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smôl Power Board LiPo Hookup Guide
Introduction
smôl is a new board format and, as the name suggests, they're really small!
smôl Power Board LiPo
SPX-18622
The smôl Power Board LiPo is an intelligent power board for smôl. It provides 3.3V power for your smôl stack from
a Li-Ion / Li-Polymer battery and has a built-in charger and fuel gauge.
Each smôl board measures just 1.60" by 0.42" (40.6mm by 10.7mm). We made the boards just wide enough so
we could squeeze USB-C and 16-way Flexible Printed Circuit (FPC) connectors on there. Some of the boards
have components on both top and bottom layers which again helps keep the boards small.
smôl boards are designed to stack one on top of the other, using 16-way 0.5mm-pitch FPCs to provide the
interconnect from one board to the next. Each board has an IN FPC connector on the bottom layer and an OUT
FPC connector on the top layer. The boards stack in a zig-zag daisy chain; signals and power are passed from
one board to the next up and down the chain through the FPCs.
Required Materials
As a minimum, you're going to need a Lithium-Ion / Lithium-Polymer rechargeable battery to go with your power
board:
Lithium Ion Battery - 1Ah
Lithium Ion Battery - 2Ah
PRT-13813
PRT-13855
Lithium Ion Battery - 400mAh
Lithium Ion Battery - 850mAh
PRT-13851
PRT-13854
Lithium Ion Battery - 18650 Cell (2600mAh)
Lithium Ion Battery - 6Ah
PRT-12895
PRT-13856
The Power Board LiPo is part of the smôl ecosystem. Why not pair it with one of the smôl Processor Boards and a
Peripheral Board?
smôl ARTIC R2
smôl ESP32
SPX-18618
SPX-18619
smôl ZOE-M8Q
SPX-18623
Don't forget that you will need Flexible Printed Circuits to connect your smôl boards together. You're going to need
one FPC per board. Our 36mm FPC is the perfect length if you want the smôl boards to stack neatly, one on top of
the other.
smôl 36mm 16-way Flexible Printed Circuit
CAB-18731
Need to do some prototyping with smôl? Or want to connect your smôl stack to a Qwiic board? The smôl Header
is perfect for that:
smôl Header
SPX-18620
Suggested Reading
This is the hookup guide for the smôl Power Board
LiPo. Click the button below if you want to find out
more about smôl itself.
GET STARTED WITH THE SMÔL HOOKUP GUIDE
We recommend taking a look through the following tutorials if you are not familiar with the concepts covered in
them:
Battery Technologies
I2C
The basics behind the batteries used in portable
electronic devices: LiPo, NiMH, coin cells, and alkaline.
An introduction to I2C, one of the main embedded
communications protocols in use today.
Hardware Overview
In this section we'll cover what this board does and what is included on the smôl Power Board LiPo.
What Does This Board Do?
What does this board do? Excellent question! Let's answer that right now.
Many SparkFun boards, especially our Thing Plus boards, come with a Li-Ion battery connector and built-in
charger so you can power your project from a rechargeable battery. smôl is no different. The smôl Power Board
LiPo is equipped with: one of our standard JST-PH battery connectors; an MCP73831 Li-Ion and Li-Polymer
charger; and a MAX17048 I2C battery fuel gauge. But it also comes with an on-board ATtiny841 AVR
microcontroller. This is an intelligent power board!
The main job of the Power Board is to provide power for your smôl ecosystem. smôl is designed to be both small
in size and small on current draw. The Power Board plays a critical role in reducing the current draw of smôl as
much as possible.
When you want your project to go into a low power or deep sleep state, it is standard practice to put your
processor into the lowest power state it offers. But you may find that the current draw is still something like 100µA
to 500µA depending on which processor you are using. Then there is the quiescent current drawn by the voltage
regulator. The quiescent current is the current drawn by the regulator when it is on but has no load attached.
Again, it varies from regulator to regulator but you may find this adds another 55µA to your current draw. Those
little currents add up and reduce your battery life considerably.
With smôl, we took a new approach. The Power Board takes control and provides the 3.3V power for the whole
smôl stack. When instructed to by the Processor Board, the on-board ATtiny microcontroller will turn off that power
completely and then put itself into a low power sleep state for a pre-defined interval. Sleep intervals from a few
10's of milliseconds to several days are possible. We have used the fantastic Otii Arc Power Analyzer to help us
reduce the sleep current to just 6µA. Yes, you read that right, 6 microamps! smôl makes it possible for your battery
life to be measured in months not days!
Battery Connector
By far the biggest component on the board is the JST-PH connector for the battery.
Battery Polarity: Please make sure that you use one of our recommended Lithium Ion batteries. Some
batteries use the same JST connector as ours but have the opposite polarity. Connecting one of these to
your smôl power board could destroy it. If you are going to use your own battery, it is up to you to ensure it
has the correct polarity. In the above photo, the positive pin is on the right.
MCP73831 Li-Ion and Li-Polymer Charger
Like our Thing Plus boards, the smôl Power Board LiPo comes with a MCP73831 Li-Ion and Li-Polymer Charger
IC. We've set the charge current to 100mA to prevent the board drawing too much current through the Flexible
Printed Circuit interconnect and to make it safe to use small Li-Ion batteries like our 400mAh battery.
The yellow CHG LED will light up when the battery is charging from USB power via the Processor Board.
MAX17048 Fuel Gauge
Like our Thing Plus C - ESP32 WROOM, the smôl Power Board LiPo comes with a MAX17048 I2C Fuel Gauge IC.
The processor board can communicate with the power board via I2C and read the battery voltage, State-of-Charge
and other parameters.
ATtiny841 AVR Microcontroller
The smôl Power Board LiPo is an intelligent power board. The on-board ATtiny841 microcontroller can monitor the
battery voltage, State-of-Charge and other parameters. When the Processor Board requests it to, the ATtiny841
will turn off the smôl 3.3V power completely and place itself into deep sleep for a pre-defined interval. This is what
makes it possible to reduce the sleep current to just 6µA.
Our SparkFun smôl Power Board Arduino Library does all of the heavy lifting for you, making it easy to
communicate with the ATtiny through simple function calls.
A Note About Temperature Sensing
The ATtiny841 has a built-in temperature sensor, which can be accessed via the SparkFun smôl Power Board
Arduino Library. However, the quoted typical accuracy of the sensor is ±10°C. Yes, plus or minus ten degrees C.
The sensor measurement requires external calibration to be useful.
Voltage Regulators
The smôl Power Board LiPo has two 3.3V regulators on-board: an AP2112K-3.3V and a STLQ015-3.3V.
The AP2112K-3.3V is one of our favorite regulators. It provides 3.3V at up to 600mA with a typical voltage drop of
250mV. The AP2112K provides 3.3V to the smôl stack and can be switched off completely by the ATtiny841
processor. This avoids the regulator's 55µA quiescent current draw depleting your battery.
The STLQ015-3.3V is a new friend. It provides 3.3V at up to 150mA with a typical voltage drop of 112mV. The
STLQ015 provides 3.3V power for the ATtiny841 microcontroller (only) and has a truly tiny quiescent current draw
of 1.4µA.
FPC Connections
Like all of our smôl boards, the Power Board LiPo is equipped with two 16-way 0.5mm-pitch Flexible Printed
Circuit connectors. FPCs are used to link the smôl boards together in a daisy-chain.
The pin-out for the smôl Power Board LiPo is as follows:
Connector
Pin No.
Signal Name
Function
Notes
1
PROC_PWR_EN
Processor Power
Enable
The power board pulls this signal low to disable the
voltage regulator on the power board
2
3V3
3.3V Power Rail
3
GND
Power Ground / 0V
4
SCLK
SPI Clock
Not used
5
COPI
SPI Controller Out
Peripheral In
Not used
6
CIPO
SPI Controller In
Peripheral Out
Not used
7
CS0
SPI Chip Select 0
Not used
8
CS1
SPI Chip Select 1
Not used
8
CS2
SPI Chip Select 2
Not used
10
GPIO0
General Purpose
Input / Output 0
Not used
11
GPIO1
General Purpose
Input / Output 1
Not used
12
SDA
I2C Data
Used for ATtiny841 and Fuel Gauge communication
13
SCL
I2C Clock
Used for ATtiny841 and Fuel Gauge communication
14
GND
Power Ground / 0V
15
3V3
3.3V Power Rail
16
V_USB
USB Power Rail
(5V)
USB power is used to recharge the battery
The IN and OUT pin connections are identical on the smôl Power Board LiPo. (That's not always true on smôl
Peripheral Boards. Check the appropriate Peripheral Board Hookup Guide for full details.)
The order in which you connect smôl boards is important. However, because the Power Board LiPo only uses I2C
communication, it can be placed anywhere in the stack. Please see the smôl Hookup Guide for more details.
GET STARTED WITH THE SMÔL HOOKUP GUIDE
smôl Specifics
Interface:
Interface: I2C
ATtiny841 Default Address: 0x50
MAX17048 Fuel Gauge Address: 0x36
PROC_PWR_EN:
PROC_PWR_EN:
The power board pulls PROC_PWR_EN low to disable the regulator on the processor board
Arduino Example: Battery Voltage
If you are using the smôl ESP32 Processor Board, you are going to want to install the CP210x USB Driver and
Arduino Boards Package for the ESP32 first. Please see the smôl ESP32 Hookup Guide for more details.
The smôl Power Boards have their own Arduino Library to make communicating with the board as simple as
calling a function. You can install the library through the Arduino IDE Library Manager by searching for SparkFun
smol power. Alternatively, you can grab the library from GitHub or can download it as a zip file by clicking the
button below:
SPARKFUN SMÔL POWER BOARD ARDUINO LIBRARY (ZIP)
You are also going to need to install the SparkFun MAX1704x Fuel Gauge Arduino Library. Again, you can install
this library through the Arduino IDE Library Manager by searching for SparkFun MAX1704x. Alternatively, you can
grab the library from GitHub or can download it as a zip file by clicking the button below:
SPARKFUN MAX1704X FUEL GAUGE ARDUINO LIBRARY (ZIP)
The Power Board library contains a set of tried-and-tested examples which will work with both the smôl Power
Board LiPo and the smôl Power Board AAA. There is only one line of code to change when switching from one to
the other.
The following code is a simplified version of Example2_BatteryVoltage. Upload the code onto your processor
board and open the Serial Monitor or a terminal emulator at 115200 baud to see the output.
#include
#include // Click here to get the library: htt
p://librarymanager/All#SparkFun_MAX1704x_Fuel_Gauge_Arduino_Library
#include //Click here to get the library: http://librarymanager/A
ll#SparkFun_smol_Power_Board
smolPowerLiPo myPowerBoard;
void setup()
{
Serial.begin(115200);
while (!Serial)
; // Wait for the user to open the Serial console
Serial.println(F("smôl Power Board example"));
Serial.println();
Wire.begin();
if (myPowerBoard.begin() == false) // Begin communication with the power board using the defau
lt I2C address (0x50) and the Wire port
{
Serial.println(F("Could not communicate with the power board. Please check the I2C connectio
ns. Freezing..."));
while (1)
;
}
float voltage = myPowerBoard.getBatteryVoltage(); // Read the battery voltage from the fuel ga
uge
Serial.print(F("The battery voltage reads as: "));
Serial.println(voltage);
if (voltage == -99.0)
{
Serial.println(F("A voltage of -99.0V indicates an error."));
}
}
void loop()
{
//Nothing to do here
}
Troubleshooting
If your smôl stack is not communicating, it is probably in deep sleep. When the Power Board is commanded into
deep sleep by the Processor Board, the only way it will wake it up again is when the sleep interval expires. You
cannot wake or reset the system via the USB interface.
Removing and re-inserting the battery connection will reset the power board and wake it up again.
We did not include a reset button on the smôl Power Board to keep the board as small as possible. However, you
can reset it via the ISP programming test points on the bottom of the board. Briefly connect RESET to GND to
reset the board.
Not working as expected and need help? SparkX products are rapidly produced to bring you the most
cutting edge technology as it becomes available. These products are tested but come with no guarantees.
Live technical support is not available for SparkX products. Head on over to our forum for support or to ask a
question and we will get back to you as soon as we can.
Resources and Going Further
For more information about the smôl Power Board LiPo, check out the following links:
smôl Power Board LiPo Documentation:
Schematic
Eagle Files
GitHub Hardware Repo
SparkFun smôl Power Board Arduino Library
Arduino Examples
Li-Ion / Li-Polymer Charger:
Datasheet (MCP73831)
Battery Fuel Gauge:
Datasheet (MAX17048)
Microcontroller:
Datasheet (ATtiny841)
smôl Documentation:
smôl Hookup Guide
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