A battery charger is a device used to energize a rechargeable battery by driving an electric current through it. The charging protocol depends on the size and type of the battery being charged. Some battery types have high tolerance for overcharging and can be recharged by connection to a constant voltage source or a constant current source; simple chargers of this type require manual disconnection at the end of the charge cycle, or may have a timer to cut off charging current at a fixed time.
The MCP1631HV multi-chemistry reference design board is used to charge one, two, three or four NiMH batteries or one or two cell Li-Ion batteries. The board uses the MCP1631HV high speed analog PWM and PIC16F883 to generate the charge algorithm for NiMH, NiCd or Li-Ion batteries. It is used to evaluate Microchip’s MCP1631HV in a SEPIC power converter application. As provided, it is user programmable using on board pushes buttons. The board can charge NiMH, NiCd or Li-Ion batteries. It provides a constant current charge (Ni based chemistry) and constant current / constant voltage (Li-Ion) with preconditioning, cell temperature monitoring (Ni based) and battery pack fault monitoring. Also, the charger provides a status or fault indication. It automatically detects the insertion or removal of a battery pack.
For more detail: Multi-Chemistry Battery Charger from Microchip
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