Hi all, I am neither an artist nor an electronics person but I'm giving it my best shot today and every day.
I have a battery-powered driveway gate which charges by a solar panel. I chose to get the cheapest system possible and then spent almost an equal amount of money upgrading it, and getting out of my car dozens of times, always in the rain, when it failed in a truly surprising variety of ways.
Recently the board burned up and took the marine deep cycle battery (Product Link) with it. I replaced the board and battery but now the new battery only charges up to 12.3v or so, and this gate company designed their actuator to run on 12.5v to 13.5v with a solar controller that outputs 11v to 13v. I would've expected it to at least run slower at lower voltages, but it doesn't run at all if the battery is sitting at 12.49v or less - the control board won't tell the gate to open. I could exchange the battery but I'll just be facing the same problem in a year anyway when it gets to 95% service life and can't hit 12.5v anymore. It seems crazy to me that the control board would demand the top sliver of performance or else refuse to work at all, but anyway.
My solution, and what I would like help with, is: Get a second identical battery, hook it up in series to provide roughly 24v, then regulate it down to 12.5v - 13.5v so that the gate opener gets what it wants and my batteries should last a long time. Is this a good solution, and how do I hook everything up? I expected a Battery Isolator to only have 3 connections and a Regulator to only have 2 connections, but I'm not sure if this is correct: I keep seeing DC-DC Converters with 4 connections. (Is that the same thing as a regulator?)
This is a picture of my current setup:
This is my proposed solution:
And this is how the wires would be hooked up at the battery(s):
Is this correct? Here are the products I was thinking of using but I am definitely open to suggestions.
Regulator: 24v to 12v DC-DC Converter
Battery Isolator
I have a battery-powered driveway gate which charges by a solar panel. I chose to get the cheapest system possible and then spent almost an equal amount of money upgrading it, and getting out of my car dozens of times, always in the rain, when it failed in a truly surprising variety of ways.
Recently the board burned up and took the marine deep cycle battery (Product Link) with it. I replaced the board and battery but now the new battery only charges up to 12.3v or so, and this gate company designed their actuator to run on 12.5v to 13.5v with a solar controller that outputs 11v to 13v. I would've expected it to at least run slower at lower voltages, but it doesn't run at all if the battery is sitting at 12.49v or less - the control board won't tell the gate to open. I could exchange the battery but I'll just be facing the same problem in a year anyway when it gets to 95% service life and can't hit 12.5v anymore. It seems crazy to me that the control board would demand the top sliver of performance or else refuse to work at all, but anyway.
My solution, and what I would like help with, is: Get a second identical battery, hook it up in series to provide roughly 24v, then regulate it down to 12.5v - 13.5v so that the gate opener gets what it wants and my batteries should last a long time. Is this a good solution, and how do I hook everything up? I expected a Battery Isolator to only have 3 connections and a Regulator to only have 2 connections, but I'm not sure if this is correct: I keep seeing DC-DC Converters with 4 connections. (Is that the same thing as a regulator?)
This is a picture of my current setup:
This is my proposed solution:
And this is how the wires would be hooked up at the battery(s):
Is this correct? Here are the products I was thinking of using but I am definitely open to suggestions.
Regulator: 24v to 12v DC-DC Converter
Battery Isolator