4.2. BAR Actions
There are five actions that you can use to build a BAR:
NiCd/NiMH Quick Charge Cycle, Standard Charge Cycle and Trickle Charge Cycle:
These are actually all the same – just a blank constant current action than can be terminated by a number of methods.
You would normally use this for charging NiCd and NiMH cells. But you can use it for other functions. We use it to
prequalify a lithium ion battery.
NiCd Discharge and Li-ion/SLA Discharge:
These are the same discharge action. You can choose the load (constant current, power, or resistance) and the
termination method. You would specify about 1 V per cell for the cut off for NiCd or NiMH, about 2.75 V for lithium,
and about 1.75 V for SLA.
Li-ion/SLA Standard Charge
This is the constant voltage charging action designed for lithium ion, lithium polymer and SLA/gel cells/lead acid
batteries.
Routine (from NiCd/NiMH->Add Routine->Empty Routine)
This is an empty routine. Click on it to open the subroutine. There a couple of routines already populated with some
actions. They are accessible from: NiCd/NiMH->Add Routine->.
Goto
This branches either forward or backwards. You can specify the number of times to branch (i.e. run a
charge/discharge cycle 10 times) and allow a discharge action to break out of the loop before the repeat count is
reached.
4.3. BARs Included with UBA Console
Although making your own BARs isn’t very difficult (we just did one last section, remember?), there’s no glory in
reinventing the wheel; therefore we’ve included a few BARs with UBA Console that have been written by our resident
battery expert, me! I suggest that you use them, at least until you have gained enough confidence to write your own.
And remember, when using a new BAR for the first time, watch the battery analysis while it's running the first time to
ensure sure that it does what you intended it to do.
Actually the easiest way to create BARs is to modify existing ones. Modify ours, we don’t mind. There are many
parameters in a BAR and it’s easy to over look something. By modifying a working one you increase the chance of
getting it working the first time.
The UBA Let's Get Started Guide
Page 19
Figure 29: All available actions.
