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Comment by 01100011 | Hacker News Reader

Maybe a good place to ask this: does anyone know of an all-in-one board for battery management in small mobile devices? Recently started playing with the ESP32 and was surprised there isn't a ready-to-go board on AliExpress for handling usb battery charging with simultaneous device powering. I want to add a LiPo to my design and have it just work like my cell phone does.

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Adafruit has a couple of LiPo charger boards, but they don't have the integration you'd want: you'd need a separate USB cable for charging.

ISTR that some of their ESP32 boards do, though. i.e., charge LiPo through the USB port.

Also, I think some of the Heltec boards do. I have one here with a JST battery connector, but I haven't used it in so long, I'm not sure. I think this is the one I have: https://heltec.org/project/wifi-kit32-v3/

LILYGO has some. I have one on my desk right now, the T18: https://github.com/LilyGO/TTGO-T-ControllerV2.2/blob/master/...

Though I'll also not I'm having some problems getting it to take an upload properly, but I tend to find most of the LILYGO stuff takes a little experimentation to get everything right, then it is reliable once you know what it likes.

ESP32 chips supposedly has an integrated BMS, and it's used in M5Stack as well as Seeeduino XIAO. Weird part is it's not clearly stated how it works other than you're supposed to solder a battery on.

I'm currently exploring 2-cell solutions: BQ25886, BG25887, MP5461, MP2672, LTC3118, MP2639C, IP2326, BQ294533, MCP73213. And here are some single cell solutions: IP2312, ETA9740, TP5100, IP5328P, MCP73834, MCP73833, LTC1734, LTC4121.

I found some modules on aliexpress with usbc connector, for example:

- IP2326 https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007175222069.html

- CN3302 https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006203228418.html

but I haven't tested them yet.

Pimoroni has a range of products. Here is a generic batter management board with simultaneous charging: https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/lipo-amigo?variant=397793...

You can also get version to fit the Pico, or even a RP2040 based board with integrated battery management.

The Heltec Lora32 has integrated LiPo circuitry, but it might be overkill if you don’t need the RF side of things.

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