Hello!
I bought this lipo battery that works well with my RT1062 Lithium Ion Polymer Battery with Short Cable - 3.7V 420mAh : ID 4236 : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits and it charges successfully using this external charger: Adafruit Micro Lipo - USB LiIon/LiPoly charger [v2] : ID 1304 : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits
According to the product page, if I connect the RT1062 to USB, it should also charge the external battery: “A LiPo battery connector compatible with 3.7V LiPo batteries commonly sold online for hobbyist robotic applications with battery charging support via USB”
However, I have tried this and left it connected for extended periods of time and it never seems to work. Do I need to configure anything in the main.py script in order to charge the battery?
Thanks!
This is all done in hardware. Note that we charge at 100mA rate. I’ve verified that the charger works… it should finish charging. The red light on the right LED on the board will turn on when charging and then turn off when finished.
So, with USB, the green power LED will turn orange when charging and then turn back to green when done.
Thanks Kwabena for the quickly reply!
Attached photo for reference once I plug into USB:
Once I plug in the USB the right LED does turn green but it also starts running my main.py script and in it, I put the device into deepsleep after some processing to save battery but it seems doing so also stops the charging process (the LED light goes off).
Does the battery still charge when it is in deep sleep?
The battery will still charge in deep sleep, but, the charging LED is not powered anymore so as to not draw any battery power. So, you won’t be able to tell if it’s charging or not.
The circuit works this way because I designed it to turn the green Power Good LED off when in deep sleep. The charge LED shares the same RGB LED so it turns off too.
It could be possible to make the LED driving logic more complex to power the LED in deepsleep when USB or VIN is available. However, when in deep sleep the LED is not powered. So, it will not be on as of right now.
I’ll see if I can improve this circuit in the future and fix this indication issue. I think I can do it by powering the LED all the time and just using one more transistor to switch off PGOOD when in deep sleep.
Thanks Kwabena - we’ve tried it with multiple RT1062 units and we are still not able to successfully charge it via USB connection. To clarify - we are not charging it via USB to a laptop where the IDE is, we are just using a standard USB charger that is plugged into the wall. Are there any specific requirements to enable charging?
Thanks in advance!
Hi, it just runs when there’s power via USB or VIN. It’s a hardware circuit.
As long as there is VIN or VUSB it will charge. The current limit is set to 100mA. Safey timer is 6.25 hours. Temperature sensing is disabled.
Does your charger require that the host connected to it do USB signaling? The processor will not do this in low-power. We do not do any USB battery charging handshakes.
@openmvfan01 - Can you PM me? Let’s jump on a quick video call to debug this. This circuit works. So, something odd must be going on.
