Newbie question.. to the modders

[ericdjobs]

So, I'm purchasing a home-made VV boxmod.. my question is this

How do you monitor the state of the battery to ensure you do not over discharge it? I know the protection circuit should kick in and protect it.. but usually with a regular boxmod the voltage drop-off from the battery discharging would give you a noticeable decrease in performance... time to change the battery.

How does this work in a variable voltage boxmod? The VV chip/regulator outputs a constant voltage, right? So how do you know when it's time to change the battery? Does the vv regulator/chip have a low voltage cutoff when it will no longer work? I'm not sure how this works exactly.

I have a multimeter and can easily test the batteries when needed, but I was just curious for 'on the go'.. and more curious about how it actually works (the vv chip)

I'm also curious if it would be possible to use any of these http://focus.ti.com/paramsearch/doc...log&familyId=412&uiTemplateId=NODE_STRY_PGE_T in mods... looks interesting, but expensive considering they are TI ICs.. haha they look like amazing ways to monitor battery health though

 

[brewsterfrank]

i may be totally wrong but with mine if i have it set at 4.4v if it hits down to 3.2v it dies completely. i dont know is i built it wrong or not but that works for me. as for as anyone elses i could not say.

 

[Dalton63841]

If it is a VV mod, there will be a minimum voltage requirement for the chip to be able to output. Once the voltage input drops below that threshold, it stops giving you anything.

As far as battery guage, simple battery guages have been created using a zener diode and bicolor LED. The basic idea being that when it's one color the battery is fine, but once the diode drops voltage on one leg and the LED changes color, you know you have BLAH* voltage left.

 

[bstedh]

One thing I have found with my VV is that rotating the batteries several times during the day will help out a little as the one closest to the negative will drain lower than the other. For checking voltage I just drilled a couple of small holes in the body just big enough to insert the test leads of my MM. They are strategically placed so that I can get a reading of each battery individually and combined and also read voltage under load. I am currently looking for a switched test point so that I can also get current readings but it looks like it will be more complicated than it's worth.