Hi Ian,
I worked at Minelab Electronics (Metal Detectors) for 12 years, and all that time, I tried, every new model detector was being designed
to get them to change [b:fe21b26f57]All [/b:fe21b26f57]their multitudes of battery chargers (different for every detector) to the one AVR450 type charger with the I2c battery management type chip, that way, they only ever needed to make ONE battery charger.
They use NiMh for the military, SLA for some of the gold detectors, dry cells and NiMh for the relic detectors and Li Only for a couple of models
of gold detectors.
I couldn't make them see the cost saving in the long run.
The stupid part is that 90% of the code was already written for them in the AVR450 App note.
Oh well, I',m not there now, no idea what they're doing.
The smart batteries are the way to go.
I think there's even some spare RAM in some of the chips as well for battery ID. (or type)
Regards
Dean
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