I have 2 brand new ESP32 Thing Plus C6 boards and two brand new Lipo’s that was all ordered at the same time. I just plugged the Lipo 3.7 volt battery into the socket on the board and felt the board instantly get hot then that expensive smoke came out. I immediately unplugged but it was to late. All I have is the PCB and batter in my hand, not even connected to any devices or a protoboard. I looked at the Thing’s PCB and it shows a +/- where the battery connects and when you line the plug up the black wire is on the + and red on the -. I can see chip next to “3V3” silkscreen is bubbled up. The board still boots and works via USB power but the Lipo is ruined. I verified the battery polarity and charge is correct with regards to the wire colors. Red + and Black - with the battery at 3.916 volts. This appears to be a manufacturing issue that rendered my board useless when using the battery. Is this a common issue with the distribution of this series of boards? Can I get 2 new boards and 2 correctly wired batteries to replace them?
Quick update.
I removed the wires from the battery connector and swapped them. This fixed the issue with powering the chip but I did lose the charging circuit. My other ESP32 is still functioning properly since I didn’t plug the battery into it. I was able to prove that both batteries powered both ESP32’s but now I have one dead ESP32 charge circuit.
Glad you were able to figure it out and modify your batteries! Sorry it cost you a charge circuit though.
Sadly there’s no standard polarity for JST connectors on lipo batteries. Sparkfun does follow their own standards on their boards though so any Sparkfun made board will have + and - in the same place. At least that helps a bit.
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