I searched a long time for a simple and effective shunt controller. Until one day, Ghurd told me about his and so I decided to give it a shot.
Here's his diary entry on this: http://www.fieldlines.com/story/2007/8/24/172521/889
The kit arrived and I started assembling it. What a great circuit! And so simple to make!
As I gladly noticed, Ghurd was kind enough to supply enough resistors along with the kit so that I could choose between high or low frequency, LVD option and so.
The PCB was so small I could not believe my eyes. Here's during the assembly.
After finishing the assembly (it only took me 30 min. but then again, I'm not very fast and I double-check everything. A more experienced hand could make this in minutes.) I connected the wires and made a test using a 12V/1.3AH SLA battery connected to a 16V wall charger and a 12V/5W car bulb as a dump load. The circuit started on my first try, the bulb started flickering (as the battery was already full) and I was able to smoothly adjust the dump voltage to 13.8 thanks to the multi-turn pot provided with the kit.
I found a cool little box (a former woofer filter) and a TO220 radiator and I mounted the circuit inside it. As the box had 4 external screw connectors I used them all by keeping the FET connections inside the case. I mounted the TO220 cooler on top of the box, and the Fet legs are going inside for internal connections. So I got two connectors for the battery and two for the dump load. It came out nice.
It still is small. I can't believe this little baby can switch 6 Amps of power using this single FET. That's like 72W, isn't it?
If I'll ever need more I'll just connect several FETs in parallel.
Here's a hint about how it worked. Just as I wanted!
Great experience! I highly reccomend this circuit.
I like simple things with great results.
This one makes no exception. Good job Ghurd!
Claude
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