DIY LiPo Supercharger! (Charge, Protect, 5V/12V Boost V2)

Hi there, some of you might remember this PCB circuit that I glued onto this Li Po battery. If not then make sure to watch my video about my DIY charge protect 5V boost circuit. Like the name of the video already implies, this circuit can charge up a Li Po battery, protect it from things like an overcharge, over discharge or a short circuit and it can boost the voltage of the battery up to 5V which makes it the perfect companion to power your portable 5V electronics projects. I think this circuit is super handy to have around and many viewers of mine thought so as well and a surprising amount of them also asked for a kit version of such a circuit. So I might be 3 years too later but here it is, an improved kit version of my charge protect boost circuit which was created in cooperation with Elektor and is now called Li Po Supercharger. Some key improvements in comparison to the old circuit are a USB Type C Input Jack, an E-Fuse IC for even more protection and a switch to change between 5V or 12V as an output voltage. And in this video I will show you how we came up with this design, how to assemble it and finally I will thoroughly test out all of its features. And if you are interested you can of course learn more about this kit and buy it by following the link in the video description. With that being said, let's get started! First off let me tell you that the old circuit does work just fine for most applications but there were some slight problems that we fixed with the new version and those were the following. If you look closely you can see that the components of the old circuit were super tiny SMD ones which certainly can be soldered by hand but it is not a simple task. That is why for the new circuit, you not only get a PCB with already soldered on ICs which are the hardest to solder but the SMD components are also quite a bit bigger and thus the soldering process is much easier. Next the Micro USB input of the old circuit is pretty outdated nowadays with USB Type-C stepping in as a replacement. That is why we switched to this USB type, but do not worry you do not have to hand solder the dozens of USB Port pins by yourself. Instead you get such a lovely breakout board that you simply have to add to the main PCB. Next the old circuit had the problem that while it could prevent a short circuit, it could not prevent an overload. That means if you draw an output current of beyond 1.1A, the output voltage breaks down more and more and becomes pretty much unusable and the boost converter IC also becomes pretty hot while doing this. We fixed that in the new circuit with the inclusion of an eFuse, which only allows a specific output current to flow but more about this maximum current limit later. Then there was also the problem with the PCB design of the old circuit meaning it was definitely not perfect since I am not a PCB designer. That means there were probably feedback and GND paths which were too long, misplaced capacitors and whatnot. The new PCB design however is much better because a proper design engineer from Elektor made it and I can say that is looks rather promising. By the way the Gerber files for this project, along with the schematic and even the BOM files are open for everyone to download and see in case you want to learn in detail about this project. But anyway we also used a new protection IC for the battery since this one comes with an integrated MOSFET. Then we also in-cooperated a new charge IC and boost converter IC which are this time both from Texas Instruments. Not only do they both come with more features, but by doing so we not only increased the charging current to 1A but we also achieved an improved maximum output current of 1.5A at 5V and 0.75A at 12V before the e Fuse got activated and yes 12V as an output voltage is also a new addition to this circuit. We even added an LED to the output to inform you if 12V is selected or 5V. And those were basically the main changes and if you are now wondering how we selected all the values for the complementary passive components then let me tell you that we for the most part simply followed the recommendations given by the IC manufacturers data-sheets. We pretty much only had to do a more or less complex calculation for the inductor value. And with that being said let's finally open up our kit box which in my case is sadly empty. I of course got a pre-release version months ago and while the packaging might look a bit different from what you will receive, we can do the assembly together. So I screwed on my fine soldering tip, heated up the iron and secured the PCB to my desk with electrical tape. I basically started with the flat SMD parts like resistor, capacitors and LEDs and then moved on to the big components like the inductor or the bigger capacitor which both can in fact get easily soldered in place by hand. And while using a microscope is certainly helpful, it is definitely not a requirement for assembling this kit. But anyway at the end I soldered on the USB Type-C Port and the switches and do not worry the kit will also come with a small manual on how to do this soldering process. And if you are still confused after reading it you can always watch my video on how to solder SMD components. Now after around 1 hour of soldering my Li Po Supercharger was complete and thus it was time to add my Li Po battery to its battery terminals. After then connecting the board to a 5V power supply, we can see that the power good LED lit up as well as the charging LED which means the battery was charging with a constant current of just below 1A. After around 2 hours the charging process stopped at a current flow of around 50mA and a battery voltage of 4.19V, perfect. Next it was time to test the 5V and 12V output which both worked flawlessly by delivering 5.04V and 12.09V respectively. That means we can obviously power 5V and 12V electronics projects with it but just to be a bit more professional, I instead hooked up a constant load to the output as well as my lab bench power supply to the input instead of the battery. Then I slowly cranked up the output current of the circuit while writing down how much input current/power it drew from my supply. After doing this procedure up to the current limit of the circuit, I decreased the input voltage a bit to simulate the dropping voltage of a Li Po battery and repeated this test. Of course I did this also with another input voltage level and afterwards I did the same measurements with the 12V output as well. I did all of this just to fill in this lovely spreadsheet which shows us that the average efficiency of the converter is around 70-80% and the maximum output power is around 5 to 6W. Next I also let the battery deplete completely in order to see whether the over discharge protection would kick in which it of course did at around 2.5V. Last but not least was the short circuit test which this time did not cut off the battery power but instead it only limited the current flow which is also acceptable. And with those tests out of the way it is safe to say for me that this new and improved version of my charge, protect, boost circuit is a success and I hope that everyone who will get one will be happy with it. Also let me know what other projects of mine you would like to see as a kit. I hope you enjoyed this project and learned a bit about electronics along the way. If so don't forget to like, share, subscribe and hit the notification bell. Stay creative and I will see you next time.

Channel: GreatScott!

Views: 163,887

Keywords: lipo, li po, li-po, li ion, li-ion, battery, cell, charge, charger, super, protect, boost, 5V, 12V, diy, do, it, yourself, kit, buy, elektor, greatscott, greatscott!, tutorial, guide, beginner, beginners, make, project, management, overcharge, overdischarge, over, dis, short, circuit, current, overload, voltage, efficiency, test, assembly, assemble, how, to, usb, type c, port, jack, pcb, ic, efuse, fuse, texas, instruments, inductor, calculation, constant, load, solder, electronic, electronics

Id: 6LxRnf6sQNQ

Length: 9min 44sec (584 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 06 2020