Air ride logic-level MOSFET control

[Enki]

Some of you may know my project car will be air ride for a number of reasons, including some that have nothing to do with air ride. Rather than paying several thousand dollars for an air-ride controller, I'll be making my own or at least sourcing the parts and having someone with soldering skills put it together for me (which shouldn't be very hard, minimal amount of parts for this are needed).

The schematic I will be ultimately using is attached to this post; in this video, I basically just have one MOSFET, a 22k ohm pull-down resistor, and a big amp flyback diode (can't have the solenoids burning things up on the first actuation) per solenoid (one for fill, one for vent), and a buck style DC-DC converter to drop the battery voltage down to 5V for the MOSFETs.

In the video, you'll notice that I have the pressure set really low; this is because the hack soldering job I did to cobble everything together for testing doesn't flow enough power to fully actuate at least the fill solenoid. Even low pressures will suffice for testing though, so it's good enough for now.

I apologize in advance that this was filmed on a potato.

Air ride electronics test - YouTube

Air ride electronics test - YouTube

Now to learn how to get some code working between my old Android cell phone and the IOIO mint.

Questions? Comments?

[ms34m3]

Hello, i know this is old post, but E.E. and code is my jam so i thought i'd give my 2 cents:

1) be careful sourcing current for LED's. AVR is not designed to power many LED, so if all 3 colors are on, you might burn up chip. Common anode LED is more desireable for this reason, and you can sink the LED to PWM pins on teensy to display any color of rainbow

2) what is mosfet? IRL540? 22k is a big resistor for this application

3) to avoid dealing with thermal issues of MOSFET, maybe use relays

4) your circuit is wrong. 12V should go to Source pin of high side MOSFET switch.

5) if you are using N-Channel mosfet, best is to do low side switch. it is easier and safer
https://electronics.stackexchange.co...-high-side-loa

I hope it is all working well for you