Is it possible to charge a lipo battery connected to a battery shield and a Photon possible?

Hardware
1

I have made a cube with a 500 mah battery connected to a battery shield and a Particle Photon. This cube is sealed except for 2 sides so I can still access the ‘SETUP button’, ‘RESET button’ & micro-USB port.

I still have a few issues which I will probably have to make a new improved version for. However, I want to see which issues I might be able to solve with the cube I have at this moment.

Issues being:

  • When it’s fully sealed, I can’t see in which state my Photon board is (green blink, blue blink, …)
  • I can not recharge the battery when the cube is closed
  • I can’t access the ‘SETUP button’ on the board which I have to hold down to be able to connect to a new wifi network through the app

Most of the issues I will have to solve by making a new prototype and adjusting some aspects. But maybe the battery issue I can solve with making a dock that can wirelessly charge my cube?

I don’t know if that is possible when my cube is already made? Feedback about my other issues are welcome as well!

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Sorry @ScruffR for double posting and such, I am new to this community and am pretty desperate since I have to be ready on June 1st…

2

I have made a cube with a photon and some buttons inside of it. To make it work without using any cables I made sure I used a battery and battery shield. Doing this brings up a few problems tho.

First of all, I can’t recharge the battery since the cube is sealed.

Secondly, I can’t add a new wifi network since I have to press the physical reset or setup button on the board itself. I use the Particle app in my previous configs and just held the setup button so it would search for a new network which I then setup on the app

My question is: Is there a way to get the photon into ‘wifi searching mode’ wirelessly so when I take my cube to a new location, I don’t have to open it up (which i can’t) to add the new wifi?

Or maybe there is another way of changing/adding new wifi to the photon board wirelessly?

3

When your code takes care of that, it is possible.
The WiFi object does provide the required functions for it.

If you add the respective hardware to your project then you can virtuallly do anything - inductive charging would be one of these things.

But exposing USB (or any other set of pins required for your needs - there are multiple ways to do what you want) would be the most logical IMO.

4

I use the code from here: Providing access to the Mode Button and RGB LED from GPIO and use a magnetic reed switch inside the box. I set a 5 second timeout so the magnet has to be next to the box for 5 seconds before going into wifi listening mode.

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