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BQ24259: terminate charging before the charge current decrease to the set ITERM

Part Number: BQ24259
Other Parts Discussed in Thread: BQ27426, BQ24296

Hi,

my customer is using BQ24259 to charge one cell battery, they set ITERM[2-0]= 001 which means the charge will terminate at 256mA.

They've monitored the charge current through our gauge BQ27426, find that the charge terminate when the current is about 400mA. And they've also monitored the current with multimeter, and it also shows that the charge current is about 400mA when the charge process terminate.

They've test several pieces and all of them behave the same.

The STAT pin is not used, so we've checked the register log file. No error status register bit is set during the process.

When the battery is charging the registers are shown below:

[ 968.084633] [bq24296_read_interface,249] Reg[0]=0x46
[ 968.084958] [bq24296_read_interface,249] Reg[1]=0x1b
[ 968.085276] [bq24296_read_interface,249] Reg[2]=0x40
[ 968.085600] [bq24296_read_interface,249] Reg[3]=0x11
[ 968.085920] [bq24296_read_interface,249] Reg[4]=0xb0
[ 968.086183] [bq24296_read_interface,249] Reg[5]=0x8a
[ 968.086454] [bq24296_read_interface,249] Reg[6]=0xc3
[ 968.086757] [bq24296_read_interface,249] Reg[7]=0x4b
[ 968.087044] [bq24296_read_interface,249] Reg[8]=0x64
[ 968.087331] [bq24296_read_interface,249] Reg[9]=0x0

when the charge process terminate the registers are shown below:

[ 1010.095734] [bq24296_read_interface,249] Reg[0]=0x46
[ 1010.096057] [bq24296_read_interface,249] Reg[1]=0x1b
[ 1010.096346] [bq24296_read_interface,249] Reg[2]=0x40
[ 1010.096635] [bq24296_read_interface,249] Reg[3]=0x11
[ 1010.096926] [bq24296_read_interface,249] Reg[4]=0xb0
[ 1010.097215] [bq24296_read_interface,249] Reg[5]=0x8a
[ 1010.097504] [bq24296_read_interface,249] Reg[6]=0xc3
[ 1010.097795] [bq24296_read_interface,249] Reg[7]=0x4b
[ 1010.098169] [bq24296_read_interface,249] Reg[8]=0x74
[ 1010.098459] [bq24296_read_interface,249] Reg[9]=0x0

Could you please give any insight about this problem.

  • Hey Howard,

    I have several questions as we investigate this:

    1) What is the sampling time of your gauge?

    2) How are you testing this with a current meter? Are you using a real battery or a bidirectional supply?

    2a) If you are using a battery, can you try using a bidirectional supply instead and increase the voltage on the order of 10mV. If you monitor this current and sleep when the charge current goes to zero. I am trying to avoid a transient change in battery voltage that kicks the charger below the termination threshold without the user seeing it.

    3) Last comment may be a grounding issue on your board the is affecting the internal references used for regulation and comparator thresholds.

    Regards, 

    Joel H