Real-Time Monitoring Device for Car Battery with Remote Switching Capability Via Mobile Application

The Car Battery in the Philippines can only last for an average span of 6 to 12 months. When a battery hits the 6 months margin, it will start showing unwanted responses such as unstable start up and quick discharge. These responses must be avoided specially in times that the car is significantly needed to be in good condition, such as during an emergency or a long drive. It is an inconceivable scenario to be stuck in a place far from people. As a solution, the proponents designed a device that can automatically checked for the temperature, load current, voltage level, number of hours left before reaching critical voltage level and state of charge of a car battery via wireless technology in a real time manner using a mobile application with a dedicated storage for recording data every given period. The recording interval can be adjusted to what is desired by the user. Furthermore, Algorithms on statistically analyzing the recorded data is executed by the device itself which will be a helpful information on what preventive actions the user must do to improve the performance of its car battery and therefore, avoid further problems. Also, the device uses a state estimation in achieving an almost zero steady state error of the parameters of the battery stated above that cannot be measured by a sensor such as the state of charge (SOC) and remaining battery hours. After several testing and validation, it was found that the device where able to accurately predict the level of the parameters at a plus or minus 0.38% error. Moreover, the feature of this device was made more interesting by adding a flexibility on its mean to communicate wirelessly. The system (the device and the mobile app) communicates using GSM, internet and bluetooth to increase its reliability. The user therefore has the options to manually or remotely switch loads in the vehicle. If in the event that the communication is loss, and the vehicle is approaching critical level, the device can be set to an “auto-off” mode which automatically switch the loads off. There are instances that the loads is intended to be turned on purposively. This is why the user is given the option to enable this mode or not. Most importantly, the device is tied up with a spare battery that is intended to be used for emergency jump start. Thus, keeping an eye on the status of this spare battery is executed also on a regular interval.