Controller temperature

[Kennyboy]

Can anyone help me please, I want to monitor controller temp. as I am not using the standard motor controller and want to be able to see how hot the motor controller heatsink gets. I've commented out #define disable temp sense and it's now displaying the controller temperature.
Is there any way it could display a warning above a set temperature? I ask because I don't think it will be seen unless I go into the pypilot statistics tab on the opencpn plug in.

[ironman]

The OpenCPN 'Watchdog' plugin has a pypilot alarm, that features an alarm at 'over temperature' level, but at that point, pypilot might already have disengaged because of that same fact.

If you don't use OpenCPN, you could cook up some script from a remote pi, using 

Code:

$ pypilot_client -s 192.168.14.1 servo.controller_temp

that outputs the temperature, and then you would need to define some action based on that value.

[seandepagnier]

You can set the thermal limit in pypilot at which point the motor controller will no longer drive the motor.

Are you trying to get a warning before it is too hot?

[Kennyboy]

Thanks for the replies,

I'm using the arduino to drive a separate motor driver.
I want to see how hot the heatsink on the motor driver gets as I will have to mount it into some sort of box and I'm concerned it might not dissipate the heat very well.
How can I set the thermal limit in pypilot? I've not found very much about that in the documentation.
I  am using opencpn so I'll look into the watchdog function on that too.

One more question, would it be better to also use a shunt for the hydraulic motor current, does that slow the motor as it senses increasing current at the end of travel?

[seandepagnier]

You can adjust the thermal limits from the configuration tab in the web control, or from the pypilot plugin or in several other ways. What interface are you using? Can you find the setting?

It does not slow the motor, it simply stops when it reaches end of travel.

[Kennyboy]

This is mostly on openplotter because it's how I've been testing it out for serial connections etc.

It's to get a feel for how hot it's running.  I can see the temperatures on the statistics tab on pypilot, it's good to know that if the motor controller gets too hot it will disconnect, I'll try adjusting the temperature limits when I have a motor connected to it.

Thanks for pointing me at the watchdog plug in, I'll investigate that too.

Is it worth me updating my pypilot from 0.32 software or leave well alone?

[seandepagnier]

If it is working I would wait until my final stable release to upgrade.