Powerboost 1000c does not power with battery alone

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abinning
 
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Powerboost 1000c does not power with battery alone

Post by abinning »

SOLVED
The 3rd party battery had the wires backwards from what adafruit uses. I reversed the LiPo connector and it works.


Hello everyone!
I am trying to use the PB1kC to power my Pi Zero via a 10AH LiPo. It works fine when the power and battery are both plugged in, but does not power when it is just the battery. Do I need to short a connection somewhere for it to work on battery alone?

Battery is charged
Image

Batt&Ground resistance looks good
Image

PB1kC lights look good (Power is on, LiPo is chargable, LiPo is done charging)
Image

Pi0 gets powered just fine
Image

Removing usb power the battery no longer powers the Pi0
Image
Last edited by abinning on Mon Aug 20, 2018 5:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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johnpark
 
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Re: Powerboost 1000c does not power with battery alone

Post by johnpark »

That's odd, no, you don't need to set any jumpers or anything. From the last picture you posted it doesn't look like the blue LED is lit when you battery is plugged in, so something else seems to be going on. Does the blue LED light when you don't have the Pi Zero plugged in?

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abinning
 
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Re: Powerboost 1000c does not power with battery alone

Post by abinning »

The blue Power LED on the PB1kC only comes on with USB power, it never lights up with the battery alone. Plugging in the Pi0 or not makes no difference. I will attach a picture of the solder job. Maybe there is a problem there?
Power Boost Solder
Power Boost Solder
PB1kC.PNG (670.18 KiB) Viewed 319 times

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johnpark
 
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Re: Powerboost 1000c does not power with battery alone

Post by johnpark »

Yes, it looks like you may have some cold solder joints there. Here's a good page on diagnosing: https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-gui ... n-problems

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abinning
 
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Re: Powerboost 1000c does not power with battery alone

Post by abinning »

Ok, I cleaned up the solder a bit. Still no dice.
After plugging in the LiPo I checked the voltage on the Batt & Gnd pins, .408V should that not be 3.7?

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johnpark
 
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Re: Powerboost 1000c does not power with battery alone

Post by johnpark »

Drat, was hoping that was it. Yes, you should have about 3.7V on the Batt and GND. Is there any chance that battery needs a good charging? I know your battery measured 3.76V, but I wonder if there's a chance that if it's capacity is too low it's not able to supply enough current for the PowerBoost to do it's thing.

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abinning
 
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Re: Powerboost 1000c does not power with battery alone

Post by abinning »

Well the power boost shows the "Done" charging light, and also the Adafruit Micro LiPo Charger shows it fully charged. I have ordered a 2nd one, maybe I just got a bad board? I will see if the new one works when it shows up in a couple days. I also ordered an adafruit 6600 LiPo to see if maybe my battery is the issue.

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adafruit_support_mike
 
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Re: Powerboost 1000c does not power with battery alone

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

One of the photos above shows the PowerBoost's green and yellow LEDs lit at the same time, which indicates a problem with the battery. Do you have any other LiPo you could use to test the PowerBoost?

There's a chance that the 10Ah cell's internal resistance is low enough that the MCP73871 LiPo charger thinks it's damaged.

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abinning
 
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Re: Powerboost 1000c does not power with battery alone

Post by abinning »

I will have another battery this week to test, and I will measure the battery resistance. Thanks for the tip.

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abinning
 
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Re: Powerboost 1000c does not power with battery alone

Post by abinning »

Ok, my new Power Boost 1kc and Adafruit 6600Mah LiPo came in today. I soldered up the new one, then tested both batteries on both chips.
The power light comes on and it powers the Pi0 if I use the Adafruit LiPo. This works on both PB1kc. Also on both chips, it does not work with the 3rd party 10kMh LiPo battery.

So what is the difference between batteries that the PB1kc detects that causes it to not use the other battery? Is there an inexpensive balance charger so I can use 2x 6600 batteries wired in parallel to achieve the capacity I need?

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abinning
 
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Re: Powerboost 1000c does not power with battery alone

Post by abinning »

Found the problem. Reversed polarity on the 3rd party battery. I cut and reversed the end of the cable and it all works.

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johnpark
 
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Re: Powerboost 1000c does not power with battery alone

Post by johnpark »

Oh no! The old third party battery reverse polarity trick! Glad you've gotten it working.

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abinning
 
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Re: Powerboost 1000c does not power with battery alone

Post by abinning »

Thank you everyone for the help.

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