“This is my Arduino Nano 4x 18650 Smart Charger / Discharger Open Source Project.
This unit is powered by 12V 5A. It can be powered by a computer power supply.
The History
I wanted to make a smart Arduino powered charger, discharger battery tester that could have a barcode scanner that scanned barcodes on batteries and input all the data into an Online Database Portal. This would allow me to correctly sort and analyze trends in all my reclaimed lithium batteries.
Version 1: I originally started out using a single sided PCB milled out with my CNC. This unit only had one cell and could charge ,discharge and test milli ohms.
Version 2.2: I moved onto using smaller PCB’s that were etched then I had two cell modules on a Arduino UNO.
Version 3.2: I used the same smaller PCB’s but I used an Arduino Mega and mounted it all on a Acrylic stand. I had originally planned to have 16 modules but ended up only using 8 cell modules as I would of needed to use analog signal multiplexers and the wiring was already very messy.
Arduino Mega 8x Charger / Discharger 1.1: I designed a PCB in easy EDA for an Arduino Mega 8x Charger / Discharger. This has a 20x4 LCD, Rotary Encoder, SD Card reader (never used), Ethernet, USB Host for a barcode scanning direct into the Arduino.
Arduino Mega 8x Charger / Discharger 1.2+: Later I made some small changes and added a ESP8266 Adaptor for WIFI communication.
Arduino Nano 4x 18650 Smart Charger / Discharger 1.0: I started designing a 4x version to make it much cheaper and easier to build. This version does not have a barcode scanner but it communicated with the Vortex IT Battery Portal to send and receive data via the internet.
Arduino Nano 4x 18650 Smart Charger / Discharger 1.1: This has some small amendments from Version 1.0 as it had some small bugs in the design and this version was released to the public.”