next topic »

[on:]

Hi everyone, I have been browsing this site for many months for help with various projects I've been working and have been overwhelmed by the amount of information out there for this development platform.

Basically I have been developing a battery pack system that can be used with the Arduino for handheld applications and remote data logging etc...

I have seen other products but nothing that really covered all the features I wanted.

The shield has a Li-Polymer battery, a latching power switch circuit with on and off momentary buttons, a battery gas gauge and a DC-DC convertor to power the arduino at 5V. The features and specifications are as follows:

The li-polymer battery can be charged from the 5V USB supply, when the arduino is powered off the full 500mA from the USB bus is used to charge the battery.

When the shield is powered up the battery charge current is reduced to 100mA and the theoretical 400mA is available to the DC-DC convertor.

The power switch circuit can send a signal to the arduino to initiate a power down sequence if required, i.e. so it can finish saving data to an SD card first etc... the shield has an input so the arduino can switch itself off. this can be useful for hand held equipment auto power off, or switching off if the battery state of charge is too low.

There is an option for an i2c battery gas gauge that can report the battery state of charge to the arduino this is accurate and a very useful feature as Li-polymer battery capacity cannot be determined with a simple voltage check.

If anyone is interested in this then let me know and if there is a reasonable demand I will get some PCB's manufactured which I can supply with or without batteries.

Many thanks,
Stuart

[Reply #1 on:]

 I do want to power one of my Arduinos with a Lithium battery too. My suggestion is to suggested a price for your boards and possible show a general picture of design and dimensions. I think people would be interested in your design if you could give some visual aids.

 By the way Itead Studio sells PCBs so cheap that I would just have some made up and build up what you need. Then see if anyone wants to buy your extras. If your design is nice, the board will sell easily.

[Reply #2 on:]

I'm very interested in the a Lithium battery pack described . I have a need for 10 at the moment - probably quite a few more in a month or twos time.

[Reply #3 on:]

How would your battery pack differ from some that exist already, say from Sparkfun or from Seeed Studio?
http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10300
http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/lipo-rider-p-710.html?cPath=155