Programming TPS25750 and BQ40Z50 without EV2400?

[lja246]

Hi all,

I recently started a new project and I plan on having it powered from a 3s2p li-ion battery pack and also charging from usb-c PD. I found that the TPS25750 is a good IC to use for the usb-c PD control because it also can communicate with the charger which will be a BQ25792. For managing the battery pack I plan on using the BQ40Z50. All of these IC's can run fine on their own with no MCU however, the TPS25750 and the BQ40Z50 both need configuring using software before they can be used. Normally to do this Texas Instruments recommends using their programmer the EV2400 as the IC's are programmed over I2C for the TPS25750 and SMBus for the BQ40Z50. This all seemed good until I saw the price for the EV2400 which is around $300 AUD which I don't want to spend considering this may be a one off project and I wouldn't really have a use for the EV2400 after i'm done. TI say that it is possible to use a MCU to program the IC's as the EV2400 is simply a USB to I2C and SMBus converter but I don't have the programming knowledge to work out how to program the IC's from a bin file over I2C and SMBus using my own MCU.
I was wondering if anyone knows of any other USB to I2C and USB to SMBus programmers that aren't that expensive or any guides on how I could use my own MCU to do this task. The current MCU's that I have on hand is an Arduino, ESP32 and STM32F4 if that helps for any guides.

[RiZsho]

Hi lja246!

I've worked on a design with BQ40Z60 a while ago. Had many of the same questions as you. The BQ40Zx0 are almost all 8051 cores with dedicated hardware for battery protection/charging/balancing. The FW inside can be configure via EV2400 and BQStudio in an interactive way and it can guide you through many settings and bits very easily. Agreed that the EV2400 is very hobby non-friendly. However, when you look at the technical reference manual (link below) for it, you can appreciate the work that's been done to make it interactive as possible for the engineer to configure this beast.

At the end all of this can be programmed via SMBus easily. I'd recommend sticking with STM32F4, but that's very much dependent on what you're actually doing.

Tech ref manual for BQ40Z50-R2: https://www.ti.com/lit/ug/sluuch2/sluuch2.pdf?ts=1678450230553&ref_url=https%253A%252F%252Fwww.ti.com%252Fproduct%252FBQ40Z50-R2
Link to BQStudio: https://www.ti.com/tool/BQSTUDIO

[daisizhou]

I have a firmware for EV2200,I can send it to you if you need it.EV2200 circuit schematic diagram is public, you can make it yourself.
EV2400 firmware I remember that it might be available on an online forum in China. Someone once released it.If you need the EV2400, you may need to spend some time looking for it

[stowwest]

I have a firmware for EV2300,I can send it to you if you need it.EV2300 circuit schematic diagram is public, you can make it yourself.
EV2400 firmware I remember that it might be available on an online forum in China. Someone once released it.If you need the EV2400, you may need to spend some time looking for it

penalty kick online

It would be great if you could share me the specific circuit diagram.
Thank you very much.

[daisizhou]

https://html.alldatasheet.com/html-pdf/511925/TI/EV2300/458/16/EV2300.html

This is a schematic connection

--->ev2200

[jonathanz]

I used to think about this problem because TPS25750 is a good IC to use for usb-c PD control but because of the high cost it becomes a hindrance. I tried other ways but no results yet
Dynamons World

[Qcraft123]

I have used a cheap ebay / Aliexpress EV2400 clone that I got for ~$40 to program a BQ40Z50 board,
it has no problem being detected by bqstudio (see attached images)

[tooki]

I have used a cheap ebay / Aliexpress EV2400 clone that I got for ~$40 to program a BQ40Z50 board,
it has no problem being detected by bqstudio (see attached images)

Thanks for that! I was just looking at those on aliexpress the other day and wondering if they were any good. (And also wondering what genius decided to use a usb type A connector instead of the type B (or micro-B) it should be…)

[tretecou]

Hey, where did you get the bqstudio program from? I have a locked bq40z50 controller on a surface battery and this sw would come in extremely handy, prob. cant unlock it but could maybe copy the data to the new controller and replace it... Thanks in advance

cant download the software for some reason