“Batteries are impacting almost every facet of the world around us. Together we unlock possibilities for a smarter, safer, greener, healthier and more enjoyable world”, said Jeff Bessa, General Manager, Battery Management Solution, in his welcome address to a gathering of battery engineers. Engineers from…
Linear chargers and switching chargers are widely adopted in many applications: hearing aids, smart watches, sensor nodes, cellphones, notebooks…you name it! Whenever you use a rechargeable battery, you will need a charger. However, which charger you select may require some more consideration given the pros and cons associated with the different charging topologies…
In part 1 of this blog series, I looked at the importance of battery protection in lithium-ion batteries. In this installment, I’ll cover the other two elements necessary in order to create a safe and healthy battery pack: A monitor, which helps in grabbing diagnostics of each cell in the stack and protect as well, and a gauge which helps in intelligently calculating the state of charge and health of the battery.…
We all like to take our music with us on MP3 players. And since the invention of the boom box, many of us like to share our music as well. Shrinking the size of the boom box without sacrificing performance has been a constant innovation area for decades. A portable Bluetooth® speaker is one such step on this innovation pathway.
With a focus on smaller size and longer battery…
Electronic point-of-sale (EPOS) machines incorporate a tremendous amount of functionality and technology. First, there is the keypad and display to capture and report the user’s input. There may be a barcode scanner for merchandise or a magnetic strip reader for credit cards. There is almost always a thermal printer, because after all, you will want a receipt showing a $0…
Earlier this year, I wrote about wearables and how they can do so much and be so small. Well, wearable devices are about to get smaller, do more and last longer thanks to innovations in battery charging, low quiescent current operation, smart power management and high integration.
Battery charging for wearables is challenging because you have to use batteries that are both small in size and capacity. For example, charge…
Figure 1: TI Battery pack selection guide based on function and series cell configuration
When it comes to choosing a lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery pack for your portable application, whether for a smart watch or an e-bike, the task is not as daunting as it seems. A Li-ion battery pack has three basic functions: to protect, monitor and gauge. These functions are usually handled by individual devices; however, some devices…
During an especially busy day, wouldn’t you like to be able to sit down in a meeting and have your smartphone fully recharged from your power bank by the time the meeting is over? Recharging the ever-larger capacity batteries found in the latest smartphones and tablets usually takes hours from the USB port in your notebook. However, with newer fast charging protocols, such as MaxCharge technology, charging your…
When you’re designing a battery-operated portable system like security panels, or automatic locks, each and every inch on the board is important, each and every second of operation is important, and (last but not the least) each and every penny you pay for the system is important. These systems usually contain security codes retained by clocks, which can either be powered by the main power supply (main battery), or by…
The processor in a smartphone or a tablet requires more and more power to deliver high performance. Additionally, the around-the-clock usage of portable devices requires more battery capacity. The high power consumption of a smartphone or a tablet and the limited capacity of the embedded battery generate power anxiety for users.
Figure 1 is a picture I took at the Chicago O’Hare…
We can all remember a time when we’ve really needed to use an electronic device, only to find out the battery is dead. For years, our portable electronics have been limited by battery life and battery size. As the cost of Lithium-ion batteries continues to decrease and the charge density increases, longer lasting and exciting portable applications will emerge. As applications begin to trend toward using these high-cell…
Small gas gauging devices have found their way into many consumer, industrial, and medical applications. In a previous blog post, we introduced our bq274xx series of Li-Ion gas gauges. In this video, we introduce the bq27xx series of gas gauges. The biggest difference between the bq274xx and bq275xx series is that the latter has configurable data flash to allow for more precise modeling of the rechargeable battery. Having…
The organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays found in small devices, such as wearables and smaller medical devices, require a relatively high voltage (usually around 12V) to drive the display. But since this higher voltage only needs to deliver a relatively small current (usually less than 100mA), the power supply providing this voltage and current can be small – very small. Whether you’re driving an active-matrix…
One of my favorite aspects of working at TI is that I often travel across the globe to visit customers to learn about their products, and in turn share with them the various innovations we’re cooking up here on the Battery Management Solutions team. I’m particularly amped up these days by the larger (18V+) battery market, where folks are working on products for land, sea, air – heck…
The proliferation of the Internet of Things (IoT) has created wireless sensor nodes (WSNs) in every conceivable nook and cranny of the typical industrial building. A WSN is a device, usually battery-powered, that measures or monitors something such as temperature or movement and then reports that data wirelessly to a centralized host for further analysis. Consider a fire alarm…
Who wouldn’t love having a home that runs itself? We’re in a golden age of ever-smarter gadgets, and one of the hottest areas of innovation is one that’s long captured the public’s fascination: robots.
The industrial arena has relied on robots for decades now, and they play a key role in producing today’s modern automobiles, semiconductors and all manner of goods. Most of these robots are line…
We had an enriching conversation about energy harvesting during our Twitter chat on July 8. Participants tweeted us their questions on a variety of topics using #energyharvesting. In case you missed out we covered topics including sources for energy harvesting, the best parts to help your designs and where energy harvesting can be used.
We asked a few questions to get your opinions. Take a look at the most buzzworthy…
The proliferation of applications needing momentary backup power has contributed to an increase in demand for supercapacitors. Supercapacitors, also known as ultracapacitors, are electrochemical capacitors with the ability to store more energy than regular capacitors. They can be charged and provide energy much faster than batteries. Figure 1 compares conventional capacitors, supercapacitors, conventional batteries and…
When designing an ultra-low-power system such as a smart watch, low-power sensor node or smart meter, the current required to operate the power supply is critical. This quiescent current (IQ) must be low enough to keep high efficiency even at an ultra-low-power system’s sub-10µA load currents. For example, if your load current is only 1µA, your system will be very inefficient if…
While no one wants to be in a car accident, it’s nice to know that an emergency infrastructure exists when one happens. As of April 1, 2018, any car purchased in the European Union (EU) or Iceland will have the ability to call 112 (the EU equivalent of 911) for emergency-response purposes.
The emergency call (eCall) system will contact an emergency-response operator, who will…
The battle of the smartwatches has brought everyone’s attention to wearables again. In almost every review and technical comparison, the one thing that came up the most was battery runtime. No matter how many fancy features a smart watch has, they are useless if the battery is dead.
The battery runtime is affected by various factors including battery capacity, power consumption of the PCB components, user habits…
Battery innovation is not moving as fast as other technological advantages. With battery capacity doubling every 10 years and processing requirements increasing much quicker, developers are faced with difficult challenges. When building a battery-powered system, product developers often create efficient hardware systems only to see much higher power consumption than expected. In embedded systems optimization, hardware…
Will mobile phone designers adopt all of the available features in the universal serial bus (USB) Type-CTM specification? Probably not. They’ll weigh their options against the impact on overall product cost. The new USB Type-C interface comes with ultra-thin connectors that are less than 3mm high and 8.4mm wide, making it ideal for mobile phones. USB Type-C offers a cable-and…
2015 is quickly becoming the year of drones. So what exactly is a drone? According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), a drone is an unmanned aircraft system comprising the unmanned aircraft (the drone) and all of its associated support equipment: control station, data links, telemetry, navigation equipment, etc. To fly a hobbyist drone (weighing less than 55lbs), you don’t need the FAA’s approval, as long…
What’s the secret to getting off the grid and operating autonomously? Getting your system down to operate at a low-enough power such that it can run off of harvested energy and/or off of a battery that won’t need changing until after the sensor itself becomes obsolete. Only then do you have a truly autonomous, hands-off system. This system continues giving you the data and measurements you need for as long as you need…
