Battery Development Kit debugs smart batteries.
Press Release Summary:
Based on ATmega406 single-chip smart battery AVR® device, ATAVRSB100 Development Board uses 3 support modules to simulate individual cell voltage, total cell stack voltage, and charge/discharge current. Flash-based ATmega406 integrates voltage regulator, autonomous battery protection, 99% accurate monitoring capabilities, FET control, and cell balancing FETs. Firmware supports SMBus V1.1 protocol handling, as well as basic algorithms for charge left estimation and battery charging.
Original Press Release:
Atmel's Smart Battery Chip and Development Tool Cut Costs and Time to Market
New Reference Design Eases Development and Debugging of Smart Batteries
SAN JOSE, Calif., Sept. 15 /-- Atmel(R) Corporation (NASDAQ:ATML), a global leader in the development and fabrication of advanced semiconductor solutions, announced today the availability of the ATAVRSB100, a smart battery development kit. The ATAVRSB100 is based on Atmel's ATmega406, a highly integrated single-chip smart battery AVR(R) device, targeting Lithium Ion batteries for laptop computers, medical equipment and portable instrumentation. It demonstrates the smart battery monitoring and protection capabilities while significantly reducing the time to market for new smart battery designs.
The ATmega406 is the first Flash-based microcontroller solution with everything needed to meet the smart battery highest accuracy and reliability challenges, at the lowest system cost. In one chip, it integrates functions such as voltage regulator, fully autonomous battery protection, more than 99% accurate monitoring capabilities, FET control and cell balancing FETs, allowing to implement a complete smart battery design with a limited number of external components. Thanks to the Flash In-system Programming capability, smart battery manufacturers can use the same device in different applications, thus reducing procurement costs, time to market and scrapping risks.
The ATAVRSB100 development board is made of a full smart battery implementation and three different support modules, to simulate individual cell voltage, total cell stack voltage and charge/discharge current. These modules let developers simulate critical battery situations on request, without the risk and the complexity of using real battery cells. Numerous connectors are available to connect battery cells and to perform debugging and programming of the device, thus allowing developers to easily implement changes to the reference design and fully evaluate these changes before any batteries are connected.
The firmware supplied with the ATAVRSB100, is a framework to develop customized firmware. It supports a full SMBus V1.1 protocol handling, as well as basic algorithms for charge left estimation and battery charging. This enables battery designers to focus on firmware development for the advanced State of Charge (SoC)/ State of Health (SoH) algorithms, unique to each battery type, and to deliver to the end-users a realistic and accurate indication of the expected battery life. Support for firmware updates through SMBus is also available, allowing installation of improved algorithms for SoC/SoH estimation while the battery is installed in the laptop PC. To simplify the calibration procedure needed to get the best possible accuracy of the State of Charge estimate, the firmware supports calibration through the SMBus interface.
"The ATAVRSB100 implementation allows any engineer regardless of prior knowledge of smart batteries to get a jump start in their development," said Odd Jostein Svendsli, Atmel's Marketing Manager for battery management solutions. "At the same time engineers can focus on implementing accurate algorithms for their specific battery, knowing that all basic functions are already covered."
ATAVRSB100 is available now at a cost of $299. ATmega406 is in full volume production with pricing starting at $3.10 for 10K units.
About Atmel
Atmel is a worldwide leader in the design and manufacture of microcontrollers, advanced logic, mixed-signal, nonvolatile memory and radio frequency (RF) components. Leveraging one of the industry's broadest intellectual property (IP) technology portfolios, Atmel is able to provide the electronics industry with complete system solutions. Focused on consumer, industrial, security, communications, computing and automotive markets, Atmel ICs can be found Everywhere You Are(R).
NOTE: Atmel(R), logo and combinations thereof, AVR(R), Everywhere You Are(R) and others, are the registered trademarks or trademarks of Atmel Corporation or its subsidiaries. Other terms and product names may be trademarks of others.
Information:
Information on Atmel's ATmega406 and ATAVRSB100 at: www.atmel.com/dyn/products/product_card.asp?PN=ATmega406
CONTACT: Philippe Faure, Marketing Communications Manager - Microcontrollers, +33 2 40 18 18 87, or philippe.faure@nto.atmel.com
