I finally made some progress on reading out data using the “smart battery” interface on laptop battery packs. I’ve succeeded in pulling a number of useful numerical values from three different MacBook Pro batteries from two different manufacturers and one Acer battery pack. I have, so far, failed to get anything out of a different model of Acer pack, an ASUS pack, and an HP pack, but I have some ideas about what to try next. I also have to do more work to make sense of a few of the values I’m getting, and figure out how to read out string data, and figure out if I can get at voltages for individual parallel banks of cells.
In the meantime, here is what I got out of an old Mac battery:
NuPower
Design Capacity (mAh): 5800Design Voltage: 10800Manufacture Date: 15400Cycle Count: 531Voltage: 12.23Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 3073Remaining Capacity (mAh): 2812Relative Charge PCT: 92Absolute Charge: 48Temp: 31.85Current (mA): 0Minutes remaining for full charge: -1
HP ,Asus battery, some of them need input passwords to get in it, if no passwords,then you failed to get anything out of them,you can’t make it work on laptop even you recell it new.
Ellen, unlike some people, my main interest in using the smart battery is to extract information about the origin and history of the pack so I can estimate the health of the cells inside without having to open the pack. I don’t plan on recelling packs or changing any of the values.
Do I need a password just to read out values from HP packs? I’ve been able to get data out of Asus packs without one, but I’m still having trouble with HP. I think I may need to put the battery into the right operating mode, or something.
dear, you can try batterymon software or sbworkshop demo software(http://www.1bu8.com/en/Download-7.html) to see battery information without open battery packs, maybe a little help for you. you can try to see some information about your original battery.
Thanks. Unfortunately I don’t have the hardware that SBWorkshop requires to talk to the pack. If I can’t figure out why the HP packs aren’t responding I may have to scrounge up the hardware and use a logic analyzer to see how it is communicating.