We’ve made some good progress on OWL3.0 the last couple of months. It has now provisionally passed fairly rigorous EMC, immunity and automotive standards. We’re just waiting on the final report due in the next week or so.
Big thanks to @blinken for all the help with this. Apparently quite rare for devices to pass the first time.
We have also been working on the mounting arrangement (with stainless steel) and enclosure design (milled aluminium). Some images below:
Possibly influenced by some of our discussions around heat management I think! We also looked at the calculations and with any incident sun, it becomes pretty impossible to cool the device without any active cooling.
These are the power distribution boxes as well on their way.
Each supports:
4x 12V 7A outputs (4x OWLs)
daisy chaining of the hardware triggered OWL output enable - so you can toggle all nozzles on/off across the boom with one non-software switch. It will also be built into the software.
Soft start - the four outputs have delayed start between them and delay between nozzle activation so you can never accidentally switch 100 nozzles on/off at exactly the same time.
Rated to a 40A input. Most will consume less than this, but depends on the solenoids/relays you use to switch nozzles. Some cheaper ones can consume 1.5A at 12V.
The idea is to use one for every 4 OWLs spread across the machine.
This is our first prototype of this, so we will learn a lot from it and improve the design after this iteration.
