High Efficiency PMIC nPM1300 Evaluation Kit Experience
1. Introduction
Recently, I received a board sent by the Breadboard Community, based on Nordic’s latest nPM1300 power management chip evaluation kit. When it comes to power management chips, people may be familiar with discrete chips for functions like boost/buck conversion, power monitoring, POR reset, and charge/discharge management. However, it is rare to see all these functions integrated into a single chip. In this article, we will experience the world’s first integrated power management IC (PMIC) that includes all necessary functions — nPM1300.
The Breadboard Community is currently applying for nPM1300
Students who need it can scan the code to apply for free
2. Nordic Semiconductor
nPM1300 is a PMIC power management chip from Nordic, which is well-known for its Bluetooth low-energy product development since its establishment in 1983. Nordic is the pioneer of ultra-low-power wireless technology and a representative enterprise in the wireless technology field.Nordic is headquartered in Norway and possesses technologies such as Bluetooth, ANT+, Thread, Zigbee, WiFi, and NB-IoT.Nordic’s low-power Bluetooth SoCs are widely used in IoT applications due to their high performance and ease of design, including wireless PC peripherals, gaming, sports and fitness, mobile accessories, consumer electronics, toys, healthcare, and automation products.Although many SoCs have integrated power management functions, many users still require external power management chips to meet complex functional requirements due to limitations in power consumption, efficiency, and charge/discharge management. Common power management chip architectures are usually simple, generally supporting multiple adjustable voltage outputs and external battery charge/discharge management.With the demand for product size, performance, and battery life in smart homes and wearable products, the functions of power management chips have also increased, such as:
Hardware reset in case of exceptions
Longer battery life
Accurate battery level statistics
Fast and safe charge/discharge
Smaller size and higher efficiency
The power management IC we are going to evaluate in this article — nPM1300 includes all of the above functions.
3. nPM1300 Evaluation Kit Hardware Resources
Like many of Nordic’s development and evaluation boards, the nPM1300 evaluation kit also features a cyan blue PCB design. The board measures 100mm in length and 64mm in width, and uses a 4-layer PCB design based on Altium Designer software.All hardware materials are provided by the official source, including PCB and schematics, drilling files, BOM, Gerber, and placement files needed for production design and manufacturing. Now let’s take a detailed look at the hardware resources of the board:
nPM1300 core chip, QFN32 package, with all pins led out through standard 2.54mm pitch pin headers for flexible evaluation and measurement
1 SHPHLD button, 3 GPIO tactile buttons, 3 LED indicators
Supports two types of battery interfaces, with and without NTC batteries
The main control chip is nRF5340, connected to the host computer via USB serial and configured via IIC to set the registers of nPM1300
Two USB-C interfaces, one connected to nRF5340 for USB serial functionality, and the other directly connected to nPM1300
Multiple voltage test points for easy connection with oscilloscopes and multimeters
A set of external expansion interfaces can be used to connect compatible power meter expansion boards
The system block diagram of the nPM1300 evaluation kit is as follows:Top and bottom layers of the PCB3D effect of the PCB:Close-up of the nPM1300 chipUSB-C interfaceOnboard 3 user buttonsLEDBattery interfacePins led out through pin headersThe expansion interface can connect to the power meter expansion board shown below, used to generate the battery charge/discharge model.
4. Introduction to nPM1300 Chip Characteristics
After understanding the hardware resources of the evaluation board, let’s focus on the core of this board — nPM1300 chip.From the official datasheet, we can see the internal structure of the chip:It mainly includes the following parts:
DC-DC BUCK converter
Battery charge/discharge management section
GPIO and LED driver section
Digital interface bus section
Load switch section
The detailed electrical characteristics of nPM1300 are as follows:
Two ultra-efficient DC-DC buck outputs, adjustable from 1.0-3.3V, with a maximum output of 200mA
Charging current adjustable from 32-800mA, step size of 2mA, supports NTC input, output voltage from 3.5V to 4.45V
No limits on battery capacity, supports lithium-ion, lithium-polymer, and lithium iron phosphate batteries
Two 100mA load switches or 50mA LDO, supporting voltage from 1.0-3.3V
Supports USB Type-C interface, CC pins can be directly connected to chip pins, with built-in 5.1k pull-down resistor, no external configuration needed
Input voltage from 4.0-5.5V, maximum 1.5A, with 22V over-voltage protection
5 configurable GPIOs and 3 configurable LED outputs
Fully compatible with I2C TWI digital bus interface, supporting speeds up to 400KHz
Manufactured using 180nm process, operating temperature range of -40°C to 85°C, with PN junction temperature less than 125°C
Two hardware resets, watchdog timer, wake-up timer, general-purpose timer
10-bit ADC for measuring input voltage, battery voltage, current, and chip temperature
Supports power statistics function, sampling battery voltage, current, temperature values via internal ADC, allowing for precise power statistics using official algorithms
Over-voltage, under-voltage, over-current protection, and temperature protection
Ultra-small package sizes: 3.1×2.4 mm WLCSP and 5.0×5.0 mm QFN
Requires only 5 passive components for operation
Supports ultra-low-power transport mode, with a static current of 370nA in factory mode
Graphical interface configuration, with one-click export of configurations to user MCU applications
Under different output currents, conversion efficiency can reach around 95%, which is very efficient!Common application scenarios include:
Wearable devices
Handheld entertainment devices
Portable medical devices
Rechargeable smart home sensors
Mouse, keyboard, touchpad
Interactive entertainment devices like motion-sensing games
Low-power sensors and IoT devices
5. nPM1300: One Chip Is Better Than Eight
nPM1300 can make users’ work easier, hardware engineers do not need to write code, and software engineers do not need to read datasheets. It is ready to use right out of the box; you just need to set it up in the intuitive GUI interface and export the overlay file, then add it to your SDK project for use.Compared to multiple independent power management chips, nPM1300 integrates almost all the functions of power management chips. It integrates the functions of the following eight chips:
6. Hands-on Experience with nPM1300 Evaluation Kit
Next, let’s briefly use the nPM1300 evaluation kit. Since I do not have a usable lithium battery on hand, this experience does not involve charging, discharging, or power meter functions.First, you need to download the accompanying host software: nRF-Connect-for-Desktop, which supports the three major platforms of Windows, Linux, and MacOS. The latest version is:nrfconnect-setup-4.4.1-x64.exe. After downloading, install it, and it will also install the Jlink driver:After installation, open the software, and you will see that this tool is a collection of commonly used host software for Nordic chips. Since we are evaluating the PMIC, we also need to install nPM PowerUP.If installation fails, you can try again a few times or restart your computer.After installation, prepare two Type-C USB data cables to connect the two USB interfaces of the board to the computer. You will see the LD4 indicator light breathing. If the USB PMIC interface is not connected, the LD4 indicator will be in a fast flashing state.After connecting to the computer, the device manager will show two additional serial port numbers:On the first use of this software, you need to update the firmware of the SoC on the board:Open the nPM PowerUP software to connect the board, and you can see the logs in the console at the bottom:
14:52:40.188 Device Connected SN:EE177EE0F1D0259B
14:52:40.189 Getting serialport options from persistent store EE177EE0F1D0259B.pc-nrfconnect-npm
14:52:40.190 Device Connected SN:null
14:53:45.467 Selected device with s/n EE177EE0F1D0259B
14:53:45.478 Opened port with options: {"path":"COM4","baudRate":115200}
14:53:45.575 Closed port: COM4
14:53:45.575 Device setup ready for device with s/n EE177EE0F1D0259B
14:53:45.581 Opened port with options: {"path":"COM4","baudRate":115200}
14:53:47.831 Reset cause: SWRESET
The graphical interface is shown in the following figure:The basic functions of each window are:
DASHBOARD: Overall configuration of the nPM1300 chip
CHARGER: Battery charging current and voltage configuration
REGULATORS: DC-DC converter and load switch configuration
GPIOS: Configuration for 5 GPIOs and 3 GPIOs
SYSTEM FEATURES: Configuration for system reset, timers, POR, input current, etc.
PROFILES: Creation and loading of battery models
GRAPH: Real-time curves of battery voltage, current, and temperature
By adjusting the voltage with the slider or manually entering numbers, you can freely adjust the output voltage value. Measuring the voltage values of VOUT1 and VOUT2 with a multimeter or oscilloscope will show changes with the set values. Since I do not have a usable lithium battery on hand, this evaluation did not assess the charging, discharging, or power statistics functions.Interested friends can connect a battery for testing, and the software can display real-time information such as battery voltage, current, and temperature.The official also provides a power meter expansion board — nPM Fuel Gauge Board, which generates battery charge/discharge model data. According to the official introduction, under temperature changes from -20°C to +60°C within 12 hours, the software algorithm power meter accuracy error is within 3%.After configuring the chip, click on the left <span>Export Configuration</span>, export the current configuration, choosing between <span>overlay</span> and <span>json</span> file formats. The overlay file can be used in our MCU applications, and after adding this file to the project, it will be called in the Zephyr TWI driver.To execute the device tree overlay file, please click on “edit build configuration” in the nRF Connect for VS Code extension, and then use the “Add overlay” button under “Devicetree overlay” to add the overlay file.Make sure to include these configurations in <span>prj.conf</span>:
In-depth analysis of Nordic’s new generation PMIC applications in low-power wireless IoT devices (Part 1)www.eeyxs.com/livebroadcast/index/playback.html?tid=842&cid=6471
In-depth analysis of Nordic’s new generation PMIC applications in low-power wireless IoT devices (Part 2)www.eeyxs.com/livebroadcast/index/playback.html?tid=842&cid=6472
nPM1300 and nRF54 series solutionswww.eeyxs.com/livebroadcast/index/playback.html?tid=842&cid=6473
Webinar on July 5, 2023, by Nordic’s Power Management Product Director Geir Kjosavikwww.youtube.com/watch?v=aN5umN5zV0E
9. Conclusion
This article introduced the characteristics of the nPM1300 power management chip and briefly experienced the basic functions of the evaluation kit and the basic usage of the graphical configuration interface. During the usage, it was found that this chip is very easy to use, requiring almost no reading of the datasheet or writing code to apply it in projects. It is important to note that the nPM1300 cannot be used independently; it requires an MCU host to configure and control it via the I2C interface. The recommended typical application is to use it with nRF52 and nRF53 series SoCs, but it can also be used with other non-Nordic chips.Overall, the high integration of nPM1300 greatly reduces the workload for users, and its ultra-low power consumption and ultra-high efficiency are the advantages of this chip, making it very suitable for low-power IoT devices that do not require high current.
Author: wcc149
Source: Electronic Circuit Development Learning
ENDFree Application
👆 Scan the QR code above to apply for nPM1300 power management IC for free 👆
The nPM1300 evaluation kit (EK) allows for simple evaluation and no-code configuration of the nPM1300 power management IC (PMIC). By connecting to the nPM PowerUP application in nRF Connect for Desktop, you can easily configure all settings of nPM1300 through an intuitive GUI and export it as code for implementation in MCU applications.
This kit itself has a JST battery connector for batteries with or without internal NTC, as well as a public pin header for connecting all nPM1300 connections. Additionally, this kit features three LEDs and four buttons, making it easy to evaluate the GPIO and LED drivers of the PMIC device.
