Lipo batteries in a hot car

Hardware
1

Hi folks,

I have a question relating to the LiPo battery used by the Electron. Would this be okay to use inside a vehicle?

Take the Asset Tracker product as an example. I know the Asset Tracker can be powered via the car battery, but say I wanted to use the Electron’s LiPo to overcome voltage dips when cranking, particularly if the car’s battery is nearing end of its useful working life.

Inside a car can be harsh - way way below zero at one extreme and well over 50+ degrees Celsius in the other extreme.

Reason I ask is that I have heard LiPo’s can be nasty if not treated nicely.

Thanks.

p.s. don’t most driver cams and GPS trackers use LiPo’s nowadays?

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2

Here is a certification and test document for the battery that comes with an electron: https://docs.particle.io/assets/pdfs/electron/battery/IEC62133.pdf

It looks like generally, Li-Po prefers and operating temperature range of 0-50C.

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3

May i ask what you ended up going with? I am at this point in the decision-making process and thinking:

  • no battery (if I can get it to consistently work - taking hard look at firmware, OS, and why it does work sometimes)
  • different chemistry battery (safer and still sufficient)
  • smaller battery https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13854
4

We ended up relying on the car’s 12v battery with a buck DC-DC converter plus some large decoupling capacitors for the spikes and cranking drops/load dumps.

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