STEI students keep innovating and striving by creating sophisticated and useful equipment in everyday life. Three ITB Electrical Engineering students succeeded in making a device to detect the condition of a car battery. The tool is named CbDiag.

The three students are Bondan Ari Rahmawan, Charlie Tahar, and M Salman Galileo. This tool was made as part of a final assignment and exhibited at the 2019 Electrical Engineering Days event, which is the final project exhibition for ITB Electrical Engineering students.

The main purpose of this tool is to prevent the battery from being worn out suddenly due to the driver’s ignorance of the condition of the car battery. “This tool is also made because many car drivers today can only know the condition of the battery if it is brought to the repair shop,” said Charlie, as reported by the official ITB website, Monday (9/9/2019).

Without having to go to car or motor service

He added, another reason behind the creation of this tool is that so far the existing tools to check the condition of the battery can only monitor the voltage.

This is not enough to test the strength of a car battery whether it can still be used or not to start a car engine. Although currently there is a device that can test the current capability of a car battery, this tool is considered dangerous.

“These devices are dangerous because they draw high currents and will damage a nearly damaged battery based on the experience of our team. Using these tools is also not easy, ”he added.

Charlie revealed, CbDiag has the main benefit for car drivers, namely that the driver can find out the condition of his car battery without having to go to the garage. That way, car drivers can save time and be economical in terms of money due to sudden battery wear when using their car for various purposes, such as work and long trips.

Android integration

The tool used to detect the condition of a car battery is named CbDiag by ITB students. (Personal document)

This tool has a number of excellent features which are its main attraction, namely, it can be used to diagnose car batteries, is easy to use, can provide additional information such as battery voltage and capacity, and is not damaged when installed upside down.

Another advantage is that it can monitor up to the last 100 results, can be synchronized with an Android phone for notifications and diagnostic data access, and is easy to maintain because it only needs to be stored in a dry place and does not need to replace the battery.

There are three types of battery condition indicators on these devices, namely Good, Caution, and Bad. If the tool indicates OK, then the battery can be used to start the car engine for a long time.

If the indication is careful, it will give a message to the driver to plan a battery replacement in the near future. Then, if the battery is indicated as Bad, then the user must immediately replace the battery because the possibility of battery drain is very high when it is indicated as Bad.

Portable and safe

In making CbDiag, Charlie and friends used the internal resistance measurement technology from the battery. The battery is modeled as a source of voltage and internal resistance. This internal resistance will be measured and used as a reference for the condition of the car battery because in the process of starting the car engine there is a very high electric current that will be drawn from the battery.

In addition, there is a charge and discharge process on the battery which later causes a sulfation effect due to an incomplete reaction. This results in the value of the resistance in the battery will increase and reduce the current delivery ability of the battery.

“We consider that the device must be portable and safe for the user. Finally it was decided that this method was used, ”said Charlie.

He and his two friends hoped that this tool could be used and beneficial for people’s lives. They also plan to develop CbDiag to have the ability to predict battery wear time which will help motorists.

This article was published on  Kompas.com  with the title “ITB Student Innovation, Now Soak Batteries Can Be Detected Early via Android”, 

https: //ed Pendidikan.kompas.com/read/2019/09/10/14062111/inovasi-mahasiswa-itb  -current-battery-soak-can-be-detected-early-via-android? page = all .

Author: Erwin Hutapea

Editor: Yohanes Enggar Mustusilo