Power supply by Battery and Shield

Hi,
I bought this shield SparkFun LiPower Shield - DEV-10711 - SparkFun Electronics and this battery Lithium Ion Battery - 6Ah - PRT-13856 - SparkFun Electronics to power my Arduino and devices.
I am not sure that Arduino and this Shield can support 6Ah because I dont see any light and I can't make it work even with a 2A battery, I just smelling something strange.
I guess that it's broken or I broken it because this shield can support max 1000mAh.

Someone can understand from the specification what is going on?

this shield can support max 1000mAh

Where did you get this info from?
The specs says the charge current is 100mA, but can be changed to 500mA.

Did you ask the question in sparkfun forum?

I bought them from Sparkfun and before to connect I checked with the support to make sure that I am not going to damage anything.
They told me that everything should work but I dont understand anything about power and ampere, I understood that this shield can give me enough power to Arduino and my devices.
I am afraid that I burned something because the battery is too powerful.

There is no such thing as "the battery is too powerful". Your device will take as much juice out of the battery as it needs. The battery is kind of static reservoir of energy.

That means that I can my battery 3.7V at 6Ah and I shouldn't damage anything, right?
If that is correct, why I smelling something bad when I want to connect a 2A battery 1.5V at 2500mAh?

i just want to make it works

I use a chip from the same range as is used on that shield to manage the charge in a single cell 3.7V 930mAh LiPo battery in a solar project of mine. It works well.

That should have no problems charging your batteries - it will take 3 times as long as to charge a single 2000mAh battery, but it should be fine.

I want to connect a 2A battery 1.5V at 2500mAh

What do you mean?
Got a picture of your setup?

Just connect a 1.5V battery rechargeable at 2000 mAh instead of the battery that I bought, I think is very simple to imagine how to connect it :stuck_out_tongue:

I think is very simple to imagine how to connect it

I could not imagine you did that.
According to the datasheet

MCP73831 is designed to charge LiPo batteries, at around 4V.
There may be some protection in place, but it does not sound like a good idea to use AA rechargeables.

Again, did you ask these same questions in the sparkfun forums?
If the board is defective, they may even replace it for you.

I am not sure that Arduino and this Shield can support 6Ah

6Ah? 2.5A? 2A? It's totally unclear whether you're talking about load current
or energy in the battery, or charging currents to the battery.

Too bad Sparkfun doesn't say how much current their shield can supply to
a load. From what I can tell, by looking at the •Datasheet (TPS61200),
that chip can only push maybe 600mA, if you're lucky, so that's the max
load you can connect. Charging is another matter.

I will clear everything:
I have a battery 3.7V 6000mAh, I tried it but doesn't work, I guess is discharged and I need to charge it
I have a battery 1.5V 2000mAh, I tried to connect it to check if something is working but I just smelled something bad coming from the shield.

florinc:

I think is very simple to imagine how to connect it

I could not imagine you did that.
According to the datasheet
http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/21984a.pdf
MCP73831 is designed to charge LiPo batteries, at around 4V.
There may be some protection in place, but it does not sound like a good idea to use AA rechargeables.

Again, did you ask these same questions in the sparkfun forums?
If the board is defective, they may even replace it for you.

Yes, I sent an email about that but they told me "Yes eveything is fine". I don't really trust them and I wanted to have a double check with someone who understand this kind of things

Let me just check something to get it absolutely clear...

You took this shield, and then connected it to a single 1.5V 2000mAh battery?

After I have tried to charge the battery that I bought from Sparkfun and test it on the shield and then found that it didn't work, yes I tried for 2 seconds to connect it but didn't work

I have a battery 1.5V 2000mAh, I tried to connect it to check if something is working but I just smelled something bad coming from the shield.

From looking at the Spark webpage, it's not clear if it will work with anything
other than a 3.7V battery. To me, this is a miserable description of a product
that is made to work with the most fickle of battery types = Li.

Also, your 1.5V 2000 mAH battery is a NiMH type, I suppose. I wouldn't try
connecting it to a Li charger in any event, especially that the charger may
be trying to charge it to 3.7V.

I didn't charge the 1.5V battery, I just tried to give powered my arduino with that

Connecting a 1.5V battery to a 4V charger is an incredibly dangerous thing to do.

This is what happens if you over-charge a rechargeable battery:

If you accidentally made the mistake of connecting said battery up backwards (which is easy enough to do), then you may well have done irreparable* damage to the shield.

The shield should have worked with the supplied 3.7V battery pack, if that battery pack was working right. Myself, I am somewhat suspicious of LiPo batteries in parallel. Yes, they say they have been "matched", but they cannot get it 100% perfect, and there will be slight differences in internal resistances which may well have caused the batteries to become too discharged for normal charging to work.

* without replacing chips and things, which is possible, but pointless at the cost for the end user.

This shield can charge your battery as well but you need to connect a usb cable to the shield, I never tried to charge a NiMh battery, I only tried to charge the Lipo that I bought from Sparkfun.
What I did is to connect the Lipo to the shield but I couldn't see any green LED on my Arduino, I was checking with a Multimeter but I didn't find anything strange.
In the end I tried to connect a 1.5V Battery but didn't work, I couldn't see any LED.

The first thing to do is try and find out what input voltages you can actually
use with the circuit. As I mentioned, the Spark people were too lackadaisical
to say.

Secondly, once again, be careful with anything labelled "Li'. The batteries
don't take kindly to mistreatment of any sort, and the circuits are generally
made to work with that type of battery only. Li batteries have very specific
charge and discharge relations.

The chip on the shield is capable of managing the charge of a single 3.7V LiPo / Li-ion cell. Any other voltages are right out. It includes a boost regulator to pump it up to 5V for powering the Arduino.

If the battery doesn't contain enough charge it won't run the Arduino.

You charge the battery by connecting a USB power input directly to the shield at 5V.

If the battery is below a critical voltage it won't charge and will have to be replaced.

Again, I would like to mention how bad an idea I think these three-cell parallel packs of batteries are.