Battery chargers are devices that enable the charging of many portable hand-held electronic devices, such as cell phones, PDAs, laptop computers, portable e-mail receivers, pagers, etc. When a portable electronic device is placed within the battery charger, the charger will replenish the battery pack associated with the portable electronic device. However, if the portable electronic device placed within the battery charger is in a use mode while within the charger, the charge current being provided by the battery charger, rather than recharging the battery associated with the portable electronic device, instead powers the operations of the portable electronic device.
Many battery chargers additionally include a functionality for monitoring a charge TIME pin 106 for a battery connected to the battery charger. Upon connection of the battery to the battery charger, a charge counter begins counting the length of time the battery is connected. When a preset period of time expires and no indication has been received that a connected battery is fully charged, a fault indication of some type may be provided. The problem with this configuration is that if the charge current from the battery charger is being used to power a use mode of the portable electronic device rather than to charge a battery, the counter is still counting time as if the charge current is being used to charge the battery. Thus, a false fault signal may be generated by the battery charger. Traditionally, individuals have disabled the time out function within the battery charger in order to solve this issue. However, this causes the battery charger to lose its time out protection feature for situations when the time out counter would actually detect a fault condition. Thus, some system and method for enabling an accumulation of actual charging time without falsely registering use time of a connected battery is desired.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds