Mictronics - DIY Electronic projects and more.

BQ40Z80 Battery pack

This is a battery pack that I built for my Turtle Rover. It's a custom battery pack in a 6S3P configuration of Samsung 18650-35E cells. That's 22.2V/10.2Ah in total. The Texas Instruments BQ40Z80, a 2 to 7 series battery pack manager with impedance track gas gauge, takes care of the entire pack. Its protection and balancing features guarantee safe handling of this energy source. The SMBus interface allows readout and indication of all battery lifetime parameters in the Rovers mission control software.

Battery pack management board based on TI BQ40Z80.
Battery pack management board based on TI BQ40Z80.
Battery pack management board based on TI BQ40Z80.
Battery pack management board based on TI BQ40Z80.

The BQ40Z80 requires several charge and discharge cycles to learn battery chemistry, internal resistance, capacity etc. Since these cycles are time consuming and several parameters and flags must be monitored, I created a C# software that semi- or fully automates this process with help of a simple relay jig. It's open source and can be found on Github. However, the software might be obsolete as soon as the BQ40Z80 is fully supported in TI BQStudio software.

Complete BQ40Z80 learning cycle with Mictronics bqev2300 software.
Complete BQ40Z80 learning cycle with Mictronics bqev2300 software.

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