Can't say about the availability of v.3 boards, the whole Clean Power
Auto inventory and business was sold to an Australian or New Zealand
company that modified the design, but seem to still be supplying units.
The "original" MiniBMS design ~was~ an open source project that was
developed on the diyelectriccar forums, and went through a couple of
evolutions as the users there refined the design. Once it was a
workable, marketable product, Dimitri took it commercial/private and
basically stiffed the fellow developers, most of whom weren't at all
happy about that turn of developments.
V.3 boards chucked the four-section LM239/339 comparitor design and
went to an Atmel ATTiny45v AVR. Obviously, the code is proprietary,
but really isn't anything a competent Arduino experimenter couldn't replicate.
I'm actually developing a similar BMS based on the v.3 boards, but
with some significant improvements. These will go on the leaf modules
I just purchased to repower my ElecTrak tractor. I was going to build
five units that could monitor 5 modules (total of 10 cells), but the
PC board layout and code would be up for grabs for other users who
wanted to build their own. Of course, none of it would be based
directly on the MiniBMS designs, which I consider to be open source
by default of the cooperation that went into their development from
the beginning.
If it's helpful, I have circuit schematics for the "v.2" miniBMS
modules and the head unit, in case anyone needs to do repairs or
modifications to them. I've repaired and tested quite a few of these,
the biggest problem seems to be creepage between the pack potential
and the alarm loop, and defective solid state relays, which are cheap
and easy to replace.
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