Electronic – arduino – n Amp + Volt-meter on a chip or should I use the Arduino Analog

amperagearduinomeasurementvoltage

I'm thinking of building a general purpose battery charger. It would charge LiPo packs, 9V, AA, AAA, etc…

I've been doing a bit of Googling and read that the internal Phone charging circuits tend to do top up cycles, after the charge is at optimal level (optimal level being some 70% or 80% to give better life span to packs)

So is there a simple chip that has a Volt-meter in parallel and an Amp-meter in series, with small load, that can interface with the Arduino?

Or should I just use the Analog inputs, as long as I protect the AVR from too much current?

Thanks

Best Answer

  1. You can't measure amperes directly with an analog input. You might use a component called "shunt" (basically a resistor with low value) and an opamp for amplifying the small output of the shunt. However, there are other methods for measuring currents (e.g. using the hall effect).
  2. There are many dedicated ICs for building battery chargers out there. Some of them will be universal for many battery chemistries, I guess.
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