- #1
Jdo300
- 554
- 5
Hello, I am designing a circuit that will be running off of two AA rechargeable (1.2V 2500mAH NiMH) batteries that are stacked in series, and I am looking into a way to charge the batteries in-circuit rather than having to take them out and charge them externally. I did a very brief search online and see that there are all kinds of different battery charge management ICs out there but I want to know if there are any ICs out there than can handle charging two cells in series that may not necessarily be at the same state of charge.
I saw many chips that handle single cells but when it comes to series cells, I've been hearing that it is not a good idea to charge them unless you are certain that they are both discharged to the same extent, which may not always be the case in my application (the user may put in batteries that are not both at the same charge state). To mitigate this, I was thinking that I could design a circuit that would switch the two series batteries in parallel when charging but this has complexities of it's own to deal with so I'm wondering if anyone knows of any simple solutions to this problem? I know I can't be the first person with this problem so what do you all think?
Thanks,
Jason O
I saw many chips that handle single cells but when it comes to series cells, I've been hearing that it is not a good idea to charge them unless you are certain that they are both discharged to the same extent, which may not always be the case in my application (the user may put in batteries that are not both at the same charge state). To mitigate this, I was thinking that I could design a circuit that would switch the two series batteries in parallel when charging but this has complexities of it's own to deal with so I'm wondering if anyone knows of any simple solutions to this problem? I know I can't be the first person with this problem so what do you all think?
Thanks,
Jason O