USB / DC / Solar Lithium Ion/Polymer charger load sharing pr

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aeetos
 
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USB / DC / Solar Lithium Ion/Polymer charger load sharing pr

Post by aeetos »

I have a USB / DC / Solar Lithium Ion/Polymer charger from adafruit, recently purchased, with an adafruit 3.7v LiPoly cell and an adafruit solar panel.

There seems to be an issue with the device not passing current from it's DC input sources to the load.

I plugged in a fully-charged battery (charged by another device), wired a solar cell to the DC input pins, and connected my project to the load. The load received power , and when I put the solar cell in the sun the amber charging light lit up. I thought all was well, until a few days later when the project stopped functioning. I opened it up and found that the voltage to the load was 0.388v. No LEDs were lit.

I live in the northwest and we don't specialize in sun up here, so I plugged the charger into an adafruit 5v 2a power supply. Both LEDs lit (green and amber), but my circuit remained dead. When I measured the voltage going to the load, I found it was still about 0.388v.

I let the charger sit for a while (~3 hours), but the voltage to the load never changed. I removed power and the voltage was still ~0.380v, suggesting the battery was never charged.

Any idea what could be causing this?

Full disclosure: I do have a 10k thermistor soldered in as directed (with the default resistor removed), but as I understand it, that should work, and even if something was wrong, power should still flow from the DC input to the load, right? I'm also relatively certain I didn't get power passing when I first started working with this, before I put the thermistor in place, and just assumed it was because I didn't have a battery connected yet.

Thanks.

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adafruit_support_bill
 
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Re: USB / DC / Solar Lithium Ion/Polymer charger load sharin

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

What is the load? Post some photos showing your soldering and connections to the board.

aeetos
 
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Re: USB / DC / Solar Lithium Ion/Polymer charger load sharin

Post by aeetos »

Sure, attached. If it's not clear, the red and black to the right of the cap and looping around to the left of the xbee are from the solar cell. The white and grey wires to the left of the cap are plugged in to the LEDs. The white wires at the top are the thermistor.

The load is an Arduino Pro Mini and an XBee Pro. The pic was taken when it was working but not in the sun, meaning, it had power from the battery. Hence the glowy LEDs on the xbee and arduino.

That help?

Side note: the forum let me use a post title that was too big to fit; feel free to trim that down.
Attachments
sensor-charger.jpg
sensor-charger.jpg (733.41 KiB) Viewed 341 times

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adafruit_support_bill
 
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Re: USB / DC / Solar Lithium Ion/Polymer charger load sharin

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

If you contact [email protected] with a link to this thread, we can replace the charger for you.

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