MC5000 Charger Controller

A cross-platform Rust workspace for controlling the SkyRC MC5000 4-slot intelligent battery charger via Bluetooth Low Energy.

This project results from reverse‑engineering the SkyRC Android application's BLE protocol, with assistance from AI.

Project Structure

This workspace consists of three crates:

1. mc5000-protocol - Protocol Library

Core library implementing the MC5000 Bluetooth communication protocol.

# Use as a dependency
[dependencies]
mc5000-protocol = { path = "../mc5000-protocol" }

Features:

• Bluetooth device scanning and connection
• Command encoding/decoding
• Status monitoring
• Charge configuration

2. charger-controller - GUI Application

Full-featured graphical interface for controlling the charger.

# Run the GUI
cargo run -p charger-controller
# or
./target/debug/charger-controller

Features:

• Real-time slot monitoring with graphs
• Visual configuration dialog
• Auto-charge mode with battery detection
• Data export to CSV

3. charger-controller-cli - Command Line Interface

Console application for scripting and headless operation.

# Run the CLI
cargo run -p charger-controller-cli -- --help
# or
./target/debug/charger-cli --help

Commands:

• scan - Scan for available devices
• status [slot] - Get status of slots
• charge <slot> [options] - Start charging
• discharge <slot> [options] - Start discharging
• stop [slot] - Stop charging/discharging (all slots if no slot given)
• cycle <slot> [options] - Charge/discharge cycles for capacity testing
• refresh <slot> [options] - Deep cycle restoration (NiMH/NiCd)
• break-in <slot> [options] - Conditioning cycles for new batteries
• auto [slot] - Auto-detect chemistry and start charging
• monitor - Continuous slot monitoring
• debug - Debug BLE communication and view raw notifications

Battery Support

Chemistry	Target Voltage	Cutoff Voltage
Li-Ion	4.20V	3.20V
Li-Ion HV	4.35V	3.40V
LiFePO4	3.65V	2.90V
NiMH	1.65V	0.90V
NiCd	1.65V	0.90V
eneloop	1.65V	0.90V
NiZn	1.90V	1.10V
RAM	1.65V	0.90V
LTO	2.85V	1.80V
Na-Ion	4.00V	2.00V

Operation Modes

• Charge (0x00) - Standard charging
• Storage (0x01) - Charge/discharge to storage voltage
• Discharge (0x02) - Discharge battery
• Cycle (0x03) - Charge-discharge cycle for capacity testing
• Refresh (0x04) - Deep cycle for NiMH/NiCd
• BreakIn (0x05) - New battery conditioning

Quick Start

Building

# Build all crates
cargo build

# Build specific crate
cargo build -p mc5000-protocol
cargo build -p charger-controller
cargo build -p charger-controller-cli

Running the GUI

cargo run -p charger-controller

CLI Examples

# Scan for devices
charger-cli scan

# Get all slot status
charger-cli status

# Get status of slot 2
charger-cli status 2

# Charge slot 3 with Li-Ion at 2000mA
charger-cli charge 3 --chemistry liion --current 2000

# Charge slot 1 with NiMH at 1000mA
charger-cli charge 1 --chemistry nimh --current 1000

# Discharge slot 2 with Li-Ion at 500mA
charger-cli discharge 2 --chemistry liion --current 500

# Run cycle mode on slot 4 (Li-Ion)
charger-cli cycle 4 --chemistry liion --current 2000

# Run refresh mode on slot 3 (NiMH)
charger-cli refresh 3 --chemistry nimh --current 400 --discharge-current 250

# Break-in new NiMH batteries in slot 1
charger-cli break-in 1 --chemistry nimh --current 300

# Auto-detect battery chemistry and start charging all slots
charger-cli auto

# Auto-detect and charge slot 2
charger-cli auto 2

# Stop slot 2
charger-cli stop 2

# Stop all slots
charger-cli stop

# Continuous monitoring
charger-cli monitor

Auto-Charge Feature

The auto-charge feature automatically:

1. Detects battery chemistry from voltage
2. Starts charging at 100mA initial current
3. Measures internal resistance
4. Adjusts current based on: min(capacity × 0.5C, 300mV/R, 3000mA)

# CLI
charger-cli auto

# Or in GUI, click the ⚡ Auto button

Documentation

• docs/PROTOCOL.md - BLE protocol specification

Development

Dependencies

• Rust 1.70+
• btleplug (Bluetooth)
• iced 0.12 (GUI)
• clap 4.5 (CLI)
• tokio (async runtime)

Testing

# Run tests
cargo test

# Run with verbose output
MC5000_VERBOSE=1 cargo run -p charger-controller

Release Automation

• GitHub Actions workflow: .github/workflows/release.yml
• Manual pre-release build: run the build and release workflow with workflow_dispatch
• Release build: publishing a GitHub release triggers the same workflow and uploads assets to the release

Generated assets are separated into:

• mc5000-protocol crate package
• charger-cli portable archives for Linux, Windows, and macOS
• charger-controller portable archives for Linux and Windows
• MC5000Charger.app zipped bundle and MC5000Charger.dmg for macOS

Packaging metadata and auxiliary files live in packaging/, including the macOS bundling script at packaging/macos/create_app_bundle.sh.

License

MIT