Using a Portable Battery Pack with the PiBorg Reverse

Submitted by webiken on Mon, 06/12/2017 - 23:36

Forums:

Hello,

I ordered a PiDiddy Borg from you guys a few months ago and it's been great! Many thanks for a truly well designed product!

The only issue I have with it is the battery design. I use rechargeable batteries and I usually have to recharge them everyday when I am running any image recognition (TensorFlow).

I ordered this battery pack from Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Intocircuit-26000mAh-Capacity-Portable-External/d...

The USB output is only 5V so that's no good, but the DC output ranges from 12 to 19V which is perfect for the reverse.

However I am having a problem: I cut off a DC cable at one end, connected the wires to the PiBorg Reverse, and connected it to the battery pack. However when I turn on the pack, it almost looks like it shorts. It gives a green indicator on the voltage then dies. I have to reconnect it to the input to make it work again.

I tried the same directly on a motor and on this other driver I have and it worked fine https://www.pololu.com/product/2756

Any thoughts on what's happening here?

Thanks,
Sam

piborg's picture

piborg

Tue, 06/13/2017 - 09:30

It sounds like this part of the pack's behaviour might be causing the trouble:

Power conversion: if the output ports, 1*USB(5V 2.1A)+1*DC(12V/4A, 16V/3.5A or 19V/3A), are not connected to any digital device or the connected device is already fully charged, Intocircuit PC26000 will shut down automatically and goes into a sleep mode to conserve power

My guess is that the PicoBorg Reverse is not drawing enough power from the pack, so it thinks it is a fully charged device. Because of this it then goes into sleep mode, which shuts off the power.

Without having a better understanding of the exact requirements that cause the pack to go to sleep it is hard to say what alterations would prevent the trouble. At a guess though I suspect the Pololu driver is drawing a bit more power when it is not trying to run the motors, enough to persuade the battery pack that it is a device which is still charging.

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