Hello, I’m working with a Photon. I have a 9W solar panel , SparkFun lipo fuel guage , LiPo charge controller , Adafruit Powerboost , and then I hook up various sensors, in this case an SHT-31 Temperature and humidity sensor over I2C. I have three units up and running. One has been running for over 2 …

@ScruffR Yeah, that was my first thought. To the touch it felt quite cool, but this is anecdotal to be sure. I have a temperature probe for the multimeter, I’ll give that a whirl tomorrow as well. But my intuition is that it’s something else. Thanks for the input.

My guess is the Voltage from that large 9W panel (spec’d at 7.7V) is causing problems for the Photon. Once Re-Charging stops for the Li-Po, the Photon is likely seeing a unsafe Voltage. What is your power path (it’s hard to tell with all the extra “power” gadgets)?

[Edit] Deleted…I didn’t pay attention to the Photograph. After a quick look at your Code, it appears the intention is to sleep for 2 minutes, then awake for 1 minute (I could be wrong). If that’s correct, you might can significantly reduce your duty cycle. The Photon can read the sensors while it…

Had a look at the powerboost 1000C - this should output 5V - actually 5.2V - so I am not that clear why it would be outputting 6.5V unless it isn’t working OR the GND is going negative? You definitely need to measure with a multi-meter when it goes off.

@Rftop Yeah, it’s sleeping for 2min now and waking for a minute. I had the wake time very slim like you said 5-10 seconds, but it’s really hard to flash new updates when deployed in the field w/ such narrow windows… I’m still in development mode really so I kept it at a minute to have just enough t…

@armor Yeah, that was my thinking as well. I haven’t dug into the board level components on that Adafruit device but the output is set to 5.2V like you said to account for cable attenuation or schottky diodes on the USB inputs of devices that cause a little voltage drop. Just for clarity… The sign…

I took some multimeter readings today: Temp: 83-84F with the probe right on the surface of the Photon. So I don’t think it’s a thermal issue… Voltage: 6.16V coming out of 5V & GND from the Adafruit PowerBoost 1000 PCB. The over voltage seems like the culprit. According to the datasheets it appear…

[image] davidcool: Adafruit Powerboost 1000 To me it looks like the solar regulator out put is the culprit - you need to replace the Power boost with a buck/boost converter like this... [image] VERTER 5V USB Buck-Boost - 500mA from 3V-5V / 1000ma from 5V-12V Convert just about an…

The powerboost 1000 isn’t meant to output over 5.2V - so it looks like that isn’t working correctly. The problem with using an Voltage Regulator is the dropout level - you maybe able to find one that outputs 5V and has a drop out of 0.2V or use a zener diode?

:radioactive:CAUTION Crotchety old engineer post ahead…:radioactive: It’s a little unclear how everything is connected together, but it seems like you have an excess voltage that doesn’t have anywhere to go. You could add a voltage-activated bleed resistor which would be easy enough to implement, b…

Photon white led w/ solar panel

Troubleshooting

shanevanj September 25, 2019, 8:10am 30

Have you looked at this project

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Photon white led w/ solar panel

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