Re: SuperBoost Drive
Of sorts, yeah.
Since MOSFET's are inherently thermal protected by themselves (their internal resistance rises with temperature) it acts as a sort of stopgap measure that it otherwise wouldn't have.
...Also I'm kind of in shock at the moment, because if what i just tested turns out to be correct, then this driver is going to blow everything else away, permanently. I double checked my connections, my oscilloscope, everything to make sure what I was seeing wasn't just a trick.
Alright. So.
It boosted to 7 amps.
Seems that the supply is truly what determines how much power this can push out (I had to parallel two panasonic cells to get this, with one it can still shove 5 amps out at 5 volts.)
Here's the real, true, kicker, though.
I had to short all of the diodes in my test load, to allow all of the current to flow through just the resistor.
And because of ohm's law, 7 amps through a 1 ohm resistor means....
It boosted to
7 volts.
And, additionally, the new design and all of the little changes I made to the board and components seems to have made the new boards highly highly efficient. The ability to heatsink the mosfet directly also has a huge impact as well.
Compared to previous designs and whatnot the board doesn't seem to produce nearly as much heat, even while pushing out 7 amps into a 7 volt load. Because of the increased efficiency the driver seems to be capable of doing some ridiculous feats, since less heat produced also has a pretty big impact on performance overall. Additionally, improved efficiency also means reduced load on the batteries, meaning you don't have to have such ridiculous cells nor wire gauge to achieve good results.
To give you an idea of how important the supply is for this driver...
Here was my first test.
Battery: 18650 3400 mAh Panasonic Cell charged to 4.2 volts.
Upon driver connection cell voltage drops to 3.4-3.5 volts. Driver output is steady around 5 amps at 5 volts.
When I connect an additional cell...
Cell voltage drops to 3.73 volts.
Driver output is steady at 7 amps at 7 volts.
I'm still blown away by how much power this driver is handling. I could NOT believe what I saw when I connected the second cell, seeing the current fly up on my oscilloscope awestruck me.
I'm going to test a second identical driver board tomorrow, hopefully to reproduce my results. If I can reproduce this reliably...
Holy shit.
op: