will re-test without mains. Awesome thanks!!!

Cheers,
Trevor