Atmel: ATAVRSB200 Development Platform

Kit Overview

The Atmel's ATAVRSB200ATAVRSB200 is a development platform for SB20x smart battery reference designs, which offers an easy way to start evaluation and hence development of smart battery applications using Atmel AVR microcontrollers. The SB200 is not in itself a reference design, but is intended to be used with e.g. SB201-1 (need to be bought seperately, click here to Learn More), which is a reference design that demonstrates implementation of a single cell smart battery (Li-Ion).

The 16340/CR123A battery cells can be inserted in the ATAVRSB200ATAVRSB200 battery sockets, and a SB20x is inserted in the dedicated daughter board socket. This forms a “battery pack” with a given number of cells, safety protection and full battery capacity monitoring capabilities. Alternately other cell types can be soldered into the SB200. To simulate the use of the “battery pack” the SB200 features a Charger that can charge the battery pack, and a Constant Current Load that can simulate an application that draws power from the battery pack.

The ATAVRSB200ATAVRSB200 is developed to ease development of Smart Battery applications. It offers a communication gateway between the SB20x reference designs which uses half duplex UART or SMBus to USB. It can charge the batteries connected or inserted in the board, and act as a load to investigate behavior during discharging of the battery.

The batteries provided with the ATAVRSB200ATAVRSB200 have built in protection which might cause strange effects to occur if the battery is exposed to overstress situations, such as over-charging. The built in protection does affect the battery characteristics, especially in terms of resistance, but will ensure that even incorrect use and bugs in a smart battery application under development does not pose a safety hazard.

Key Applications: Smart Battery applications