Hello,
I am using a bq78pl116 with a bq78pl102 to manage a LiPo 6S battery pack.
Recently I keep encountering the following problem. From time to time, the bq fails to respond to some I2C commands.
For example: my board is using STM32F103 as its main mcu and sometimes I cannot read the Device Status register (0x80), nor can I enable or disable the Power Pump by writing 0x180F or 0x190F to the 0x80 register. When this happens, I connect the bq to the bqWizard to check what is happening. Everytime I encounter the same problem: When I try to read the 0x80 register via SBData Read/Write Utility, it returns 'Error' (written in red). It should return 0 or some error code in worst case scenario. Furthermore, writing 0x180F or 0x190F to 0x80 register does nothing, but checking and unchecking the Power Pump via System Control in the Pack Configuration tab seems to work.
I tried to Safe Disconnect the bq with and without toggling the Wired bit, hard resetting it by cutting the power supply, initializing and relearning/initializing but to no avail. I still receive 'Error' when I read from the Device Status register.
The only thing that seems to make it work is to reflash the firmware and reconfigure the pack's chemistry and custom parameters, but this is not an option in production.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Cheers
PS: I tested the same configuration and chemistry on 3 different chips and they have the same problematic behaviour.