I have a wheelchair that I am making into a waiter robot. This is my overall goal but right now I am still in the early stage of the development. The challenge I am facing now is electronically controlling the power distribution. In the future I plan to add more components that use a variety of voltages and currents. Little info about the chair, I have 2 12V/18Ah gel cell batteries. The batteries are set in series to provide 24V to the motors. I have a sabortooth motorcontroller for the motors off the 24V supply, then for the microcontroller I took a 12V line off a battery... See next post--

Question

I have a wheelchair that I am making into a waiter robot. This is my overall goal but right now I am still in the early stage of the development. The challenge I am facing now is electronically controlling the power distribution. In the future I plan to add more components that use a variety of voltages and currents. Little info about the chair, I have 2 12V/18Ah gel cell batteries. The batteries are set in series to provide 24V to the motors. I have a sabortooth motorcontroller for the motors off the 24V supply, then for the microcontroller I took a 12V line off a battery... See next post-->

anonymous · Answer

Then to charge the battery, I have a trickle charger for 24V/3A that I plug in when needed and of course disconnect everything else. Then I have basic switches for the main power to the 24V/12V rails. If you have not noticed, I have a very basic setup as all this was to just get things up and running. I have progressed rapidly with this project and I am currently working to solidify a centralized power management system. I have to finalize this before I progress further as I will need multiple Voltage sources later. I know in the future, I will need the following voltages: 24V,12V,9V,7.2V,6V,5V,3.3V,1.5V. Provided the current requirements for those voltages will vary, current will not exceed 20A but I hope to use voltage/current protection with a microchip. I have started to look into PWM control to power MOSFET/FET/Transistors that in turn will drive required Voltages. Now for the questions I need answered, If I use PWM what components should I use (please list product numbers so I can look for them)? Is there a microchip out there that will use 24V and do all this power management for me? What transistors should I use (again please list product numbers)? If you could provide any information at all on this matter would be greatly helpful; I have accomplished so much with this chair already with so much more to come. If you are interested to see what I have down with the chair thus far I keep a blog page on facebook, please see link. https://www.facebook.com/pages/PNC-Robotics-Team/488107041216023