Hi,

I am working on an old PCB that uses a lot of the TI IC's for performing its functions. Its essentially a power management board that takes a DC input and charges 12 batteries connected to the circuit. It has a power on/off button and a status LED light to show the overall battery level. Its a really old design and the designer has left. Instead of reverse engineering this, we would now like to prepare a alternate design with similar or better functionality. Basically, we need to power networking devices over PoE. So the board must have at least 5 PoE ports and be able to power a load of 15W for up to 80 hours. This should be enough to help us narrow down on the battery capacity and requirements. Wondering if anyone has any tips on how to get started on a circuit like this? I did robotics and specialised on the software side and wish I paid more attention in my electronic classes as well but its never too late to learn and would appreciate all the help I can get to help make build a circuit that achieves or exceeds this.

 

TI, Linear Devices, etc. have many ICs dedicated to battery charging and power control so I would start there.
The specific devices will depend upon the battery chemistry you use.
Do you have a type of battery in mind?

 

Hey, Thanks for having a look into this. The current system uses LiPo batteries and provides 80hours of up time to a 15W PoE load.