Bug Bounty: Electron not booting after battery discharges completely

Troubleshooting
65

I’ve updated to 0.6.1-rc.1 and re-tested (this time with an adjustable 3A regulated power supply BK Precision). I tested all sleep modes. I also tested with a second Electron to verify hardware is good. It’s important to note that the measured SOC of the battery during these tests was between 40-60%. I also tested using SEMI_AUTOMATIC mode and System thread enabled.

For all graphs: White line (input voltage) is increased manually with Coarse adjustment. Red line (input current through Vin).

  1. No sleep mode. PMIC functions ON.

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  2. No sleep mode. PMIC functions OFF. White line (input voltage) is increased. Red line (input current) peaks at 550-600mA.

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  3. SLEEP_MODE_DEEP mode ON, PMIC functions ON.

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  4. SLEEP_MODE_DEEP mode ON, PMIC functions ON, Electron #2!

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  5. SLEEP_NETWORK_STANDBY mode ON, PMIC functions ON.

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  6. System.sleep(long seconds) mode ON, PMIC functions ON.

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  7. I think this might be a smoking gun. In this graph, I let the main loop run but didn’t turn on the Cell modem. So does the Cell modem have to be on for the charge current to increase?

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In conclusion: In ANY sleep mode (SLEEP_MODE_DEEP, SLEEP_NETWORK_STANDBY, and normal sleep) and also with Cell modem off, charge current is limited to 100mA. Adding PMIC functions do not increase charge current past the default value. The only way to get up to the highest charge current of 550mA is while the main code is running and no sleep mode is assessed.