Hey,
I have a weather station build, https://github.com/fractalxaos/weather, up and working. I’d like to add the spark fun fuel gauge to monitor battery health. Would I put the gauge between the battery and the sunny buddy? Or between the Sunny Buddy and the Red Board? Or in neither spot, highlighting the fact that I don’t have a clue what’s going on
Thanks!
Hi the deacon,
To add the [LiPo Fuel Gauge to your circuit, you will want to place it between the battery and the Sunny Buddy. Just plug the battery into the JST connector on the Fuel Gauge and then run a 2-wire assembly like [this from the pins labeled “+” and “-” to the BATT connector on the Sunny Buddy. Make sure to double-check your polarity when soldering the wires for the wire assembly.
You can leave your LOAD connections as is since all of those connectors are in parallel on the Sunny Buddy. The battery will power the load and the Fuel Gauge so all you need to do is connect the I2C lines (SDA & SCL) to their respective pins on your Arduino. There is a library with some example code for the Fuel Gauge that works okay available to download from [here. I do not think you will have any address conflicts with the sensors on the Weather Shield but you may want to double-check. You will also need to integrate the Fuel Gauge code into your Weather Station code so I would recommend starting by verifying the Fuel Gauge code is reporting correct values and then move to customize the code for the Weather Shield to integrate the Fuel Gauge.
I hope this helps explain where you want to put the Fuel Gauge into your circuit and gets you pointed in the right direction to start using it with your weather station.](Additional-files/TOL-10617 at master · SparkfunTechSupport/Additional-files · GitHub)](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9914)](SparkFun LiPo Fuel Gauge - TOL-20680 - SparkFun Electronics)