Battery Monitor Chips and Circuit Design

[Antiwave]

I'm looking at custom building a Li+ battery pack, six or seven cells, and want to design a battery monitoring circuit that measures voltage of each cell and keeps track of charge/discharge. The battery pack needs to fit in a form size of about 8" by 2" by 2" so my circuit should be fairly small. I've found a number of different chips that seem like they have this capability, including the Maxim DS2764 and the TI BQ78PL116.

My current thinking is to use a microcontroller (like a MSP430) and conduct polling on the chip and convert discharge/charge information into user readable signals.

I'm not looking for anyone to design this system for me, but was just wondering if anyone else has done something similar and has advice on common pitfalls to avoid or a recommendation on a specific chip to use, etc.

Thanks!

 

[anorlunda]

I think that is pretty unusual. Battery packs are typically so inexpensive that nobody wants internal instrumentation. But perhaps you have laboratory purposes.

Sorry, no one here has experience to offer.