DS2438 battery monitor: how to connect load
The charge current is through the battery (VDD), then Rsens, then to ground. Rf is just a ref for the VSENS- input. When charging VSENS+ is always positive compared to VSENS-. Please re-think the flow of the charge, from battery + to ground. Your synopsis is true-when the battery is under load. This paragraph from the DS2438 IC specs explains that this IC measures both charge and discharge current:[The voltage across current sense resistor RSENS is measured by the ADC and the result is placed in the Current Register in two’s complement format. The sign (S) of the result, indicating charge or discharge, resides in the most significant bit of the Current Register, as shown in Table 3. See “Memory Map” in Figure 7 for the Current Register address location.]