Program and monitor Mean Well ENC-Series of battery chargers (e.g. ENC-120-12)

[Zweikeks]

Hello all,

I want to share my current activity.

I was looking for a decent battery charger. Mean Well builts reliable and solid stuff. So I purchased one of the new ENC-series of programmable chargers. It comes in a robust metal case, is quiet (no fan), draws no current out of the battery when off - and it is going through the three charging stages accurately (microcontroller).

To alter the charging curve Mean Well sells the programmer SBP-001 (costs as much as one of the small chargers). I found a way to program the charger directly via its serial interface. So there is no SBP-001 needed. You just have to hook up the charger to your PC.
Additionaly I am able to read out values for monitoring. The charger has a quite accurate voltage and current measurement builtin.

I started to write a Python script doing the programming and monitoring. Its a nice little command line utility. And it's revealing the communication protocol to others who may want to implement something similar. I will publish the script (GitHub?).

Connection to the charger is done with a USB to 3V3 TTL bridge. For example FTDI TTL-232R-3V3 (complete cable assemblies available) or one of the cheap Silicon Labs CP210x modules (around $2.00).
The command line will look something like this:
chargelog prg <comport> [-cc <constcurr>] [-cv <constvolt>] [-tc <tapercurr>] [-fv <floatvolt>] [-tcomp <tempcoeff>]
chargelog mon <comport> <logfile> [-ri <readinterv>] [-gi <graphinterv>] [-width <graphwidth>]

Attached is an example log file of the current version.

I would be glad to see if this is of interest to others.

Have fun!
Zweikeks

[Zweikeks]

Hi all,

I finished the script and published it on GitHub:
https://github.com/Zweikeks/meanwell...ries-chargelog

It allows to program the charging curve and to monitor/log during charging. The readings are displayed and a graph is shown from time to time.

As a Python script it should work on several platforms. It does not need graphical output (the graph is displayed with characters). So a simple terminal is enough if it is operated remotely. Instructions how to hook up the charger are given in the file header of the script.

It is working fine for me. I would be pleased if others are using it.

Best regards
Zweikeks