IMPRES

Intelligent Motorola Portable Radio Energy Source

IMPRES (originally: Intelligent Motorola Portable Radio Energy Source) is a range of batteries; chargers and audio accessories that have some intelligence built-in. Initially, the IMPRES was intended to be used only with batteries and chargers but the term was soon extended to audio accessories.

IMPRES Energy

An IMPRES energy system helps customers reduce their overall spend on replacement batteries by:

• Removing the guesswork out of determining the state of health of any battery.
• Prolonging the service life of a battery by maintaining a healthy charge-discharge and recondition cycle.

In its basic form, an IMPRES energy system consists of a smart battery used in conjunction with a smart charger and radio. The radio and charger are both able to access the information stored in the battery's on-board charge management chipset. The charger would read this data and make a decision on what to do when an IMPRES battery is inserted. The radio is also able to access this data and would give the user an indication of the battery's state of charge and health. This data can also be accessed by the IMPRES Battery Fleet Management software, either over the RF channel or via a multi-unit charger.

Batteries

IMPRES batteries have a built-in serial EEPROM that records the following information:

• Date of production
• Date of first use
• Amount of charge
• Amount of discharge
• State of charge
• Number of cycles

The date of first use is derived from the radio. The radio derives a date (not accurate) from the PC during programming.

Chargers

The IMPRES charger reads the information contained within the battery's serial EEPROM and from this information it can determine:

• If a charge is needed.
• If a calibration (recondition) is needed.
• If the battery is (near) end of life.

A Single Unit Charger with no display will give an indication via the LED:

LED	Condition
Blinking Red	Battery fault
Solid Red	Charging
Blinking Amber	Waiting to charge
Solid Amber	Calibrating battery data
Blinking Green	90% charged
Solid Green	Fully charged

A Multi Unit Charger with display will show some details about the battery.

IMPRES Audio

IMPRES audio accessories have an ADS chip built-in to the accessory that allows the radio to automatically adjust audio levels to suit the connected accessory.

IMPRES Fleet Management

To address the challenge of maintaining a large fleet of batteries, Motorola Solutions developed IMPRES Battery Fleet Management, an application that gathers information from all the IMPRES batteries used on their system and presents the state of health information in an easy to understand manner.

Each IMPRES battery has a unique serial number that can be used to identify it and which radio it is attached to. Because a lot of the guesswork is eliminated, customers can save money by only replacing batteries that no longer perform adequately. Not only that, customers can start applying just in time and material requirements planning principles to their stockholding of IMPRES batteries since the replacement date is known before problems arise.

The IMPRES Battery Fleet Management software gathers battery data in two ways:

1. Over the air.
2. By means of an IMPRES multi-unit charger, connected to the PC via USB.

Using either a control station or MNIS, the software is able to gather state of health information from all connected batteries over time, thereby constructing current information about battery status. This method is considerably slow since the software must extract data from each battery. This means that over the air battery management should not be used when large numbers of batteries need to be added quickly.

There are essentially two types of IMPRES chargers: A single unit charger with LED indicator (see above) and a Multi-Unit Charger with one or more displays. Currently, only the multi-unit charger can be connected to battery fleet management. Older versions of the IMPRES multi-unit charger require a charger interface unit (which is no longer sold but still supported by the software) to connect to a PC.

IMPRES2

IMPRES2 batteries and chargers offer the following benefits over legacy IMPRES batteries:

• An IMPRES2 battery and charger combination are able to charge up to 40% faster.
• Calibration can be optionally disabled
• Customizable charge (e.g. charge to 50% for air transportation)
• Up to 60% more charge-discharge cycles.
• IP68 when used with a matching radio.
• State-of-charge compensation during storage.