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  • Author Author: howroyd
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Hydrogen Fuel Cell Controller Demonstration

howroyd

Hi all,

 

The latest update on my project; using the raspberryPi as a controller for a hydrogen fuel cell with the intent on powering a remote controlled plane.

 

Hope you find the video interesting and inspiring, if so please click LIKE!

 

Regards,

 

Simon

 

  • in reply to michaelkellett

    Yeah that's right. Not really off topic, all relevant!

    I'd use a PIC simply because I know how to code on them because I did use them before the Arduino revolution. I did try an M3 development board but got so confused with the IDE I gave up lol!

    PICs are more designed for doing high speed number crunching and handling signals at high speed. Arduinos and the like are more universal, "do a bit of everything at a low level" type jobby which are incredibly easy to setup for non-experts. Can't really speak for the Arms because I didn't persevere enough.

    For this project, the rPi is still overkill but easily reproducible because of the RTOS. I can just clone the SD card, put an order in on element14 for some kit and job done.

  • in reply to howroyd

    We're getting off topic now but who cares:

    Why the PIC32 - I've never used them having gone the ARM route long before they appeared. Although I like Microchip the poor old PIC32 is all on its own but there are loads of suppliers with ARM Cortex M  micros.

    I hadn't realised that you were running  fuel cell model on the controller - certainly the Arduino would be a little too lightweight for comfort with that.

     

    MK

  • in reply to michaelkellett

    Hi MK,

     

    I have done this on arduino already, and I am a big fan of Arduinos. Because I want to run a fuel cell model onboard I need something with good speed and threading, The Matlab on arduino does work although my 2560 was seriously hot when it was running. which arduino is pants for. If I was doing this for an industrial product I would probably use a PIC32 in all honesty.

  • in reply to howroyd

    You might want to consider using an Arduino (or varaiant of it) for future projects of this type - pretty good integrated MATLAB/SIMULINK/RTW integration and much more deterministic hardware. I don't think I would want a big OS like Linux on my data acqusistion processor - the nice thing about using a small processor and lightweight OS (or better still no OS at all) is that you can control timing precisely. As long as it has a UART then anything can talk to MATLAB (or Python etc etc).

     

    MK

  • in reply to michaelkellett

    Quite frankly, speed (in terms of setup, tweaking, etc) and usability (pre-written OS, libraries etc). The rPi can interact directly with Matlab & Simulink which makes it very useful from an academic point of view. If I was doing this for industry I'd probably use a PIC32 or Coretex M base to reduce hardware complexity.