Category: Hardware
Product Number: MAX17048
I am looking for guidance / suggestions for a battery monitor for my application, please. My application has multiple power sources (USB, 2 x removable battery packs and an internal backup battery). It uses the two removable Li-ion battery packs as its main power source. I currently track the state of charge of these two battery packs with one LTC 4150. Since the LTC 4150 is hard to source I want to change this to another battery monitor. I am considering using the MAX17048. I have a couple of questions though:
- Is there a better choice of battery monitor IC to monitor two (or more) parallel battery packs?
- The MAX17048 is powered from the battery. If the battery is removed, this IC will be unpowered, but the application will still be powered through its backup battery. Will this damage the MAX17048. Since the I2C and ALRT IOs are open drain I suspect it won't but I want to be sure.
- Currently I measure the two parallel batteries through a single LTC4150 (the batteries are connected through an ideal diode). Would it be possible to use the same approach with the MAX17048 (I.E. treat the combined output of the two battery packs as a single battery) or would it be better to use a seperate MAX17048 for each battery? (In my application, the device can run off one or two batteries and batteries with different SOC can be inserted. With the ideal diode, the battery with the high SOC would be used until the two batteries are the same voltage).
- The battery packs are not charged in my application. They are removed from the device to be charged. Will this influence the State of Charge algorithm of the MAX17048?
Thank you for your help.