Quote:
Originally Posted by thingstodo
If I remember, the Orion can be set to monitor only, not to top balance?
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The Orion does everything, and then some more. It does indeed top balance, and you can adjust how it does this. There is a "begin" balancing setting that you set it to. As the batteries are charging, the balancing does not begin until each battery reaches the voltage that you have selected. If you have the begin balancing voltage set to 3.41 volts, as each battery reaches that voltage, it will receive a small amount of resistance, while the lower voltage batteries do not. Once the first battery crosses the finish line and the charger shuts down, all of the lower voltage batteries still have that small amount of resistance until they reach the "end balancing voltage that you set. If you set the end balancing voltage to say 3.42, as each battery settles to below that voltage, it no longer has the resistance on it. When the last battery drops below your end balancing setting, it is done.
Here is the screen that I have set up for charging mode. The Orion gives many more gauge options than this one, but this is what I like to see when my car is charging. I never did figure out how to fix the PID equations to set my decimal point to the correct position, so the highest and lowest cells read 333+ volts each, but they are really just 3.33+ volts each. It is pretty cool to be able to see each individual battery voltage during the charge cycle.
