Voltage and Current Protection - ESP32-C6 Qwiic Dev Board

I was excited to see the integrated JST connector and battery charging capabilities on the SparkFun Qwiic Pocket Development Board - ESP32-C6, but looking at the schematics I see you have the MCP73831, but I couldn’t quite recognize anything that was clearly for current and voltage protection e.g. something like a BQ2970 might provide. Is that understanding correct or is there something I’m missing? Are you expecting the battery to provide its own protection for this?

Just the limits mentioned here https://docs.sparkfun.com/SparkFun_Qwii … ry-charger AFAIK; 214mA @ 3.3v

The batteries sparkfun carries have voltage/current protection built into them. Rather than providing protection on the board they rely on the protection built into the batteries.

Don’t love that because it’s hard to know what brands to trust. That said I bought a couple of UN38.3 certified LiPo batteries from EEMB on Amazon which should have those protections built-in. Not sure how comfortable I am with these. Any suggestions on tests I can run to build some level of comfort that the batteries are ok. I don’t have a lot of tools yet as I’m recently getting started with all this, but I do have a Nordic PPK2 (although it can’t measure negative current).

Well, if you get a sparkfun battery, you know for sure it will work since those are what the board was designed to be used with.

Yeah I was willing to pay the premium for one of those, but I couldn’t find one claiming satisfactory certification with the capacity I’ve calculated I will need. I’m considering switching to using a LiFePO4 battery. I have room for most 26650 sized batteries which should give me amp-le capacity (sorry couldn’t resist…), but it’s even harder to find a reputable seller willing to sell a few of these. I’ve reached out to Power Sonic to see if they’d be willing to sell me 5 of their 3.4 AH batteries for evaluation (on mouser you have to buy over 10k minimum). It would be nice for Sparkfun to offer a larger selection, but I acknowledge this is probably a pretty niche market and there must be rather large carrying costs.

Apologies if this is should be a separate post, but it seems related:

is it correct to say that the Qwiic Pocket Dev Board ESP32-C6 (https://www.sparkfun.com/products/22925) should not have the Sparkfun 110mAh battery attached (https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13853)? I’m looking at the schematic (https://cdn.sparkfun.com/assets/d/4/0/a … P32_C6.pdf) that suggests the battery is charged at 213mA.

Thanks!