Electric circuits are definitly not my strong point. I need to use trailers with electric 12v systems behind both 12 and 24v vehicles. I am trying to work out a way to do this so that the driver does not have to switch anything on or off ... ie no silly beggar is going to forget and fry the circuit.
I am using a standard 12v brake controller and a 12v battery on the trailer and a solid state multivolt input relay to control the braking from the 12/24v brake light. So far so good. The problem comes when I am keeping the 12v battery charged. I have put in a small solar panel battery charger controller thinking that it would handle the input voltage from a park light circuit and automatically charge the 12v battery. Unfortunately it automatically uses the input voltage to determine if it should be charging a 12v or a 24v battery. I figured maybe I could use a DC DC buck to bring the voltage down, but then it drops too far when using a 12v vehicle. Any ideas?
I am using a standard 12v brake controller and a 12v battery on the trailer and a solid state multivolt input relay to control the braking from the 12/24v brake light. So far so good. The problem comes when I am keeping the 12v battery charged. I have put in a small solar panel battery charger controller thinking that it would handle the input voltage from a park light circuit and automatically charge the 12v battery. Unfortunately it automatically uses the input voltage to determine if it should be charging a 12v or a 24v battery. I figured maybe I could use a DC DC buck to bring the voltage down, but then it drops too far when using a 12v vehicle. Any ideas?