Hi James,

Curious... this multi-cell battery arrangement... are all of these cells in series? If so, can you add wires in-between each of the cells... and pulse charge them individually depending on their current voltage reading?

I'm no genious... but it seems if you had access to each cell, you could first read it's voltage, then smack it with a charge pulse and then move to the next cell. If the cell was fully charged, you'd skip over it. You could store each of the cells voltage for recall and viewing at any time on a display. You would not need to short the cell with a resistive charge. This assumes you have the multi-cell battery off-line for charging... such as a cordless drill battery.

The pic is a good choice. If you are new to PICS might I suggest that you get playing with some code a bit... scrounge the internet for some circuits that might be related to what you are doing and start playing with it.

I assume you have PicBasic Pro.

I purchased Microcode Studio Plus with it's Bootloader. The 16f877 is a nice fat chip with plenty of breathing room and peripherals. It's more than you might need but inexpensive enough and you can stick the bootloader in it. I can't say enough how much the bootloader has helped me along. It's great for a beginner. You write a bit of code, press a button (to load your program into the chip) and see what you've done... instant feedback!

I would love to hear more about your project.

Good Luck,

Ross

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