5.3 Board-Level Calibration

The choice to calibrate each unit individually or to apply a generic calibration across all boards is determined by the designer. A production test fixture can be designed to apply calibrated voltages and currents to the board in a manner consistent with the GUI calibration routines. If a generic calibration is desired, the GUI includes an option to capture the calibration and configuration parameters from a ‘golden board’ and store them in a special .h file named ‘MultiChemCharger_Values.h’. This file can be added to the project and enabled with the #define directive called ENABLE_FIXED_CONFIG. This file will be compiled with the project, resulting in an easily managed .HEX file that embeds the configuration and calibration values at the time of firmware compilation.

Separately, this function is also useful during development, as each recompilation and programming of the part would otherwise erase the configuration and calibration values when the hardware stores them in Flash memory, as implemented in the PIC16F1776 hardware.