Flashing Green for A Long Time

Hi,

I am using particle Boron 2G/3G in a product, and around 10 day after I deployed the product, it stopped sending data and I had to recall the device. When I got the device for inspection, it blinked green for a few seconds, then blinked white once, then green for few seconds again and so on. When I connected the device to a lithium ion battery it worked great! I replicated the problem couple times, and the battery seems to be the solution for this problem. What should I do to prevent this from happening keeping in mind that I am using the USB port to power up the device?

@alqurashim for Boron 2G/3G, you should always have a battery connected to compensate for high current consumption while connecting.

Thank you so much for your reply. Can I just have a power adapter with high current? If yes, how high?

@alqurashim, it’s not just a matter of high current but how quickly the supply can respond to the demand. This is why the battery is used because very few power supplies can perform as required.

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The problem is that we can not afford to hook a battery to our product at this stage, so it must be plugged through USB.

@rickkas7, any recommended USB power supply that could remove the need for a battery?

@alqurashim Even the tiniest of batteries I think would work to meet the burst power demands. This is used while also keeping the USB plugged in. I didn’t test it myself but even something like this would be a relatively low cost, simple but effective solution I would think: There might be a few ways to shave another dollar or two off using a capacitor maybe? Not sure. If it was me, I’d first try something like this.

@jgskarda, this battery may not suffice if cellular signal is weak and getting a connection takes time or multiple retries. With the 2G/3G, the “peak” current demand can be as high as 2 Amps!

A good 2A USB charger will often work with 2G/3G. A 500 mA laptop USB port will almost never work without a battery.

One thing to be careful of is that some chargers do not implement DPDM, the protocol USB host and hubs use to determine how much current they can source. When this happens, the Boron can default to 500 mA, which is not enough. Printing out the input current limit values can help determine if this is the case. Changing chargers or overriding the configuration can be solutions.

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Hi,

Thank you you so much for your suggestion. I used the below power adapter along with particle USB, and it does not seem to solve the problem. What other suggestions do you have for me?

Hi