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Battery Gas Gauge

Customer wants me to plop a gas gauge into their circuit for a LiPo. They currently have a Maxim DS2784G; their software guy says "One-wire -- ick". Since I've had bad experiences with Maxim, I'm happy to make a change. (Is Maxim still sometimes-horrible on delivery?)

So -- anyone have a knee-jerk favorite gas-gauge chip? DigiKey barfs up the STC3100 as a good choice, but I don't know anything about any of these beyond what I can read in the data sheets.

The STC3100 has an I2C interface, which may or may not be acceptable to the customer. An SPI interface may or may not be better -- I'd like to have some choices with which to juggle. DigiKey's usually wonderful search engine, alas, does not list interface type on their gas-gauge chips.

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Tim Wescott 
Wescott Design Services 
http://www.wescottdesign.com
Reply to
Tim Wescott
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What about the TI benchmarq BQ chips? I don't see SPI so I guess your stuck with I2C or SMbus.

Cheers

Reply to
Martin Riddle

So far I like the ST part best, and not least because it's the cheapest. I was looking for war stories ("oh this one is definitely good" or "oh god, don't use THIS one!"). As long as there isn't one chip that's both loved and hated then it'll help narrow things down.

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Tim Wescott 
Wescott Design Services 
http://www.wescottdesign.com
Reply to
Tim Wescott

We use the LTC2943. Works great and has other features including temperatur e. SPI interface. The only negatives are relatively high current consumptio n (100uA)when idle and the temperature is a few degrees centigrade high bec ause of self heating. Of course since it's Linear Tech, it's not going to b e the cheapest.

Reply to
papabear546

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