Having trouble with Helders Power Board

[Tinkerman92]

So I'm not sure if it's my wiring, if I'm doing something wrong or just possibly have a bad board.

I have 2 problems with my board currently:

1st problem: Random brownouts
I'm not sure if it's that the batteries are low, I measured the voltage and they were 3.3v if I remember correctly, but these cells are rated for 2.8v or 2.6v if I remember correctly. I dont see any shorts but I cant guarentee that since I'm constantly moving the top and bottom lid around. But I watched the voltage in the output drop to 0v using my multimeter.

2nd problem: No I2C communication
No matter what I do I cannot get the Pi and Helders PSU to talk to each other, I followed the instructions to install the scripts and have an empty battery on my screen. I know their not communicating because I'll run a jstest /dev/input/js1 and none of the values change at all.

I'm including some pictures of my wiring ignore the mess.
Also ignore the tiny wires going from the PSU to the GPIO 5v and ground those were just to make sure it wasnt the pi's fuse preventing the pi and helders from talking to each other.

[VeteranGamer]

not sure about the batteries.....

but have you also enabled I2C via the setting....
this can easily be done by selecting Raspi-Config and then I think its interfacing option (but dont hold me to that)....




.

[Tinkerman92]

Yes sir, I made sure the setup script enabled it in the boot/config.txt and after your suggestion also tried setting it via raspi-config for good measure

[Helder]

Power issues can be a few things like the wire thickness and length you want 24AWG or thicker like 22AWG and keep them short. The other issue that alot of people seem to do is power the PSU through a usb connection and it's not outputting the correct voltage the PSU NEEDS a battery soldered on to be able to properly output the boosted voltage.

Really hard to make heads or tails from that spaghetti bunch of wires but I see alot of thin wires which I bet some are being used for power.

[Tinkerman92]

Power issues can be a few things like the wire thickness and length you want 24AWG or thicker like 22AWG and keep them short. The other issue that alot of people seem to do is power the PSU through a usb connection and it's not outputting the correct voltage the PSU NEEDS a battery soldered on to be able to properly output the boosted voltage.

Really hard to make heads or tails from that spaghetti bunch of wires but I see alot of thin wires which I bet some are being used for power.

Attaching a picture with some of the mess out of the way. I'm using 28awg for power but have everything homerun to the PSU to reduce load on the cables and reduce possible noise. (The teensy and external USB dont have 28 awg but that's it)



I didnt supply power to the pi via gpio but instead supplied it via testpad under the the microusb power in so the pi could still be protected by the poly fuse.

2 individually protected 18650 cells in parallel soldered onto the battery pins

Even tried wrapping the i2c wires around the ground wire incase it was a noise problem

[Helder]

I'm using 28awg for power but have everything homerun to the PSU to reduce load on the cables and reduce possible noise. (The teensy and external USB dont have 28 awg but that's it)

Again you need to use 22-24AWG for power output from the PSU to the pi or whatever you're using to power off the PSU or it will loose amperage since the wires can not handle that much amperage and you get lightning bolts and you need to keep wires as short as possible.

So you say you have issues with the i2c? but are you using the battery monitoring scripts to activate the monitoring like HoolyHoo's mintyPi battery scripts or the OneForAll on my github?

[Tinkerman92]

I'm using 28awg for power but have everything homerun to the PSU to reduce load on the cables and reduce possible noise. (The teensy and external USB dont have 28 awg but that's it)

Again you need to use 22-24AWG for power output from the PSU to the pi or whatever you're using to power off the PSU or it will loose amperage since the wires can not handle that much amperage and you get lightning bolts and you need to keep wires as short as possible.

So you say you have issues with the i2c? but are you using the battery monitoring scripts to activate the monitoring like HoolyHoo's mintyPi battery scripts or the OneForAll on my github?

Sorry in the middle of moving so I havent been able to test the power again yet, migrated to 18awg(its what I had) but yes i used the OneForAll script and soldered the pins according to the pinout. I'm gonna try the minty script next time I get a chance to sitdown.