What is it?

This is a breakout board based on BQ24250, an IC designed by Texas Instruments, that allows you to charge a LiPo battery with a fast charge current up to 2A(a maximum of 1.5A is recommended).

How it Works?

BQ24250 Breakout Board can be used standalone with a preset fast charging current of 1A set via R7 resistor, or you can control it with a microcontroller via the I2C interface and set it fast charge current in the range of 500mA to 2A with 50mA steps(a maximum of 1.5A is recommended).

With the other pins available, you can read a lot of information measured by the IC like fault conditions, state of charging and also set some of this values to adapt this board perfectly to your application

Only with I2C you can get and set all the information you need.

What Inside

In the box you will find:

• x1 BQ24250 Breakout Board with all component soldered (except for screw connectors and male header)
• x3 Screw connectors
• x1 Male header

Features

BQ24250 Breakout Board can be used standalone using few pins or via I2C gaining more features.

It charges your battery up to 2A(a maximum of 1.5A is recommended) and provide different protections to prevent faults like over-current, over-voltage or over-temperature protection

Here a pinout description:

J1 connector:

• VIN: connect directly to IN pin of the BQ24250, you must connect here the + terminal of the voltage source used for charging

• GND: connect it to the GND of the entire circuit.

J2 connector:

• BAT+:  you must connect the + terminal of the lithium battery that you want to charge

• BAT-:  you must connect the - terminal of the lithium battery that you want to charge

J3 connector:

• LOAD: connect the system that you want to supply with the battery

• GND: connect it to the GND of the entire circuit.

J4, 7 pins Header connector:

• INT: connected directly to the INT pin of the IC, a resistor pull up it to VIO:

    a logic "LOW" means that the battery is in charging
  
    a logic "HIGH" means "charging complete" or that the charger is disabled
  
    You can see here a 256μs pulse when a fault occurs
  

• STAT: connected directly to the STAT pin of the IC, a resistor pull up it to VIO:

     a logic "LOW" means that the battery is in charging
  
     a logic "HIGH" means "charging complete" or that the charger is disabled
  
     You can see here a 256μs pulse when a fault occurs
  

• SCL: connected directly to the SCL pin of the IC, a resistor pull up it to VIO

• SDA: connected directly to the SDA pin of the IC, a resistor pull up it to VIO

• CE:  connected directly to the CE pin of the IC:

    a logic "LOW" enable charging
  
    a logic "HIGH" disable charging and place the IC into shutdown mode
  

• GND: connect it to the GND of the entire circuit.

• VIO: you should connect to this pin the external voltage that you want to use for pull up signals from INT, STAT, SCL and SDA pins, if you are reading these pins for example from a 3V3 microcontroller connect a 3V3 supply to VIO for example

for more details of how BQ24250 Breakout Boards works and for some tutorial of how to use it in standalone and I2C mode, visit the following links:

http://ambergarage.net/2017/12/07/bq24250-switching-battery-charger-part1/ http://ambergarage.net/2017/12/21/bq24250-switching-battery-charger-part2/

Why did you make it?

Battery powered systems are getting more and more every day, also hobbysts using batteries to power up their projects like robots,remote systems and more..

For hobbysts the better solution is to use rechargeable battery for trying their project more and more times so a fast battery charger breakout board like this can be useful in different applications.

BQ24250 offers a powerful solution in a small space(28mm X 32 mm) so you can place it in almost all your projects

What makes it special?

BQ24250 it's parts of a set of Breakout Boards that was made and will be made by ambergarage to offer a full set of essential electronics breakout board for hobbysts projects and for everyone that needs this products to tests, works and have fun with them. Visit www.ambergarage.net to see more detail about this product and some tutorials of more than one Breakout Boards working together! Have fun!