Wattcher Is Awesome, Can someone help me use it another way.

[paulrich]

I have a electric r/c car I race indoor wish to use the idea of Wattcher to monitor my voltage.

Can I use the same software and building instruction and programing of the xbee or do I need to tweak something ?

Thanks Very Much, Paul

[adafruit]

thats a good idea! yes you can adapt it to work just fine. make sure the voltage range is 0 to 3.3v, in case the RC car is 7v or 12v.
be sure to post if you get it working!

[mojo]

I made a simple device like this for a friend of mine to use on his model helicopter.

I was originally going to just use an op-amp as a voltage comparator with a reference voltage and light up and LED when the battery gets low. That would keep the component count and the weight down. We got a working circuit which was going to be re-done in surface mount parts to keep the weight as low as possible, but in the end decided not to make a PCB and instead look at doing a more complex AVR based system that could transmit telemetry too.

If you are just going to use stripboard or matrix board then an op-amp to scale the voltage connected to the XBee is probably the simplest solution. The Kill-a-Watt is more complex because it deals with AC voltage. Since you have more analogue inputs you could use a dual/quad op-amp and add some extra sensors (e.g. thermistors for motor temperature).