I am familiar with charger schematics for single cells, but... I cannot
find any information on charging
multiple cells. (ie 4x AA cells 1600mAhr, e.g. shall I have these cells all
independently
charged or is it reasonably safe to series them all up??)

Anyone know where to point me??  I've looked at a few Maxim and other
dedicated IC charging methods
and found nothing suitable...what IC do commercial chargers use just out of
interest??

Planning on doing a PIC -based charger (to control charge time, LED mode
display to user, PWM operation, and other) that pulse charges using PWM
waveform for say 3seconds then shorts all batteries for 100msec, cycling.
Apparently this charging scheme is the one to go for, for long life of your
batteries to reduce those "dendrites"....

Planning on constant current charging the 4 batteries all connected in
series at around 2C rate normally (selectable C rate via user) as want a
fast charger and willing to trade off battery life slightly for fast charge
times.

Anyone got any help/tips/neat circuit ideas?

Thanks,
Bernard Wood
New Zealand

--
http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different
ways.  See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.