CC-BY-SA 3.0
This circuit is a charger for single-cell lithium (Li-Ion) and Polymer (LiPo) batteries. It can sources energy from DC jack connectors (two different dimensions), USB-C and solar panel. It uses MCP73871 which has the peculiarity to smartly adjust the current sank, making it ideal for solar-powered applications, where the available energy could be really scarce and high-varying over time.
The main application of this circuit is recharging a small battery of a weather station, which is a low power system and basically, not easily accessible for maintenance. So the battery life should be extended as much as possible. For this reason, I avoid recharge it at maximum capacity (set a high current threshold to stop it) and I limit the maximum recharge current to 100mA. However, these values can be changed replacing the value of the resistors (look at the schematic).
It does not integrate any protection for LiPo batteries (except the optional thermal monitor), so use batteries that are already shipped with integrated over charge, over discharge, over current, short circuit protection, and, optionally, over temperature protections.
This project is derived from the Adafruit USB / DC / Solar Lithium Ion/Polymer charger - v2. If you just need a cheap alternative to Adafruit board with no special form factor requirements, you can search on (Aliexpress)[https://www.aliexpress.com/af/mcp73871.html].
The main differences with Adafruit's version are:
You will need hot air gun for fine-pitched components like USB-C and MCP73871.
Except for USB-C, you can safely connect multiple power supplies (max 6V) because they are protected. Even if the battery is not connected, the board can delivery current to the load (4.2V, max current is regulated by R8-PROG1). Since the protection will dissipate a bit of energy (particularly precious limited when using solar panel), you may consider to short and remove a diode, at your own risk.
Each printed board has a version. Version advancements are ruled accordingly to Semantic Versioning.
To show the status of each version I use the following symbols:
ID | Name | Designator | Footprint | Quantity |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Header pins 1x04 | H4 | 1X04 2.54MM HOLES HEADERS PINS | 1 |
2 | LED-0603_R | LED3 | LED0603_RED | 1 |
3 | 10uF | C1 | C0603 | 1 |
4 | 4.7uF | C4,C3 | C0603 | 2 |
5 | MBR120VLSFT1G | D3,D1,D2 | SOD-123F_L2.8-W1.8-LS3.7-RD | 3 |
6 | 4700uF | C2 | CAP-TH_BD12.5-P5.00-D1.2-FD | 1 |
7 | LED-0603_B | LED1 | LED0603_BLUE | 1 |
8 | MCP73871-2AAI/ML | U1 | QFN-20_L4.0-W4.0-P0.50-BL-EP | 1 |
9 | JST_2-PIN_Female_Connector | JST2,JST1 | JST-PH-2-SMT-RA | 2 |
10 | 10k | R8,RT2,R7 | R0603 | 3 |
11 | 270k | R9 | R0603 | 1 |
12 | 100k | R10 | R0603 | 1 |
13 | 1k | R1,R2,R3 | R0603 | 3 |
14 | 0k | R11 | R0603 | 1 |
15 | 5.1k | R4,R5 | R0603 | 2 |
16 | ∞k | R12 | R0603 | 1 |
17 | 10k | RT1 | R_AXIAL-0.3 | 1 |
18 | LED-0603_G | LED2 | LED0603_GREEN | 1 |
19 | Header pins 1x02 | H3,H1,H2 | 1X02 2.54MM HOLES HEADERS PINS | 3 |
20 | DC050 | J1 | DC050 DC POWER CONNECTOR | 1 |
21 | DC-045B-13A | J2 | DC-IN-SMD_DC-045B-13A | 1 |
22 | USB-310F | USB1 | USB-C-SMD_20P-P0.50-L6.5-W8.9 | 1 |
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