This charger is the only one you need to keep all your Lithium Polymer (LiPoly) or Lithium Ion (LiIon) rechargeable batteries topped up. No matter the power source at your disposal!
I wouldn’t describe the lack of battery voltage information as a failure as it seems like this is an intentional design choice from the manufacturer. The exclusion of this feature is likely so that they can provide a lower cost alternative to a board that comes with this feature.
What are the names or SKUs of the other board you are comparing this against?
Sorry Samuel, there’s a fair bit of background in some other threads, and in my head. Basically I am angry that DFRobot and Waveshare use the phrase “Solar Power Manager” to justify charging a lot more for boards that are only solar LiPo chargers, At least Adafruit aren’t overselling their version.
Yes it’s a “design feature”; and that’s fine if only using it to charge a mobile phone or powerbank. But I am not happy to have power to my microcontroller just cut off without warning. Yes, adding an INA3221 to monitor battery and solar voltages, and supply this data via i2c to the microcontroller seems an ideal solution.
and that is my question … is there any board that has the ability to warn of impending power cut ? None of the products sold by Core - I have checked.
I did find that 10 years ago SwitchDoc Labs started selling suitable boards … but in 2021 with covid and parts availability issues they exited the maker market just as their SunAirPlus 3 was getting ready for market .
That would be something. A clairvoyant board complete with crystal ball.
That would be like Austgrid saying “get your candles out, there is going to be a tree fall on the power lines in 10 minutes”.
Cheers Bob
Actually Robert it would simply be an INA3221 (or similar) supplying battery voltage value, so the microcontroller could be programmed IF batt_voltage < 3.4V THEN send a notification and go into deep sleep mode before the battery’s inbuilt protection cuts off the power.