I am realizing that the maximum output of the Battery Babysitter connected to a 3.7V battery is not high enough to power an Arduino ESP32. Is there anything I can implement so that it gets at least 6V?
Edit: Would a Buck Boost Converter be sufficient?
I’m not sure what’s wrong with this circuit here. The ESP32 doesn’t turn on when the Babysitter is turned on. However, if I plug in the ESP32 via USB, the Buck LED turns on for some reason.
Solar Moisture Sensor Drawing.pdf (59.1 KB)
Another update - there is no voltage coming out of the babysitter with the below configuration. The battery is fully charged.
Flip that switch on the right side of your most recent photo to ON
Check out our guide for more detailed info about charge rates, etc Battery Babysitter Hookup Guide - SparkFun Learn
It’s still not outputting anything despite being on.
Gotcha. You’re testing the lower leads, right? (VOUT)
I’m wondering if your terminal block is struggling to make a good connection (it looks a bit crooked and might have a manufacturing defect)
Yes, you’d need a boost converter to step-up the voltage to 5v…this would be ideal https://www.sparkfun.com/lipower-boost-converter.html in-place of the battery babysitter, then use the battery babysitter to charge the battery
I’m not quite sure I understand. Is the configuration not sufficient?
The minimum Vin for the ESP32 is 6V so wouldn’t stepping up to 5V before the Babysitter be unnecessary if it’s going to be stepped-up to 6V after anyway?
Which esp32 are you using? (I assumed the 6v was a typo, nearly all I’ve seen are around 3 volts).
It would suffer from what you mentioned above, the max output from a lipo only is the battery’s voltage…if you need 6v you’d need the one you mentioned instead
Arduino Nano ESP32
The solder connections looked okay but I’m trying to remove the current terminal and replace it.
I tried a new Babysitter which is outputting about 3V, however the buck boost is only outputting 0.7V. I am using a 680 Ohm resistor and based off my calculation, I thought that would output 8.7V.
Edit: Does it need to be powered/grounded with the Vin and GND pin?
Edit 2: When set to 3V and 5V it works but not when its set to the custom setting
It turns out I used the wrong resistor with the Buck Boost. The equation in the hookup guide solves for resistance in the thousands which I did not see.
