SkyMul Holds Kickstarter Campaign for New Drone Battery Monitor
Fundraising sites have helped fuel a number of drone projects. Kickstarter is now hosting a campaign to develop the BatMon, a petite monitor that can be added to an existing battery to enable a drone pilot to track the health and remaining capacity of his battery while in flight.
BatMon is a project of Atlanta, Georgia-based SkyMul, which is developing a way to use drones to tie together the rebar used in construction projects. Founded by Georgia Institute of Technology alumni, SkyMul has won Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants from the Air Force Research Laboratory and the National Science Foundation.
The BatMon is a SMBUS-compatible device weighing just 12 grams. It displays the current, the individual cell voltages, battery temperatures from different thermistors and gives an estimate of the battery that is remaining. The monitor supports the 18650 lithium-ion battery and a few Lithium polymer packs. When installed with a compatible autopilot like PixHawk, ArduPilot or Arduino, the BatMon can keep an operator apprised of the battery’s status in real time during flight.
The SkyMul team is half way to their goal of raising $7,800. Backers get a discount on the purchase price of one or more BatMons and free installation of the monitor on a Titan battery. Titan is supporting SkyMul by offering a discount on their batteries. The Kickstarter campaign ends the morning of February 20.