Motherboard on/off signal from battery voltage

Thread Starter

distanceman89

Joined Nov 26, 2020
1
Hi all, brand new here and I'm more of a Mechanical Engineer/shop guy by trade, so bear with any errors in nomenclature or ignorance of some basics. I'm usually on the operator end of things!

Background-I'm trying to control a Folding At Home computer that runs off of my small ~24V LTO Solar battery bank, to use up any excess power rather than the charger shutting off on a particularly sunny day. The end goal is to have the computer turn on and start folding as a productive dump load when the battery voltage gets above around 24.5V, and shut down gracefully when battery voltage drops down below 23.5V to leave capacity for the other things I run off the battery.

I do have an unused load output from my solar controller (Victron Smartsolar), that can turn on and off with some basic logic that I think could be used- I.E. output is turned on when Vbatt > 24.5, and off again if Vbatt drops below 23.5 or whatever thresholds I want.

I know I could use a micro-controller and some simple code to read the battery voltage, and close the contacts on the motherboard accordingly for on/off signals, but I feel like there might be a more elegant (and power efficient) custom solution using the built-in logic from the solar controller. A simple circuit that would see the output come on, momentarily short the mobo pins to turn it on, and see the output turn off, and short the pins again to signal shutdown?

I'm new to circuit design, so I really just don't know where to start! I'm happy to try my hand at design, I just needed some guidance in what direction to head in.
I would greatly appreciate any help, advice or direction anyone with experience could give.
 
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