Home-brew battery measuring station

[BrianG]

Originally Posted by Arct1k

before going any further i'd confirm with pdc that nothing funky in esc elecs that would stop it driving a resistor vs a motor...

an oil bath maybe easier than fans...

If anything, it would work better. No inductance, no phase angles, no "current leading voltage", etc. Purely resistive loads are always easier to drive. Which is why some devices use caps to cancel out inductance for power factor correction to make the load appear more resistive. I suppose it wouldn't hurt to ask him though, if he answers his PMs...

Originally Posted by Metallover

You could find a way to hook up an OLD space heater to act as a resistor... I have an old one that's so inefficient.. It's 1500 watts, tripped a breaker a couple times.

That would work if I was testing 120v batteries. That heater's element is around 10ohms. I would need at least 3s just to get 1A out of it. Thanks for the suggestion though!

[Metallover]

Originally Posted by BrianG

That would work if I was testing 120v batteries. That heater's element is around 10ohms. I would need at least 3s just to get 1A out of it. Thanks for the suggestion though!

I was thinking it would be possible to make a "reverse power supply" fairly easily. Convert the voltage from the battery to 110v for the space heater. The space heater may even have a power supply to step down the voltage a little?

Or, instead of a resistor, you could hook itup to a bigger motor driving a fan or something....