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BQ4050: BQ4050 communication with Arduino

Irshad Ahmad Khan
Prodigy 20 points
Part Number: BQ4050
Other Parts Discussed in Thread: BQ76920, BQ76930, BQ76940

Hi! I am trying to reuse a BQ4050 obtained from my laptop battery pack. I am building another larger prototype battery pack (4s10p 20AH). I wanted to use another TI product but due to lockdown i had to tear apart an old laptop battery pack and use whatever is available. I have the following queries:

1. Is it even possible to repurpose the BQ4050 obtained from a laptop battery pack?

2. Does the BQ4050 retain all the information of the pack it was previously connected to? I mean will it still hold the data of the battery pack it was connected to? If yes, is there a way to reset it completely? If there is no way to reset it, will it pose any problem to my use case?

3. My primary use case of BQ4050 in this project is to constantly monitor the individual cell voltages and report these to Arduino. Arduino uses I2C and these power management chips use SMBus. So will the BQ4050 be able to report the cell voltages to Arduino over I2C (or any other connection)?

Regards,

Irshad

  • 0
    TI__Guru* 80343 points

    Hi Irshad,

    The BQ4050 can do what you require, but I strongly advise against using an IC from an existing battery pack. The device is likely sealed for security reasons by the pack manufacturer, so you will likely not be able to read or alter data memory settings. It will still be holding the data of the battery pack it was connected to - this is an important function of this IC. You will not be able to reset it if it is sealed. 

    If you want an IC to monitor individual cell voltages, this would be much easier using a battery monitor like the BQ76920. I think multiple users have published Arduino projects with this family of ICs (BQ76920/BQ76930/BQ76940) and it has a simple I2C interface to read the cell voltages.

    Best regards,

    Matt