PTX SPM-622 User Manual

SPM-622 Squad Power Manager

User Guide

Revision 7

PROTONEX TECHNOLOGY CORPORATION

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Table of Contents

What’s A Power Manager? ................................................................................................ 4

Quick-Start ......................................................................................................................... 5

Connecting a Battery ..................................................................................................... 5

Powering a Radio ........................................................................................................... 6

Charging the Battery ...................................................................................................... 7

Adding Devices ............................................................................................................... 7

More Uses .......................................................................................................................... 7

Power From Vehicles, and Charging Vehicle Batteries .................................................. 7

Battery to Battery Charging ......................................................................................... 10

Making a Field UPS ...................................................................................................... 11

Using the Display and Keypad .......................................................................................... 13

The SPM-622 Screen .................................................................................................... 13

Port Information .......................................................................................................... 15

Configuration and Information .................................................................................... 19

Help Menu ................................................................................................................... 22

Manual Input Port Control ........................................................................................... 23

Data Logging ................................................................................................................ 24

Diagnostics ................................................................................................................... 24

Port Update Screen ...................................................................................................... 26

UI Map ......................................................................................................................... 28

Using Datalogging ............................................................................................................ 29

Upload A Log ................................................................................................................ 29

Data Logging Configuration ......................................................................................... 29

Resetting the Log ......................................................................................................... 30

The Real Time Clock ..................................................................................................... 30

SPM-622 Maintenance and Cleaning ............................................................................... 31

Before Each Mission .................................................................................................... 31

Periodic System Check ................................................................................................. 31

Battery Calibration ....................................................................................................... 31

Upgrading Firmware .................................................................................................... 32

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Cautions ........................................................................................................................... 37

Troubleshooting ............................................................................................................... 38

Contacting Protonex......................................................................................................... 39

SPM-622 User Guide Rev 6 Page 3

What’s A Power Manager?

Welcome to the world of intelligent power
management. What’s a power manager? Quite simply,
a power manager is a universal automatic charger and
power converter – it takes whatever energy sources
you have available, and powers or charges whatever
devices or batteries you have. That’s it! In one sense,
you could think of it as a Swiss army knife for power.

Some examples of things you could use your power manager to do:

• Charge a radio battery from a solar panel.

• Power a laptop from a car.

• Power a GPS device from an incompatible radio battery.

• Charge one battery from a different kind of battery.

• Scavenge power on the battlefield from a vehicle battery

Because the power manager has six ports on it, you can do lots of the things above, and
other tasks like it, all at the same time. Here’s a photo of someone charging multiple
battery types from a solar panel:

So with that as an introduction, let’s get started.

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Quick-Start

There are a couple things to know that will help you get comfortable with the power
manager:

1. All cables fit all ports – you can plug any SPM cable that came in your kit into

any port on the SPM. There is a small red line on the side of each plug and each
socket – just line them up and push!

2. All cables are labeled at both ends: one end goes into the SPM, and the other

“business end” will be labeled to tell you what device it was designed for.
Please only use a cable for the piece of gear on the label – if you have
something to power and no cable, let us know: we have cables for almost
everything.

3. You can’t hurt it by making a mistake - The SPM will protect itself and your

equipment, and won’t allow you to damage anything by plugging it in “wrong.”
So when in doubt – plug it in!

4. If the SPM needs something different, it will tell you. Sometimes the SPM

needs a particular device to be plugged into a certain set of ports. If this is the
case, and you plug that device into a different port, nothing will be damaged.
The SPM will simply tell you on the front panel which ports you should plug
that device into – just unplug it and switch ports.

OK, with those simple guidelines, we’ll attach your first device: a battery.

Connecting a Battery

Usually the first device you connect to the SPM will be a battery: sometimes a radio
battery, such as the BB-2590 (also known as the ASIP battery), or a smaller PRC-148 or
PRC-152 handheld battery. Sometimes a car or truck battery. Sometimes a conformal
wearable or other specialty battery – it doesn’t particularly matter, as long as you have
a cable in your kit that fits it.

The photo below shows a BB-2590 and a conformal wearable battery connected to a
power manager.

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When you connect a battery to the power manager, the power manager will turn on
(assuming the battery is not dead).

Caution: The conformal wearable battery cable has one black end and one tan end.

Always plug the black end into the battery, and the tan end into the SPM.

One detail specific to the BB-2590: the battery ships with a small sticker on the top,
covering several small metal pads. These pads let the SPM “talk” with the battery, which
lets it charge faster and show you more accurate information about it – so peel the
“SMBus” sticker off when you get a new battery

Powering a Radio

Now let’s add a radio, and power it from the battery you connected above:

1. Find the radio power cable in your SPM kit that matches your radio.

2. Connect the “business end” of the cable to the radio – this may mean twisting

it on, plugging it in, or removing a battery box, depending on the radio, but it
should be pretty obvious.

3. Plug the other end of the cable into the SPM.

4. Watch the SPM screen

In most cases, the SPM will display what model of radio you connected, and the radio
will come on (assuming its power switch is on). However, a couple other things could
happen:

• The SPM could tell you on the screen to use a different port. If it does, simply

unplug the radio and plug it into one of the suggested ports.

• If you have a big radio and a small battery, the SPM may tell you to plug in an

additional battery. For example, a handheld radio battery simply cannot power
a man-pack SatCom radio – but a couple of them working together can. If the
SPM prompts you to add another battery, simply find and connect another
battery (it does not need to be the same type as the first one), and the SPM will
use it to try to power the larger radio.

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Now you should have a battery powering a radio through the SPM – good start!

Charging the Battery

Now we want to add an energy source, so that the SPM can recharge the battery you
connected above (assuming it’s a rechargeable battery). Many kits include solar panels,
automotive (civilian and military), and AC wall adapters. Find the adapter easiest for you
to use (AC if you’re inside, solar if you’re outside, etc) and follow these simple steps:

1. Connect one end of the cable to the selected energy source. In the case of the

AC wall adapter (which looks like a laptop power supply), plug it into the wall.
In the case of a vehicle adapter, plug it into the cigarette lighter / accessory jack
or the NATO slave adapter jack on the vehicle. If solar, unfold the panel in
direct sunlight.

2. Connect the other end of the cable to the SPM, using ports 3 or 4. The sun

icons next to these ports indicate that the ports are optimized for bringing
energy into the power manager.

Once the SPM recognizes the cable and that power is present at the other end, you
should see it start to use that power:

• On the screen, the small arrows by each port will change to show that rather

than power coming out of the battery, power is now going into the battery
(assuming it’s rechargeable).

• Your radio should remain powered on.

Adding Devices

You can now add additional radios, computers, batteries and other devices, and charge
or power them as needed. Simply plug them into available ports. The SPM knows what
you’re plugging in, and it knows to “do the right thing”: Batteries are used to power
equipment, and are also charged if an energy source is connected. Energy sources are
used to power gear and charge batteries. Gear is powered from energy sources if they
are available, and batteries otherwise.

More Uses

This section shows additional uses for your SPM – experiment with them to see how the
power manager can reduce the amount of gear you need to carry and add flexibility to
your missions.

Power From Vehicles, and Charging Vehicle Batteries

A common use of the SPM is to charge radio batteries and power equipment from a
vehicle battery or power jack, but the SPM can also be used to recharge a dead vehicle
battery.

Which port you connect the vehicle to, tells the SPM what you want it to do.

SPM-622 User Guide Rev 6 Page 7

There is a simple rule: If you want to take power out of the vehicle, connect it to ports 3
or 4. If you want to put power into the vehicle, connect it to one of the other ports (1, 2,
5, or 6).

Here are two examples to show this:

In the example above, the SPM will charge the BB-2590 battery by drawing power out of
the car via the cigarette receptacle.

However, if you have a dead vehicle battery but charged radio batteries, you could
connect them like this:

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In this case, the SPM will charge the car’s battery from the BB-2590 battery – after a
couple hours the car should crank.

Note that in both cases above (and in all cases), when batteries are connected to both
Ports 3 or 4 and Ports 1, 2, 5, or 6, the SPM will pull energy out of the battery or
batteries connected to ports 3 or 4, and will push that energy into the battery or
batteries connected to other ports. The SPM assumes that the cigarette plug cable and
the NATO slave cable both connect to the connected car or truck batteries, and so it can
use them both for pulling power from the vehicle, and also for charging the vehicle
batteries.

Here are some other examples of when this can be useful:

In the example above, the car’s battery is being charged from the truck. In the example
below, the truck’s battery is being charged from solar.

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Battery to Battery Charging

Many of the examples in the automotive section above show “battery to battery
charging” – moving energy from one battery to another, to make it more useful. The
SPM can be used to easily shuttle energy between identical or different batteries, simply
by connecting the source battery (the one to pull energy from) into ports 3 or 4, and the
destination battery (the one to charge) into one of the other ports.

Here are some examples of when this might be useful:

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In the example above, a BB-5590 is charging a BB-2590. In the example below, a vehicle
is charging more than one battery.

Making a Field UPS

The SPM can act as an uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS), simply by connecting it to a
rechargeable battery, an AC wall input, and powering a device. The drawing below
shows how it can be used to provide uninterruptible power to a SatCom radio: As long
as AC power is available, the battery is kept fully charged by the power manager, and
the radio is powered from the AC power. If the AC power fails, the radio remains
powered, but now from the BB-2590 battery – the SPM automatically and instantly
switches the radio from being AC powered to being battery powered.

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When AC power is restored, again the SPM instantly switches the radio back to AC
power, and also recharges the battery.

The SPM can support multiple batteries in this configuration if needed. Simply hook
them up and the SPM will figure out which one to use.

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