As of February 8, 2023, the now-discontinued LC709203 battery monitor chip has been replaced with the MAX17048. If you are unsure which one you have, check the silkscreen printing on the back of the board. If your board does NOT have "MAX17048 Monitor" in the upper left corner, or you only see address 0x0b from an I2C Scan, then you have the LC709203 version.
There are two ways to power your Feather:
1) Power with a USB Cable connected to a power source.
2) Connect a 4.2/3.7V Lithium Polymer (LiPo/LiPoly) or Lithium Ion (LiIon) battery to the JST jack. This lets you run the Feather without wires, untethered!
If you're running off of a battery, chances are you want to know what the voltage is! That way you can tell when the battery needs recharging.
In this section, you'll connect a battery to your Feather, and configure a battery monitor component from Adafruit IO to report the board's battery voltage and charge percentage.
The Feather's LC709203F LiPoly / LiIon Fuel Gauge and Battery Monitor is located directly above the STEMMA port, highlighted in pink.
You can plug any 250mAh or larger 3.7/4.2V Lipoly battery into the JST 2-PH port (identified in the diagram below) to power your Feather and charge the battery. The battery will charge from the USB power when USB is plugged in. If the battery is plugged in and USB is plugged in, the Feather will power itself from USB and charge the battery up.
For more information about powering your Feather, visit the Power Management Page in this guide.
If you used the Magic Config button to automatically configure the components on your board, then the Battery Monitor component will already be configured. Skip ahead to the Usage section.
Don't know about Magic Config? Click the Auto-Config button on the device page for further details!
Add Battery Monitor Component to Adafruit IO
From your device page, click the New Component (or +) button.
Search for the component name by entering LC709203F into the text box on the component picker. The list of components should update as soon as you stop typing.
Since WipperSnapper supports such a large number of components, there is keyword filtering. Try searching for various keywords, like:
- component names:
aht20,servo,buzzer,button,LC709203F, etc - sensor types:
light,temperature,pressure,humidity, etc - interface:
i2c,uart,ds18x20,pin, etc (also I2C addresses e.g.0x44) - vendor:
Adafruit,ASAIR,Infineon,Bosch,Honeywell,Sensirion, etc
There are added product and documentation links for every component. Follow the links beneath the component descriptions to be taken to the appropriate product page or Learn Guide.
Select the LC709203F from the list of results to go to the component configuration page.
There will be a back button if you select the wrong component, and you can use the Edit component icon (⚙️) on the device page to update the component configuration in the future.
On the Create LC709203F Component form, there are two options:
- Enabling the battery cell voltage reading will cause the Feather to report the status of its battery expressed in Volts.
- Enabling the battery cell percent reading will cause the Feather to report the status of its battery expressed as a percent.
Then, the battery measurement will be read and sent to Adafruit IO every "Send Every" period.
In the screenshot below, the battery is configured to monitor and report its battery cell voltage and percent to Adafruit IO every 30 seconds.
After configuring the LC709203F component, click Create Component.
Every 30 seconds, the Feather uses the LC709203F component to measure its battery cell percent and voltage, and report it back to Adafruit IO.
Going Further
Now that you have a battery monitor component set up on Adafruit IO, you may follow this guide to configure an Adafruit IO Action for receiving an SMS when your Feather's battery level is below a threshold.
Page last edited October 31, 2024
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