Electron Asset Tracker V2 Battery Issues

Hardware
1

Hi

I’m trying to power my Asset tracker using a different battery : this battery

The device / project works fine when powered by USB or the normal 3.7v lipo battery provided with the device.

So looking at the battery above i think it has enough output to power the device… but it seems to stalling when the gps module starts up and then it grinds to a halt.

Its hard to debug it as i can’t plug in the USB!

any help greatly appreciated.

2

The added power draw of the GPS unit may be pulling the battery voltage to low causing the issue your seeing. The only difference between the LiPo and USB power is the higher voltage those sources are feeding the Electron.

You may need a booster circuit to keep the battery voltage high enough for proper operation.

Others have used this successfuly with the same battery type you are using:

1 Like
3

Hi - Thanks.
Just need to try and source something like it in the UK.

4

I’m sure they ship to the UK

5

they do - just the cost of the shipping.
I’ll have a hunt to see if i can get anything more local first
But thank you for the help.

6

If i were to use a slightly bigger battery such as this: bigger battery which is 3.7v.

I believe they should handle the peak currents.

thanks

7

Also, the highest Electron current draw is during blinking cyan. You may want to consider waiting until Particle.connected() is true before turning on the GPS.

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8

Thanks.
I’m not connecting to the particle cloud, but instead my own server.
Although the modem is only made to connect once the GPS has completed its positioning / timed out.

I know it can connect to my server as i have a ‘Hello world’ connection when my device is hard reset.
Its just once all the other modules start coming online the power demand is greater.
I’d rather find a better battery than add more components to the project.

9

I am currently testing one of these.
Have you used one on the particle asset tracker v2 board? If so have you experienced any issues with the device not waking from accelerometer.

Thanks

10

Make sure you use the AssetTrackerRK library, not the official AssetTracker library, which will not work properly.

Also make sure you set the time to detect no movement to be a long time period. Basically, if you’re currently moving when you go to sleep the Electron will no longer wake up on movement until you wake up by time and are no longer moving.

11

thanks - I’m already using that :slight_smile:

It works absolutely fine when i don’t use the booster. So i’m assuming its something to do with battery current.
I’m currently testing with the standard particle battery rather than anything different at the moment.

I’m testing it sat on my desk - it will wake OK from a reset or on time, just not from the WKP pin.

12

Its now started to work…
Which is awesome… Time to setting off for the weekend to see how much i can get out of it.

13

You might want to add some logic go back to the calibration loop if WKP is high at the time you’re about to sleep. The problem is that if WKP is high at the time you go to sleep the rising edge won’t be detected if it later goes low then high again while asleep.

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