Systems and methods for event tracking and health assessment of battery-powered information handling systems

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10496509-B2
Application number	US-201715443140-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Feb 27, 2017
Priority date	Feb 27, 2017
Publication date	Dec 3, 2019
Grant date	Dec 3, 2019

Abstract

Systems and methods that may be implemented to monitor and record (store) information related to environmental conditions, operating conditions and/or events to which a battery-powered information handling system has been exposed while the battery powered information handling system is not powered. In one embodiment this stored environmental, system operating and/or event information may be made available to one or more system programmable integrated circuits at a following system restart or operating system (OS) boot. Such stored information may be used, for example, to determine one or more actions during a subsequent system restart or OS reboot, and/or to better enable root cause analysis of no-POST (power on self-test) type failures.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A battery system, comprising:
one or more rechargeable battery cells configured to be coupled to provide electrical current to a system load of an information handling system when the battery system is paired with the information handling system;
a battery system storage; and
at least one programmable integrated circuit coupled to the battery system storage and the one or more battery cells, the programmable integrated circuit of the battery system being programmed to be powered by the one or more rechargeable battery cells to perform the following while the battery system is not paired with the information handling system or while the battery system is paired with the information handling system with a host programmable integrated circuit of the information handling system in an unpowered condition:
sense at least one of environmental conditions, operating conditions or event occurrences to which the battery system and/or the information handling system is exposed while the battery system is not paired with the information handling system or is paired with the information handling system having the unpowered host programmable integrated circuit; and
record and store the sensed environmental conditions, operating conditions or event occurrences as stored sensed information on the battery system storage while the battery system is not paired with the information handling system or is paired with the information handling system having the unpowered host programmable integrated circuit;

where the at least one battery system programmable integrated circuit is further programmed to later provide the previously-stored sensed information from the battery system storage that was previously recorded while the battery system was not paired with the information handling system or was paired with the information handling system having the unpowered host programmable integrated circuit to at least one programmable integrated circuit of a paired information handling system when the battery system is next paired with the information handling system having the host programmable integrated circuit in powered condition; and
where the battery system is a smart battery pack that includes a battery management unit (BMU) coupled to a battery unit that includes the one or more rechargeable battery cells, the BMU including the battery system programmable integrated circuit and the battery system storage; and where the battery system programmable integrated circuit is configured to:
sense presence and absence of the information handling system paired to the battery system, and
record the number of times that the battery system has been paired and unpaired with an information handling system as the sensed information on the battery system storage.

2. The battery system of claim 1 , further comprising one or more sensors coupled to the battery system programmable integrated circuit, and where the battery system programmable integrated circuit is programmed to use the coupled sensors to sense at least one of the environmental conditions, operating conditions or event occurrences to which the battery system is exposed while the battery system is not paired with the information handling system or is paired with the information handling system having the unpowered host programmable integrated circuit; and to record and store the sensed environmental conditions, operating conditions or event occurrences as the stored sensed information on the battery system storage.

3. The battery system of claim 2 , where the one or more sensors comprise at least one of a temperature sensor, voltage sensor, charging current sensor, a discharge current sensor, an accelerometer, a relative humidity sensor, or a global positioning system (GPS) sensor.

4. The battery system of claim 1 , where the programmable integrated circuit of the battery system is further programmed to be powered by the one or more rechargeable battery cells to perform the following while no external charge source is present:
sense at least one of environmental conditions, operating conditions or event occurrences to which the battery system and/or information handling system is exposed while the battery system is not paired with the information handling system or is paired with the information handling system having an unpowered host programmable integrated circuit; and
record and store the sensed environmental conditions, operating conditions or event occurrences as stored sensed information on the battery system storage while the battery system is not paired with the information handling system or is paired with the information handling system having the unpowered host programmable integrated circuit.

5. A battery system, comprising:
one or more rechargeable battery cells configured to be coupled to provide electrical current to a system load of an information handling system when the battery system is paired with the information handling system;
a battery system storage; and
at least one programmable integrated circuit coupled to the battery system storage and the one or more battery cells, the programmable integrated circuit of the battery system being programmed to be powered by the one or more rechargeable battery cells to perform the following while the battery system is not paired with the information handling system or while the battery system is paired with the information handling system with a host programmable integrated circuit of the information handling system in an unpowered condition:
sense at least one of environmental conditions, operating conditions or event occurrences to which the battery system and/or the information handling system is exposed while the battery system is not paired with the information handling system or is paired with the information handling system having the unpowered host programmable integrated circuit; and
record and store the sensed environmental conditions, operating conditions or event occurrences as stored sensed information on the battery system storage while the battery system is not paired with the information handling system or is paired with the information handling system having the unpowered host programmable integrated circuit;

where the at least one battery system programmable integrated circuit is further programmed to later provide the previously-stored sensed information from the battery system storage that was previously recorded while the battery system was not paired with the information handling system or was paired with the information handling system having the unpowered host programmable integrated circuit to at least one programmable integrated circuit of a paired information handling system when the battery system is next paired with the information handling system having the host programmable integrated circuit in powered condition;
where the battery system is configured to be paired with the information handling system with the one or more battery cells coupled to provide electrical current to a system load contained within a chassis enclosure of the paired information handling system; where the battery system programmable integrated circuit is configured to be coupled to one or more sensors of the information handling system that are external to the battery system and that are attached internal to and within the chassis enclosure of the paired information handling system with the one or more external sensors being disposed outside of and not part of the battery system; and where the battery system programmable integrated circuit is programmed to:
use the external sensors of the information handling system to sense at least one environmental condition within the chassis enclosure of the information handling system, and
record and store the sensed environmental condition as the stored sensed inf

Assignees

• Dell Products Lp

Inventors

• Thompson Rick C
• Leara William D
• Vichare Nikhil M

Classifications

• G06F11/3093

  Configuration details thereof, e.g. installation, enabling, spatial arrangement of the probes · CPC title

• G06F1/26

  Power supply means, e.g. regulation thereof (for memories G11C) · CPC title

• G06F9/4401

  Bootstrapping (security arrangements therefor G06F21/57) · CPC title

• G06F11/3058 Primary

  Monitoring arrangements for monitoring environmental properties or parameters of the computing system or of the computing system component, e.g. monitoring of power, currents, temperature, humidity, position, vibrations (thermal management in cooling arrangements of a computing system G06F1/206) · CPC title

• G06F1/3206

  Monitoring of events, devices or parameters that trigger a change in power modality · CPC title