Mobile Computing & Handhelds

Portable Battery Packs

Green Cubes specializes in the development of portable battery systems, which are designed, verified and manufactured for superior run times, reliability, durability, safety and ease of use. The range of handheld devices supported by Green Cubes includes bar code scanners, handheld readers, portable printers, rugged PDAs, handheld computers, handheld radios, GPS devices and wearable computers.

Green Cubes offers rechargeable industrial lithium batteries based on all commercially available lithium-ion chemistries. As OEMs strive to differentiate in competitive markets, Green Cubes has increasingly addressed our customer’s needs with the highest performance Li-ion chemistry. Today, Green Cubes has designed well over one thousand Li-ion battery packs. Choosing the optimal cell can contribute to the success or failure of a product in the field and requires extensive knowledge of the performance profile of the cells under consideration. The range of cell chemistries used in our industrial battery packs include Nickel Manganese Cobalt (NMC), Lithium Cobalt Oxide (LCO), Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) and Lithium Titanate Oxide (LTO).

SMART Batteries

Green Cubes’ advanced SMART batteries communicate status to the portable device via an integrated microprocessor in the battery pack. This information could include: type, model number, manufacturer, characteristics, discharge rate, predicted remaining capacity, almost-discharged alarm, temperature and voltage. This microprocessor maximizes system run-time by enabling use of the full chemical capacity available in the battery pack. Communication is delivered to the portable device via a communication bus (such as SMBus, I2C, or HDQ) and delivered to the user with LEDs.

Mechanical Integration with Host Device

Like its host device, a battery pack is designed with a mechanical and industrial design that is adapted for the specific environment in which it will be used. Green Cubes provides battery packs that are assembled in plastic shrink wrap and fully enclosed in the portable device. For user-replaceable batteries, the best choice is a battery pack with a hard plastic enclosure. Green Cubes provides enclosures that meet the needs of the most demanding environments while augmenting your product’s aesthetics and industrial design. Typical plastic choices include PolyCarbonate (PC), Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS), PC/ABS blends, Nylon, or Acrylic. Plastic enclosures will be sealed with ultrasonic welding for ease of manufacture and cost savings, as well as adhesives, screws and gaskets for the most robust seals. The electrical connector is selected to be the most compatible with your device such as spring pins, formed metal contacts, blade connectors and pads on the PCB. A custom battery pack offers the best physical integration with your portable device, in addition to the highest electrical performance.

With a proven track record of technical excellence, superior quality and on-time delivery, portable equipment manufacturers rely on Green Cubes to deliver power solutions for their portable device. Most equipment manufacturers strive to achieve maximum dependability and power efficiency by sourcing a battery and charger system that is customized to their application and device.

Charging Systems

Green Cubes offers custom battery chargers and docking stations for portable and handheld devices. As a complete power system solution provider, Green Cubes has the fundamental battery chemistry knowledge that is the keystone of charger design. This allows Green Cubes to design and manufacture a charger that seamlessly integrates with the battery pack for exceptional ease of use and maximum energy delivery with a minimum charge time.

In order for an user to take full advantage of a portable device, it must be charged quickly and remain in a high state of readiness. Multi-bay battery chargers are the best way to keep the most demanding users up and running through multiple shifts and our customer can optimize charge time according to the battery chemistry and the current available to the system. Green Cubes routinely designs chargers with the number of bays ranging from one to eight. Our multi-bay battery chargers employ our unique microcontroller-based charging system and are available with the following features:

• Configurable LCD or LED status indicators for various battery conditions
• AC or DC inputs
• Battery management features including battery conditioning and gas gage calibration
• Battery health and status-of-charge indication
• Power management and conditional charging
• Fast charge regimens
• Custom enclosures that are rugged and have industrial design consistency with the device
• Custom electrical contacts and battery latching schemes
• Custom configurations such as vehicular-mount or desktop versions
• Relevant safety and EMC certifications

Green Cubes maintains a catalogue of in-house reference designs for use in configuring individual battery charger solutions. Green Cubes high efficiency industrial chargers can be either a circuit board embedded in your device or a stand-alone charger in a configuration that best suits the usage model of the portable device.

The Complete Solution

Battery and chargers can no longer be developed as isolated systems. They involve design teams to verify processes and capabilities at all phases of product development. At Green Cubes, our experts work with you from concept review and prototyping to final product.

When considering the selection of a battery and charger platform, OEMs should consider the advantages of sourcing both the battery and charger from a common vendor, committed to reduce technical risk and minimize development costs. Several factors that OEMs should consider when assessing a supplier for both the battery and charger programs:

• Concurrent Designs with an Integrated Team – If a battery pack is developed by one vendor and the charger by a second vendor, both companies must integrate these two products together when each product is under development and undergoing changes. It is recommended that one company develop both products with a common, integrated development team that has constant communication (and file sharing) among themselves.
• Reduced Risk for Electrical Integration – A common design team for the battery pack and charger electronics will assure proper electrical operation/behaviour during charge cycles. As an example, when SMBus communications is required, development time and cost is minimized when complete exposure of SMBus operation is available to engineers developing both the battery pack and charger.
• Tight Mechanical Integration – Using a common mechanical design team will assure tight mechanical integration between the battery pack and charger, which covers topics like cup holders, contact resistance, insertion/withdrawal and thermal management issues that affect both battery pack and charger as a system.
• Consistent Industrial Design – Using the same vendors for the battery pack and charger enclosures ensures that product colours and textures are integrated and consistent. This is achieved using common vendors for injection moulds, specifying identical textures, common vendors for custom-coloured plastic resin material, common lots of raw plastic material and economies of scales with purchases of plastic resin.
• Lower Risk with Agency Approvals – If an OEM requires agency approvals on the charger, using Green Cubes to design both pack and charger will ensure that the charger will pass agency approvals with pack resident in the charger. This is especially applicable for radiated EMC testing and approvals.

Green Cubes has experience designing handheld battery packs and chargers for the following devices:

• Automatic Identification and Data Collection (AIDC) devices – bar code scanners, RFID scanners, and portable printers
• Handheld gas detection and analyzing devices
• Industrial portable computers