PowerBoost 500 Shield - Recovering from Dead Battery

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drsousa
 
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PowerBoost 500 Shield - Recovering from Dead Battery

Post by drsousa »

I bought a PowerBoost shield to be able to power an Arduino Uno from a battery, on an application with LoRa communication. The shield works really well, and I'm very happy with the choice I made to power the Arduino, but I'm having one issue that I can't seem to be able to troubleshoot.

Whenever the battery dies, the device obviously turns off. When that happens, I then charge the battery. When it starts charging, it turns on, and I expect it to turn on the blue LED and start running as normal. Instead what happens is that it turns on the blue LED at a very low brightness, and doesn't seem to be running the sketch.

Pressing the reset button does nothing, however using the power switch to turn it on and off seems to fix it. The LED starts running at full brightness and the sketch runs.

The device is supposed to be encapsulated, so in the future there will be no possible access to the switch to turn the board on and off. Is there any way I can fix or alter this behaviour so that the board runs normally on recharging the battery?

Thanks for any help you can provide! I'm really at a complete loss here and would really appreciate some pointers.

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Franklin97355
 
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Re: PowerBoost 500 Shield - Recovering from Dead Battery

Post by Franklin97355 »

I think the issue is the low voltage of the "dead" battery as it is being charged. I'll ask those who know.

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drsousa
 
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Re: PowerBoost 500 Shield - Recovering from Dead Battery

Post by drsousa »

Franklin97355 wrote:I think the issue is the low voltage of the "dead" battery as it is being charged. I'll ask those who know.
Yeah, that sounds very plausible, voltage measured from the shield is indeed very low, at slightly under 3V. I just don't understand why toggling the power switch would fix it, it shouldn't change the voltage. Thank you for taking the time to help out and ask around!

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drsousa
 
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Re: PowerBoost 500 Shield - Recovering from Dead Battery

Post by drsousa »

A small update that may be interesting and help diagnose the problem.

Experiment #1:
Context:
  • Arduino (with PowerBoost Shield) is running (shield ON/OFF switch is set to ON).
  • Battery dies, but I do not touch the switch (still ON).
Action: I then start charging it, still without touching the ON/OFF switch (still ON).

Result:
  • Blue LED turns on at half brightness.
  • CHG LED turns on at full brightness.
  • If I stop charging, then everything turns off, regardless of how long I leave it charging for.
  • Measuring battery voltage shows it has not charged.
  • After stopping the charging, turning the switch on and off does nothing, everything stays off (obviously, since the battery has no juice).

Experiment #2:
Context:
  • Arduino (with PowerBoost Shield) is running (shield ON/OFF switch is set to ON).
  • Battery dies, but I do not turn off the shield.
Action: I then start charging it. While it is charging, I toggle the switch OFF, then back ON.

Result:
  • Blue LED turns on at full brightness.
  • CHG LED turns on at full brightness.
  • If I stop charging, then everything remains on. Turning the switch ON and OFF results in the expected behaviour, Arduino turns on and off.
  • Measuring battery voltage shows it has charged.
I have since tried a few other combinations of toggling and not toggling the switch at different times, and the results seem to be consistent. It appears that once the battery dies, it only actually charges if the shield's ON/OFF switch is toggled while it is charging. Any idea why this could be happening?

Again, thank you for any help the community can give, I'm at a complete loss here.
Last edited by drsousa on Tue Aug 02, 2022 11:42 am, edited 1 time in total.

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adafruit_support_bill
 
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Re: PowerBoost 500 Shield - Recovering from Dead Battery

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

I think this is due to the behavior of the battery protection circuit. Once it shuts down due to over-discharge, the protection circuit does not reset automatically. You need to disconnect the battery to reset it.

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drsousa
 
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Re: PowerBoost 500 Shield - Recovering from Dead Battery

Post by drsousa »

adafruit_support_bill wrote:I think this is due to the behavior of the battery protection circuit. Once it shuts down due to over-discharge, the protection circuit does not reset automatically. You need to disconnect the battery to reset it.
Thank you, that makes a lot of sense. Do you know of any way to reset the protection circuit upon receiving current form the charger? Maybe replacing the switch with a circuit?

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adafruit_support_bill
 
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Re: PowerBoost 500 Shield - Recovering from Dead Battery

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

I'll check with some of our circuit wizards to see if anyone has a solution for that.

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