LiPo Battery Charging Chips

The one this charger is based on has worked pretty good for me:

From your question, I can't tell if you want to build something from scratch using chips or if you want a ready to play charger. I'll assume the latter.

Check into what the RC (radio control) and quadcopter crowd is using. They're all "balance charger" types: I have two of these, that work nicely for most chemistries and battery configuration (up to 6S or 6 cells):

Maximum charge current is about 5A, so it should work at 500 ma. I'm not sure what you mean by "raw voltage" but if it resembles a 12V car battery with something in the 11 to 18v range, it should work.

I am a circuit designer. If I'm asking for a chip, I want to design a chip into a circuit design.

I know how to build a charger -- that's why I said "I know how to do it". I want to know if there's a one-chip solution out there -- that's why I said "is there a chip".

It sez it's only good for one cell, though -- I'm hoping for the same idea, but in a one-chip, multi-cell solution.

Sigh. Looks like I'm going to have to actually work at finding something, or worse, build something. I was hoping that someone would just have a part number for me. Oh well.

Check with TI, At one time I foudn a SLA charge IC that had everything built in, but never got around to using it. They might have something in the BQ line that they brought out not too long ago. See the Stand Alone charger section they have support for multiple cells.

Cheers

Ah. I guess one could use a solid state relay or something to charge up multiple cells in parallel then discharge in series? But yeah, not single chip...

LE SIGH

Following your link to microchip this does two cells.

George H.

And a table,

GH.

If there was such a thing, those dirt cheap chargers from HobbyKing would most likely contain one.

A lot of the Laptop batteries use the BQ controllers.

Cheers

It charges up tables? How do you do that?

:)

Oh, be nice. No offense was intended. I just wanted clarification.

I've only seen the insides of about 4 different "balance chargers" which is the latest fashion in LiIon chargers. All the LiFePO4 chargers are balance chargers. I did find individual chips that could be thrown together to make such a charger such as cell balancers and monitors: However, I could not find a single chip or board with everything.

Note that the trend seems to be to put the charge controller, coulomb counter, balancing, fuel gauge, short protection, and such in the battery pack, instead of the powered device or charger. The insides a Ryobi 18v LiIon battery pack. Little wonder the packs are rather pricey:

Good luck.