Works with USB power, not with battery?

[codepope]

Set up badgy on USB power, things behave as expected. Board LED glows flickers blue. Board boots up.

Popped a LIR2450 in with no USB connection and... nothing. Won't wake up, won't reset for new sketches, no LEDs glowing.

Pop in USB with LIR2450 in place, board LED glows bright blue (charging?) and board functions.

Any suggestions as to trouble shooting this?

[chunkysteveo]

Just received my new (WHITE PCB) version and can echo the same here - Works fine on USB, appears to charge when an LIR2450 is in place (blue LED) and USB plugged in. Can switch on with an LIR2450 and USB connected, and interestingly when I disconnect the USB while still on it still works. Switch off and back on with just the LIR2450 and no power.. Have not looked into testing where power getting to, and also just testing another LIR2450, but this is odd behaviour indeed! It's like the USB connection trips it on, and without that initial USB trigger, it doesn't power up?

@codepope - if your board is working with both USB and LIR connected, disconnect the USB and does it still work on the battery? And then when you switch off and on, does it then fail to boot up?

Would be worth people advising which boards they have, I.E. I now have a blue PCB version with programming headers, and now a super cool white PCB with a serial-USB programming chip on the USB (very cool additon!)

[codepope]

That's exactly what I'm seeing. (White PCB too). USB+LIR boots, pull the USB, it carries on running, then switch off and back on and it fails to boot up.

[chunkysteveo]

hmmmm, maybe the power regulator is not detecting the battery voltage to switch on? Trying another battery here, but sounds like a valid problem.

[codepope]

Seems to be another symptom - when you do the switch on with USB and then pull the USB the default sketch reports multiple incorrect directions selected when the stick is touched. Plug the USB back in and it reports as normal.

[chunkysteveo]

Yes(!), did not notice that, but now also seeing that the button message reports randomly when going from USB to BATT, and it tends to report multiple button presses, and incorrect ones. It's actually reporting multiple presses as I type this and I am not touching it. Sounds like the button is not being de-bounced correctly, or something to do with the ground - unless on USB which may be grounding things correctly?? Could also tie in with the battery issue, maybe there is an incorrect ground issue when running on battery, so it won't boot up from battery?

[chunkysteveo]

Also - not sure if this is part of the schematic, but if you plug in the USB with switch ON (after it runs on BATT), it does not work. Switch if off and on again with the USB still plugged in, and it still does not work. I have to remove the USB, switch OFF, and then plug in the USB and switch ON. This is not how the blue version of the board works.

Additionally to the previous post - running on BATT when you power up with USB and then remove it - the Badgy stops responding after several minutes. So maybe it's not running on battery at all, but some residual energy stored up in the capacitors, but that doesn't make much sense?!

I am going to poke about with a multimeter and see what voltages we are seeing. Have tried this with three LIR2450 batteries too.

[chunkysteveo]

@sqfmi - any thoughts on this odd behaviour of the new boards? Noticed the use a new charge IC too, the TP4054.

[Flet]

Same exact issue here :(

New white PCB. Tried two different fully charged batteries.

@sqfmi any thoughts?

[chunkysteveo]

Oh ho.... Huston, we have a problem..! 😣

[sqfmi]

Sounds like it could be a hardware issue with the new batch, let us investigate the issue and get back to you guys shortly.

[chadvavra]

I just received 2 white PCB units and can also confirm that they do not boot, or even power the esp on battery power.

[sqfmi]

Brief update, it seems while on battery power only, you are able to turn it on by resetting it. This can be done by using a metal object to short the reset pin with the metal shield (e.g. paperclip, key, etc.):

Hacky solution for now, will continue to diagnose the root cause.

[codepope]

Doesn’t seem to be working for me.

[chunkysteveo]

I can confirm this hack works for me and boots the ESP8266 on battery power.

A better connection to "tap" @codepope would be the lower pad of the Lipo JST connection (which is ground). Not the upper pad as that is the positive to BATT. The casing didn't seem to give a good reliable ground connection, but turn on the switch, put a wire (I used a dupoint breadboard wire) on the RESET pin imaged above, and then tap the lower JST pad - the ESP should flash it's blue light on boot. (don't tap the left side pads of the JST connection, these don't seem to be tied to ground, just mechanical fixings)

[codepope]

@chunkysteveo Yes, the JST pad is easier to tap, but still no joy. To ensure I was getting a reset, I applied USB power and ground tapping the reset line did reset.