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Old 03-10-2014, 07:42 PM   #6 (permalink)
RobertISaar
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Join Date: Jul 2012
Location: camden, MI
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MC SBX - '95 Chevrolet Monte Carlo LS
Last 3: 29.75 mpg (US)
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not sure what kind of terrain you deal with, but this would be quite difficult to impliment around here without some significant signal filtering.....

uphill, downhill, uphill, downhill, uphill with 10,000 unavoidable potholes, left, right, down.......

it's a pain.

what could be done using "dumb" hardware is to setup a resistor/capacitor to smooth out a float signal, which would be used by a schmitt trigger to control whatever you want. setup the RC filter so that it takes an instant movement of the float from minimum to maximum to take(for instant) 60 seconds for the voltage to match reality and it could do well, but it wouldn't take very happily to rapidly changing conditions.

the schmitt trigger is setup to use a hysteresis, so it won't cause the opposite action to happen at the same voltage level, so instead of (for instance) the grill block closing again once the coolant level is at 87.5% of maximum(more instance examples), you could set it up so that it would wait until the level dropped to 50% of maximum.....



of course, using a lot of the same hardware, you could use a temperature sensor instead of a float and control it using that.



for the ultimate in control...... you have to go with some type of logical controller(meaning, writing code), you could go so far as to write some self-learning subroutines and have the controller learn how much grill opening is required to maintain your target temp at various road speeds and ambient air temperatures.

i realize this sounds complicated, but as someone who has written a lot of 6800 assembly, i tend to simplify things that are in reality quite difficult for anyone that has no programming experience.
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