Pick the wrong battery and you could end up with products that die too quickly, catch fire, get stuck at customs, or never make it to market.

Most battery mistakes happen early in the design process when they're easy to fix, but they don't get caught until later when they're expensive to fix.

So in my latest video, I walk through the most common battery selection mistakes I see in hardware designs.

10 Battery Mistakes That Kill Hardware Products [VIDEO]

Or if you prefer, you can read about it here.

A lot of people just reach for lithium-ion or lithium-polymer because that's what phones use, without considering whether it's actually right for their product.

Every battery chemistry has different tradeoffs in cost, energy density, temperature range, safety, and shelf life.

Another common mistake is ignoring peak current requirements.

Your battery doesn't just need to handle your average current draw, it needs to handle those spikes when your wireless radio transmits or a motor kicks on.

If your battery can't deliver that peak current, your voltage will sag and your microcontroller will brown out and reset, even when there's still plenty of capacity left in the battery.

The discharge voltage curve can also trick you into thinking you have more usable capacity than you actually do.

And if you're using lithium batteries without proper protection circuitry for things like overcharge, overdischarge, and overcurrent, you're asking for serious trouble.

USB-C charging is another area where people get tripped up, because just adding a USB-C connector doesn't automatically give you fast charging.

You need to implement the right level of power negotiation, where your device and the charger communicate to agree on how much power to deliver.

Sometimes replaceable batteries actually make more sense than rechargeable ones, and cold weather can destroy your battery performance regardless of which chemistry you choose.

Plus, there are sourcing and regulatory issues that can completely derail your product if you don't plan for them early.

Check it out and let me know what you think.

Talk soon,
John