comparison FC-handset-spec @ 49:38bcb9425df0

FC-handset-state: battery documented
author Mychaela Falconia <falcon@freecalypso.org>
date Fri, 11 Jun 2021 04:34:26 +0000
parents cb8d43a5023c
children da1a2a32c260
comparison
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48:cb8d43a5023c 49:38bcb9425df0
678 to be made right now. 678 to be made right now.
679 679
680 Because our firmware will be designed for a simple on/off vibrator control, 680 Because our firmware will be designed for a simple on/off vibrator control,
681 during fw development on the Venus board it will be trivial to use a LED to 681 during fw development on the Venus board it will be trivial to use a LED to
682 simulate the vibrator on/off state. 682 simulate the vibrator on/off state.
683
684 1.10. Battery
685
686 The battery in our FC Libre Dumbphone handset will be single-cell Li-ion. It
687 goes without saying that this battery will be freely removable and replaceable
688 by end users. The specific size, form factor and mAh capacity of this battery
689 won't be addressed until later in the project, when we get closer to building
690 the actual handset.
691
692 Our Calypso+Iota chipset dates from the era when the cellular handset industry
693 was transitioning from NiMH to Li-ion batteries, and the Battery Charger
694 Interface (BCI) block in the Iota chip supports both battery types, or at least
695 TI's documentation claims so. Given that we are going against the mainstream
696 society's ideas in so many other ways, I have given thought to the possibility
697 of using a NiMH battery instead of Li-ion. However, the problem with using a
698 NiMH battery is that we would be going into completely uncharted territory
699 without any guidance. In the case of Li-ion batteries the charging process is
700 well-understood in both theory and practice, and our FCHG logic based on reverse
701 engineering of Pirelli's firmware works well both on the same Pirelli and on
702 Motorola C1xx family. In contrast, if we went with NiMH, we would have
703 absolutely no guidance in implementing the necessary charging control logic
704 (TI's LCC code is useless), causing a huge risk to the project. Furthermore,
705 determining the state of charge from Vbat for the purpose of the bars icon is
706 already somewhat challenging even with Li-ion, given the relatively flat middle
707 part of the discharge curve - and with NiMH we can only expect the problem to be
708 even worse, as their discharge curve is said to be even flatter. For these
709 reasons, we are going to play it safe and stick with Li-ion.