4.28.6. MAX1785x

This module supports the MAX17852 and MAX17853 monitoring ICs by Maxim Integrated. Communication with these ICs is handled through a MAX17841B bridge IC. The communication between bridge IC and monitoring IC is encoded as Maxim Battery Management UART, which is a optimized, differential variant of UART with a focus on robustness.

A typical setup consists of one master unit with one to two bridge ICs and several monitoring ICs in a daisy-chain. The current implementation of the driver supports communication through one bridge IC (the “uphost path”), but the hardware supports a redundant approach by adding read only communication on the “downhost path”.

4.28.6.1. Driver structure

The driver is separated into three main modules with additional helper modules. The three main modules are:

• MAX17841B bridge IC driver in mxm_17841b.c,

• Battery Management UART protocol abstraction in max_battery_management.c and

• MAX1785x device driver in mxm_1785x.c.