IanD

I think his point was that they seem to be reinventing the wheel -- why do all this over again from scratch when there's a pretty good solution that they could maybe start from? (license, collaborate with, buy, add to...) Done properly an app supported by CART could be very useful, especially if they did a proper job of integrating (and updating!) navigation notices. Even better if they could fold some (or all?) of the canalplan functionality into it so it could take in a journey plan, and then show in real-time when you could expect to arrive somewhere... 😉

I didn't mean there were any problems with the Ashton, same for us as the Rochdale (none), I meant the Ashton is not a pleasant canal to travel along. Neither posed us any real problems, unless you count the tiny police-taped-off section on the Rochdale where apparently somebody had been stabbed the previous night... (which was only a problem in that we worried a bit). Same as all the warnings about Stoke or Manchester or [fill in your area of choice], we've never had any problems. Except once where the boat was untied overnight, after we'd almost won the best pumpkin competition at the pub (we wuz robbed) and then left it on top of the boat overnight, which was probably taken as provocative by the (Boat Inn, Stockton) pub locals...

When we went up the Rochdale we found even the Manchester section less horrible than the Ashton, and had no problems with vandals or stuff on the prop. Quite a few bridge trolls emitting sweet-smelling smoke but they were friendly 😉

There are others which do up to 12 cells in one chip, try Intersil.

Anyone considering building their own BMS should look at devices like the TI BQ79606A: http://www.ti.com/product/BQ79606A-Q1 Accurate voltage and temperature measurement for multiple cells (6 per chip, stackable), includes 150mA load-balancing MOSFETs. Cost is around £5. Plenty of other similar devices from companies like Intersil, all targeted at the huge BEV market -- which means boats get to use them "for free" 🙂

If you simply "drop-in" 12V Li batteries (with no other precautions) and these include overvoltage disconnect, you're pretty soon going to have to "drop-in" the cut whatever other equipment self-destructs when the battery disconnects when the alternator is charging and the load dump puts a 100V spike onto your 12V bus...

The main circuits are powered from (for example) 3.3V, and the high-voltage circuits (e.g. analogue mux) use the highest voltage node (e.g. 26V) as their power supply (they take negligible current from this). Then there are instrumentation amps which can take a differential voltage centred anywhere up to several hundred volts offset and output it relative to 0V -- look at LT6375 as an example.