EDIT: Get assembled smart batteries on Kickstarter Campaign

UPDATE

We have some good news. A battery manufacturer Titan Power is working with BatMon kickstarter backers to assemble BatMon into Lithium Ion batteries for free! Backers also get a 5% discount on Titan batteries upto $1000 purchase. Now, you can get a custom shape/size Lithium ion battery without having to assemble BatMon into the pack yourself.

Hi robot enthusiasts,

We launched a kickstarter campaign to support production of “smartification” module for robot batteries. BatMon is a small module that can be attached to your lithium batteries to convert it into smart batteries.

Here are some of the specs:

Voltage, current, and temp sensors
64 bit unique battery id
OLED display
Current battery life display
Automatic discharging to maintain cycle life
No discharge cutoff
Open source case design
Dual LED, optional buzzer
Cell balancing, with individual voltages
Only 12 grams
Compatible with SMBUS, PX4, Ardupilot, and Arduino
Integrated coulomb counting

BatMon data on QGroundControl: Individual cell voltages of 6S cell during flight

Opensource case design for a 6S Smart Battery

If you are interested in a smart battery for your robots or other projects, PLEASE FUND US at BatMon Kickstarter

Finally after so many years someone is making this product, however I think there are few aspects that have been overlooked.

1.Bus interface: While we know that SMbus/I2C is a standard for battery management, but using I2C this days feels like buying a product from the past. I2C is great in a laptop battery but definitely wrong choice on a drone where you have long wires going trough strong magnetic fields. Even DJI has realised that and ditched I2C on their smart batteries. Come on guys we are in 2020 where is the CAN bus interface!!

2. Current: The only options available are 100A and 200A and all drones do need that much current capability, so small batteries for fixed wings are left out. With an 100A shunt your resolution on current draw is not that great. Also I'm surprised to see a Shunt instead of a modern Hall effect sensor.

3. Size: It might be a personal opinion, but I see the size way too big to be a "generic module". The connectors are an unnecessary waste of space as this device is only designed to be installed once and not removed. I'm sure your pool of users must be able to do some soldering otherwise I doubt they will buy this product.

4. Price: Well it's only my option, but to make this accessible to everyone it needs to cost 1/10 of the cost of battery. pack.

Hope this can be taken as advice for future products... I wish you guys all the best.

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Comments

Echo G February 12, 2020 at 6:59am

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/batmon/batmon-smartify-your-dr...

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/batmon/batmon-smartify-your-drone-battery/faqs
Edward Sellars January 29, 2020 at 6:46am

I agree on the can and Hall effect sensor definitely. CAN makes way more sense given the very thing that easily disrupts the i2c bus is essentially what is being monitored so I don’t know why it wasn’t used... same with a Hall effect sensor. That’s pretty much the norm in anything highly accurate but at least this is coming out. I don’t have a problem with the size or price or soldering although maybe an option to choose a solder port or plug would have been good in hindsight for more users. Either way it’s cool someone started to ball on this. Either them or others will follow with another incarnation at some point but great to see it.
naish January 29, 2020 at 1:40am

Finally after so many years someone is making this product, however I think there are few aspects that have been overlooked.

1.Bus interface: While we know that SMbus/I2C is a standard for battery management, but using I2C this days feels like buying a product from the past. I2C is great in a laptop battery but definitely wrong choice on a drone where you have long wires going trough strong magnetic fields. Even DJI has realised that and ditched I2C on their smart batteries. Come on guys we are in 2020 where is the CAN bus interface!!

2. Current: The only options available are 100A and 200A and all drones do need that much current capability, so small batteries for fixed wings are left out. With an 100A shunt your resolution on current draw is not that great. Also I'm surprised to see a Shunt instead of a modern Hall effect sensor.

3. Size: It might be a personal opinion, but I see the size way too big to be a "generic module". The connectors are an unnecessary waste of space as this device is only designed to be installed once and not removed. I'm sure your pool of users must be able to do some soldering otherwise I doubt they will buy this product.

4. Price: Well it's only my option, but to make this accessible to everyone it needs to cost 1/10 of the cost of battery. pack.

Hope this can be taken as advice for future products... I wish you guys all the best.
Edward Sellars January 28, 2020 at 10:09pm

@lot if you want it open sourced so badly, go make one and open source it. This guy took the time and resources to make this and it doesn’t exist anywhere. So what’s the problem with that that he wants to make what will likely be not very much money but at least cover his time and costs? This looks great. I would have probably added UAVCAN but that’s here nor there. This is awesome and pretty inexpensive. People need battery management.

From how you wrote it, it just sounds like you want it open source so you can go make them for free... people will definitely use this! Congratulations on putting this out there and forget any negativity from people that want things for free... looks awesome.
lot January 27, 2020 at 3:07pm

Cool, but open source "only" the case is like nothing, not what open source people are waiting for.

We are looking for open source electronics.

Thanks anyway.
Darrell Burkey January 23, 2020 at 5:13pm

Great idea. I hope this goes well. Battery management is a real issue when you have multiple airframes.
ming.lv January 23, 2020 at 3:02am

非常不错的设计

This reply was deleted.