In alt.engineering.electrical Morris Dovey wrote: | snipped-for-privacy@ipal.net wrote: |> In alt.engineering.electrical Michael A. Terrell wrote: |> |> | Either put up, or shut up. If you can't find the datasheet of an IC |> | online it is either obsolete, or proprietary. Track it down and see if |> | it even has anything more than a few simple gates. you will find most |> | of these battery related ICs to be ASIC, or Application Specific |> | Integrated Circuit. That means there is nothing you can do to make |> | changes, unless you steal the masks, change the layout and have new |> | chips made. |> |> Chances are, if I saw the specs for this IC, at least in terms of how much |> RAM and ROM was on the chip, I'd be the one having a good laugh. You can |> be sure I'm not going to run a power system from one IC. I'm going to do |> it from a full computer which allows it to keep and analyze a large amount |> of data. So I have no interest in some puny little IC. | | You might want to take a look at some of Dallas Semiconductor's | products, some of which do provide options for dynamic reconfiguration. | IIRC, their product line includes devices for monitoring batteries.
I'm not sure what all I would be interested in, just yet. I need to get a better idea of what all I need to measure, and what devices are available to do the measurements.
For example, how does one set up a computer system to measure specific gravity? That probably requires a special battery. One way I could envision doing this (requires being part of the battery design) is for Gray coded float device in a narrow tube opened to the electrolyte of each cell, behind a few window. An LED would scan the code bars of the device horizontally and the code received would indicate the position.
There are other ways this could be done, but I would favor an optical one where I don't need to penetrate the cell to do this. The measurement device would have to be in place permanently, and the cell needs to remain as sealed as it would be in normal operation. I just don't know how this can be done with any existing batteries. I've always know specific gravity measurements to be done manually by opening the cell cap, and closing it again when done. But this is not something I want to implement under computer control.
What I want for any measurement device in general is just a way to feed data to my computer system. I also want control over contacts to open and close circuits under automated control.
| If you'd like a small footprint for your full computer, follow the link | below for a few more ideas (block diagram, photos, descriptions).
The size of a PC is a suitable footprint. It will have its own power system.