Battery Babysitter USB

Components & Accessories Power
1

Hello,

I purchased the LiPo battery babysitter and successfully testing it connected to an Arduino using the provided code.

For my particular project, I need the fuel gauge interface to be USB. I used the Adafruit FT232H to convert from I2C to USB, however, I have not been successful in using it. I have followed the steps outline in https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-ft232h-breakout/i2c and changed the address to 0x55 which is the default for the fuel gauge. However, I keep getting an error stating “Failed to find expected I2C ACK!” when reading from buffer 0x04 (voltage).

Are there any special commands that need to issued to use this chip with the battery babysitter? If this device cannot be used, can you recommend any other USB to I2C converters (chips or microcontroller)?

Thanks!

Mike

2

Hi Mike.

Unfortunately I’m not familiar with the Adafruit product you’re looking to use with the battery babysitter so I’m unable to assist in getting those two to play nicely together.

I’d recommend using a SparkFun RedBoard or Arduino Uno with the battery babysitter and using the example code we have in the BQ27441 Arduino Library to talk to the board. The RedBoard and Uno both connect via USB to your computer and will serve as a USB connection. Check our[ hookup guide for more information.](Battery Babysitter Hookup Guide - SparkFun Learn)