摘要 |
A rechargeable battery pack including a microcontroller connected to a voltage measuring circuit and a current measuring circuit for measuring, respectively, the voltage across and the current flowing from a battery. Upon each expiration of a predefined time period during each discharge cycle of the battery, the microcontroller computes the product of the voltage, the current, and the length of the time period, thereby computing the energy expended by the battery over each period of time. An energy variable stored in a nonvolatile memory device associated with the microcontroller for representing the total amount of energy output by the battery over the life thereof is incremented by the computed energy. In one embodiment, a temperature sensing circuit measures the temperature of the battery and the instantaneous energy is adjusted by a temperature factor associated by the measured temperature before being used to increment the value of the energy variable.
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