The article now describes how to build a charger controller board and how to program the AVR microcontroller. You should have a LiIon battery you can practice on - my practice battery is still alive and well despite considerable abuse. The more you know about the battery the better: Maximum charge voltage and amps (sometimes printed on the case), thermistor (yes/no and resistance - they are not always 10K) and Smart Battery or not.
In addition to the charge controller a DC supply capable of providing at least 2 volts more than the max cell voltage (14.6 volts in my case) at the desired current is required. At the capacities I want you are out of the "Wall wart" category. I found a laptop supply for a Dell rated at 18V @3.5A.
The board is fabricated using easily obtainable components - refer to the parts list in the Atmel App Note. I made some substitutions and marked the schematic up accordingly.
The ATMEGA8 is a new release and has 8K Flash, 1K RAM in a 28 pin narrow DIP package and can be clocked up to 16MHz. If you are willing to eliminate the Smart Battery interface and delete some of the debug code the code could be made to fit in an AT90S4433 as per the original Atmel design.
The microcontroller software used is GCC version 3.2. This version is required to accommodate the direct I/O assignments that resulted from the conversion from IAR that was used in Atmels App note. The software is actually a combination of Atmels, converted from IAR, an I2C interface, converted from 68HC11/Imagecraft and my own GCC code. As a result the program does not read as well as I am used to as 3 different styles are evident.
The current / voltage control is managed by a PWM output into a P-Channel MOSFET. A large inductor / capacitor combination is used to stabilize the circuit. The special purpose chargers generally run at much higher frequencies ( 150KHz compared to 15KHz) and can thus use smaller components, not that important in my case.
The charger provides a continuous data stream output from the UART for your PC. I send initialization info and continuous charge status information from the charger, and, if a Smart Battery is connected, the battery, that can be viewed on a PC terminal program. Baud rate is set at 115K but could be lowered as desired.
The charge LED flashes quickly during constant current mode, slower during constant voltage mode and ends up at steady on when charging has completed.
The charger was operational after a weeks part time effort, another few days were spent on the Smart Battery interface and a couple more to document the whole thing.
The Hardware
For one-off projects such as this I prefer to use wire-wrap in combination with soldering.
I use a foil grid one side board with foil down. I spot solder most components to the grid and use wire-wrap to wire it up. This board had a requirement for larger power wire which was installed where needed. Notice from the photo that I use homemade wirewrap pin labels - I print them on the printer and push them down over the pins. Works quite well. I also print out top of board ID labels. This project would be a good candidate for a printed circuit board - I just don't have any incentive now that my board is working.
There are three attached schematics that describe the board.
First is the microcontroller itself, then the Atmel designed charge control circuitry and finally the Atmel designed reference voltage circuit.
The microcontroller physical design is pretty much a standard AVR design. A 7.3 MHz crystal is used (the ATMEGA8 can take up to 16 MHz). I added an 8 point dip switch for battery parameter selection and a variable resistor for setting Charge current in "Custom" mode. I include a UART interface but did not install the RS-232 interface on the board as I have a very useful cable with a MAX233 built in.
You can see from the photo that I have attached a heat sink to the HexFET. I suspect I could get up to 3.5 to 4 amps without problems with this setup. So far I've held back to 2.5 amps as I have no spare HexFETs in house and don't feel like doing destructive testing. Read the App note for a good description of how this circuit works. I mounted the power components on the opposite end of the board from the uC and kept three separate grounds (uC, analog, charger power) connected only at a single point. The op amp circuit used to measure battery voltage and current will take a little fiddling around. You do not need to have exact values as the circuit can be calibrated using software. Refer to the App Note for determining your specific resistor and calculating the inductor size. Here is an Excel calculation worksheet.
In case you are unable to get the thermistor operational I have a provision to jumper in a 10K resistor and bypass the protection. Obviously this should be a last resort. I may need to install several jumper selectable thermistor inputs as there seems to be a wide range of resistance ranges in use.
I use a standard power jack for the power supply connection and at the battery. In addition I have a separate 3 circuit cable to connect to the thermistor and Smart Battery lines at the battery. The actual battery connectors are very specific and not easy to find. I found one for my first battery but not for the Gateway. You will likely have to fab something up yourself.
The Software
You will require the latest version of GCC to be able to program the ATMEGA8 and take advantage of direct I/O register assignment mode which is new in this release.
Here is the set of c code files. Take a look at the "notes.txt" file. It describes the IAR to GCC conversion, the mods made to Atmels software, uC resources used, pin assignments and general notes about the software.
The main file is BC.c. Program flow starts with setup then moves directly into the LiIon fast charge algorithm in LiIon.c. It is here that the program checks for the existence of a Smart Battery. If detected charger settings are based on the information received from the battery, if not, settings are based on the on-board dip switch settings.
The charger then checks for over/under battery temperature and over voltage and flags an error if any of these are detected, sending a short error message to the PC. If OK control proceeds to the Constant Current loop where the PWM signal on-time is adjusted up or down until the measured current matches the specified fast charge current. The charge LED flashes quickly during this mode. When the Maximum Charge Voltage setting is reached then the mode switches to Constant Voltage and a new loop is entered that uses the same method as above to control voltage at the Maximum Charge Voltage point. The LED now flashes more slowly. This continues until 30 minutes after the charge current, which is decreasing with time in constant voltage mode, reaches the minimum (set at 50 mA per 1600 mAH of capacity). The charger then shuts off and the LED goes on steady.
The Atmel software included a trickle charging algorithm that I left intact but commented out. I don't see myself using it. I also removed most references to alternate battery chemistries. The program was designed to have the charge settings, specified in the BC_defs.h file, defined at compile time. I converted all of these settings to variables which are defined in various ways as described above. I deleted the BC_defs.h file and consolidated the user setup area in LiIon.h. Be sure to review this file and update important parameters such as Maximum Charger Current before firing things up. The preset settings (pick up to 8 different batteries) are set near the end of the LiIon.c file.
The voltage, current and temperature analogs must be calibrated. I used my calculation sheet to determine nominal resistor values, as described in the App Note, then fine tuned them by setting the VOLTAGE_STEP and CURRENT_STEP. This gives the number of mV or mA per each of the 1024 steps of the 10 bit A/D input. The thermistor values never leave the raw state though I see an NTC look-up table which was never implemented by Atmel.
The Smart Battery routines, located in sbcomm.c, are based on bit-banged I2C 68HC11/Imagecraft software. I converted them to AVR/GCC and added information and functions specific to the Smart Battery spec. Take a look at SBComm.h for the available SB commands. The ATMEGA8 has a built in I2C port but I did not use it. These routines could be extracted and used separately from the charger if desired, say, to monitor battery status of your robot during use. It provides some useful information such as voltage, amps, time remaining until recharge required (based on current usage rate), percent capacity, temperature, status flags, etc.
Also worth discussing are my StdDefs files. I have included in StdDefs.c routines that I seem to use in almost all programs such as putchar, putBCD, putstr, run_led, msleep, etc. StdDefs.h includes defines that simplifies changing uC models and crystal frequencies, primarily with respect to the UART, and has some other standard macros that I frequently use.
I removed the Atmel debug statements and used my own putchar / putstr / putBCD routines instead. All errors will report a string back to the PC. The error handling system has not been well tested - To date everything has worked and I haven't needed it.
Start-up
Once wired up and with the software installed you should be ready to go. I like to have my scope on during this phase to watch the PWM signal and check for data on the SMBus. The PC was connected to the UART and running HyperTerminal. I started off using load resistors instead of the battery just in case. I found a couple 7.5 ohm 25 watt resistors that were ideal. I then calibrated my voltage and current measurement by adjusting VOLTAGE_STEP and CURRENT_STEP until the readings reported on the PC agreed with my voltmeter measurements. You need to be sure your meter is pretty accurate as the maximum charge voltage needs to be accurately maintained to ensure the battery takes its full charge.
By changing LiIon_CELL_VOLTAGE and CAPACITY I was able to force the charger into both operating modes. The PWM circuit worked right from the start which was a relief after the struggles I had had with the MAX745 circuit. Once I was confident that the PWM worked and the charging routines were working I connected the battery power. The PC feedback looked good and the voltage was slowly rising in Constant Current mode. I then connected the Thermistor / Smart battery connector and troubleshot those two functions.
Operation
Note that the software is set up as a single pass. The uC must be reset to restart the sequence or to accept new charge settings from either the Smart Battery or the dip switches.
If a Smart Battery is connected then there is nothing to do but plug in the battery, then plug in the power and let it charge. If not you need to select the correct charge settings for your particular battery. In custom mode you use on board dip switches and the variable resistor to set CELLS, LiIon_CELL_VOLTAGE and CAPACITY (same as max charge current). If the "Custom" dip switch is not selected then the software goes to the GetBatteryData() function where it selects a predefined set of parameters based on the PreDef0, 1 and 2 switch settings. You can define up to 8 different batteries in the GetBatteryData() routine.
NB!!!! You must be very careful at this point not to select a battery with higher current or voltage settings than the battery you have connected. I would recommend monitoring voltage and current via the PC or with a volt-ammeter to be sure. My Smart Battery reports back a Max Charge Current of 0 if the voltage is above the max charge voltage.
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