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The power regulation board was used to distribute power to the other boards on the satellite. It also monitored the voltage and temperature of the batteries during charging and discharging and notified the onboard computer if an error occured. Additionally the power regulation board balanced the batteries to insure even discharging and charging.  Even discharging and charging maximizes the batteries capacity and longevity.

 

On this project I worked specifically on the programming of the ATMEL microcontroller on the board. I programmed the battery balance function and the voltage and temperature monitoring functions.  To achieve this I had to use various communication protocols (CAN and SPI) to talk to the OBC, temperature sensors, and anolog digital converters. The microcontroller was programmed in C in a FreeRTOS embedded environment. To test my code I used a logic analyser to read the signals being sent and received to the board. 

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For more information:

http://csdc.uvic.ca/wiki/index.php/Regulation