I've been seeing the issue come up pretty frequently:
so I felt it was appropriate to come up with a guide on how to troubleshoot power related issues with the mintyPi.My mintyPi powers on when connected to a usb power source but not when it's supposed to get power from the battery
For starters, you're going to need a decent digital multimeter. If you don't have a multimeter don't bother wasting your time reading this guide because you don't have the proper tools to troubleshoot this issue. Multimeters are pretty cheap, you can pick up a decent one for around $20 at your local tool store. Here's a link to the one that I bought: http://www.homedepot.com/p/Klein-Tools- ... /204367271
To resolve this problem we're going to need to figure out exactly what parts are receiving power. (you're going to need your handy multimeter!)
Checking continuity
You'll need to check to see if you have power and ground continuity from the Pi to the mintyPi PCB. To achieve this, you need to set your multimeter in continuity mode and test your 5v and GND connections like so:
Testing Pi 5v ContinuityShow
With your multimeter in continuity mode, place one test probe on the 5V GPIO port on the Pi and the VCC pad on the mintyPi PCB. If you have solid continuity you should get a solid ring from your multimeter
Testing Pi GND ContinuityShow
With your multimeter in continuity mode, place one test probe on the GND GPIO port on the Pi and the GND pad on the mintyPi PCB. Once again, if you have solid continuity you should get a solid ring from your multimeter
Checking voltage
Now you're getting a solid ring from 5v and GND from the Pi to the mintyPi PCB, you'll need to test that you're getting sufficient voltage. To achieve this, you'll need to use your multimeter again (notice something here?) but this time you won't be using it in continuity mode. You'll need to set your multimeter to test for DC voltage.
To test for DC voltage, you'll need to connect the multimeter probes like so:
Testing mintyPi PCB voltageShow
With your multimeter in DC voltage test mode, place the RED multimeter probe on VCC and the BLACK probe on GND
Now if you're not getting a voltage reading at all, you have some other problems you need to sort out before you can move forward.... You'll need to check that you have your multimeter is in the correct mode to test for DC voltage. You'll need to check that you have a solid soldering connection on all wires leading up to the mintyPi PCB. You can go ahead and test the PCB for voltage again once you've verified that you have good connections,
Now that you've verified that the mintyPi PCB is getting voltage, you isolated the culprit..... The Pi!
Now you'll need to check that you're getting voltage from the mintyPi PCB to the Pi:
Testing voltage from mintyPi PCB to the PiShow
With your multimeter in DC voltage test mode, place the RED multimeter probe on the 5v GPIO port on the Pi and the BLACK probe on GND pad on the mintyPi PCB
I hope you found this guide helpful! This was my first guide so I apologize if it was hard to read. If there's anything I missed, or if you have further questions, please feel free to post a comment and I will do my best to help you.