Battery

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Basics

Many electronic devices run off batteries as their energy source. The ideal battery is a source of voltage, when connections are made to it current will flow, the amount depending on the connections. For the ideal battery the voltage will not fall when current is drawn, or time goes by. For real batteries none of this is true, but may be useful approximations. An improved model of a battery is that it is an ideal voltage source in series with an ideal resistor ( known as the internal resistance of the battery ). A battery is a collection of cells so a single cell battery is really just a cell, not a battery.

Some of the most important characteristics of batteries:

  • Voltage
  • Internal Resistance
  • Energy content ( often indirectly measured by amp hours or mAh )
  • Rechargeable? Primary ( not rechargeable ); Secondary ( rechargeable )
  • Size
  • Weight
  • Chemistry ( lead-acid, NiCd, NiMH, Lithium, etc ...... )

Uses

  • Provides power to circuits. At any time the power is equal to the voltage of the battery times the current. When the battery is not connected, the current and the power are 0.
  • We will often use a power supply in place of a battery.


There are a surprising number of myths and urban legends about batteries (such as the "memory effect" near-myth and various ways of "fixing" it). Also the process of charging them up.

battery test jig

I wish someone would design an open-hardware battery test jig. One I could program with various recharge protocols, to see which protocol is *really* the best for recharging secondary batteries. And one that anyone could build to repeat the experiment.

Can I do that with the Smart Battery Charger with Graphical Data Logger ?

  • * Yes, yes you can. DS

Further Reading

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