Low cost Lithium Polymer batteries have revolutionized electronics – they’re thin, they’re light, they can be regulated down to 3.3V and they’re easy to charge. On your phone, there’s a little image of a battery cell that tells you the percentage of charge – so you know when you absolutely need to plug it in and when you can stay untethered.
The Adafruit MAX17048 LiPoly / LiIon Fuel Gauge and Battery Monitor does the same thing. Connect it to your Lipoly or LiIon battery and it will let you know the voltage of the cell, it does the annoying math of decoding the non-linear voltage to get you a valid percentage as well!
Since this nice chip is I2C, it works with any and all microcontroller or microcomputer boards, from the Arduino UNO up to the Raspberry Pi. And you don’t have to worry about logic level, as the gauge runs with 3.3V or 5.0V power and logic equally fine.
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat and our Discord!
Python for Microcontrollers – Adafruit Daily — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: The latest on Raspberry Pi RP2350-E9, Bluetooth 6, 4,000 Stars and more! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi
EYE on NPI – Adafruit Daily — EYE on NPI Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey
