Week 3 - Optocoupler (II): Initial circuit and possible improvements

By Anonymous -

Week 3

We have finished testing the optoisolator through a different simpler circuit as of the previous one we did. Instead of trying to read the digital signal being sent through, we decided to test if the signal sent through can power up a LED connected on the HV side and be controlled from the LV side.

Figure 1: Optocoupler circuit

As seen from above, the LED is on and powered by the signal sent from the LV side, if we were to off the switch at the LV side, the LED at the HV side will turn off. What we are basically doing is using the signal to control our LED. We don't have a bigger load at the moment as the only motor we found isn't working. Once we have a bigger load than a LED, we will most probably test it and try to see if we can control it using a microprocessor instead of a simple switch. 

We found out from Mr. Kenny, the main purpose of the optoisolator is to separate the ground of HV e.g. the Battery and the Arduino in the SunSPec, and that we aren't going to be connecting anything from the HV to the LV. It will be used in conjunction with a DC/DC converter to step down the voltage from the HV. There will be 2 such converters and each one requires an optocoupler to isolate the different ground. We will then get the HV value through calculation accounting for the step up(s).

We may be improving this circuit further on as there is definitely more space for improvements but for now, we will be focusing more on the Bluetooth modules (HC-06 FC-114) with Arduino as well as the RedBear Bluetooth modules (with mini Arduino built-in).




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