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Battery Equaliser LED's
The battery equaliser guide proved very popular so here is an enhancement for it.
It gives a graphical representation of when the cells are done (by the LED going
out). here is what you will need:
Resistors: (All 1/4 watt)
6 x 1 kohm
2 x 390 ohm
2 x 270 ohm
2 x 220 ohm
Transistors:
3 x BC548 (NPN)
3 x BC558 (PNP)
LED's:
6 x 5mm round or square LED's

The circuit is fairly simple, the easiest way to make it is to place all the
components on a small prototype board. Then use a piece of ribbon cable or seven
individual wires to connect the board to the seven posts on the tray that connect
to the ends of the cells.
The easiest way to understand how it works is to look at the circuit diagram of a
Circuit Diagram
How It Works
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Page 1 of 3 Sanj's Yokomo RC Homepage - Yokomo MR4TC and HPI Micro!
7/8/2004 http://www.schumacher.clara.net/leddisplay.htm
single cell. This is shown bellow.

The main part of the circuit is a transistor (the three legged thing marked C-
collector, B-base and E-emitter), if you don't know much about transistor you can
think of it as a switch with a diode on the input. It is much more complex than this
in reality but it will do for now. The 'diode' is positioned between the base and the
emitter, when this is turned on (more then 0.8 volts is placed across) the
transistor is switched on and current is allowed to flow into the collector and out
the emitter.
The resistors in the circuit limit the current to protect the LED and the transistor.
R1 limits the current flowing into the base of the transistor, as when the transistor
is turned Vbe (the base - emitter voltage) is always 0.8 volts, without the resistor
a very large current would flow into the base when a charged cell (1.2volts) is
applied. R2 limits the current flowing through the LED to around 15mA as this is
the desired operating current.
When a cell with a voltage of at least 0.8 volts is placed in the circuit current flows
from the positive, through R1, into the base and out the emitter back to the cell.
This current turns the transistor on which inturn allows a large current (limited by
R2) to flow through the LED, causing it to light up. As the battery voltage drops
less and less current flows into the base of the transistor until when the cell
reaches around 0.8 volts the transistor turns off. When the transistor turns off the
collector emitter resistance goes high stopping current flowing through the LED,
which causes it to turn off.
The whole circuit is made up of six of these smaller circuits, the bottom three are
exactly the same with only R2 changed to keep the 'on' current the same with the
different supply voltages. The top three are similar but they are inverted so that
the bottom three cells can be used to supply the voltage to run the LED's.
One thing that you have to be careful about is the polarisation of the LED's and
the transistors. The pin-outs of each are shown below.

Page 2 of 3 Sanj's Yokomo RC Homepage - Yokomo MR4TC and HPI Micro!
7/8/2004 http://www.schumacher.clara.net/leddisplay.htm


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Page 3 of 3 Sanj's Yokomo RC Homepage - Yokomo MR4TC and HPI Micro!
7/8/2004 http://www.schumacher.clara.net/leddisplay.htm