Hi,
I am testing the SparkFun Battery Babysitter with 5000mAh & 8000mAh battery and arduino board.
The battery reading is unstable. Here are my results
5000mAh - At O% when I connect charger to usb and after 5 minutes, SOC reaches to 100%. I assume this is battery problem
8000mAh - This is bit stable but in many incidents the SOC reading jumps to 100% even the actual battery charge is around 80%.
Is anyone faces the same problem?
Hi shrzpk,
Your first issue with the 5000mAh battery definitely sounds like a problem with the battery. Is it a single-cell LiPo battery? Do you have a multimeter available to test the actual voltage present on the battery? If so, please use that and see if your battery is functioning properly. Also, check the datasheet(s) of your batteries to see what their optimal charge rate is. Usually, this is at 1C but it can vary depending on the battery.
As for the fluctuations for SoC for the 8000mAh battery, I’m not sure what would cause that based on the information here. Can you please provide more information about your setup? What type of Arduino are you using? Are you only testing when powering from USB? If so, what type of USB port (eg. 2, 3.0, etc.) are you using? Finally, in order to get a better look at what may be going on, please take a few photos of your board(s) and the circuit you have it in and attach them to your reply. Please do your best to make sure they are clear and well-lit. Also, I believe our “Attach Image” tool is not working properly on the Forums right now so if you have issues attaching them, please host them on another site (eg. Imgur, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.) and link to that source.
I have attached another single cell 3.7v 1500mAh lipo battery which shows capacity as 1364mAh. The charging blue LED cutoff when SOC reaches to 85%, second case 90% and third case 92%.
The question is how to find the battery power in percentage remaining? This board gives unexpected results and logics are not correct as expected.
Can you please guide me the correct figures which ables me to show the battery power (%)?
The board cut off the charging to the battery as it reaches to 84%. First of all, battery is 1500mAh and this shows 1364mAh. Is anyone tested this board as this seems like wastage of time?
SoC = 84%
Voltage = 4199 mV
Current AVG = 159 mA
Capacity REMAIN = 1145mAh
Capacity Full = 1364 mAh
Power = 668 mW
Health = 91%
Forum is not active and the team is quite after sale. No support, data is wrong and unreliable
Hi again,
We would be happy to help you troubleshoot this issue, but I need more information about how you are using the Battery Babysitter before we can progress. Can you please answer the questions I asked in my first post about how you are using the board as well as take a few photos of your Battery Babysitter and the circuit you have them in?
I have attached the below image of Sparkfun babysitter with ESP8266 Waveshare board
Real Image
http://23.239.215.234/sparkfun_esp8266.jpeg
Drawing
http://23.239.215.234/sparkfun_babysitter_esp8266.jpg
Sparkfun babysitter hookup guide
https://cdn.sparkfun.com/assets/learn_t … ard_bb.png https://cdn.sparkfun.com/assets/learn_t … ini_bb.pngI am working on Waveshare e-paper project and everything works fine but only problem is facing with battery SOC doesn’t appear to 100%. Charger stops at 85% (most of the cases) but sometime stops at 80% too.
I am very near to finish my project and seeking help to fix the battery module. I am using Sparkfun library for the babysitter module.
Looking for your help.
Hi Mark,
Have you looked to the pics attached? Any solution for my question?
Thank you for taking those photos. I am a bit concerned about your connections here. Is there solder underneath the hot glue on your connections? It is very difficult to tell so you may want to review those connections and make sure they are secure and making a solid connection between wire and pad.
Are you using the examples from our [BQ27441 LiPo Fuel Gauge Arduino Library? Also, are you verifying the charge on the battery is full with a multimeter? A fully-charged battery should measure at roughly 4.2V. That will help identify whether the problem is with the battery or the rest of the circuit.
Finally, while the library should work with ESP8266-based boards, we cannot guarantee it will work with every Arduino-compatible microcontroller out there. There may be some minor edits you need to do for the library to work properly here. If you have an AVR-based microcontroller to test with, that would be ideal.](GitHub - sparkfun/SparkFun_BQ27441_Arduino_Library: Arduino library for the BQ27441 LiPo Fuel Gauge.)
Thanks Mark for your reply.
Thank you for taking those photos. I am a bit concerned about your connections here. Is there solder underneath the hot glue on your connections? It is very difficult to tell so you may want to review those connections and make sure they are secure and making a solid connection between wire and pad.
Yes, wires are connected to the pad using solder. Hot glue is only for the protection.
Are you using the examples from our BQ27441 LiPo Fuel Gauge Arduino Library? Also, are you verifying the charge on the battery is full with a multimeter? A fully-charged battery should measure at roughly 4.2V. That will help identify whether the problem is with the battery or the rest of the circuit.
Yes I am using the BQ27441 LiPo Fuel Gauge Arduino Library. When charge reaches to 4.2v (checked with multimeter), charger turned off the blue LED and stop charging at SOC 85%. As charging stops, it drops to 4.05v in multimeter and serial too which is the actual charge in the battery. If I disconnect battery and power, reconnect, charge blue LED blink and turned off.
Finally, while the library should work with ESP8266-based boards, we cannot guarantee it will work with every Arduino-compatible microcontroller out there. There may be some minor edits you need to do for the library to work properly here. If you have an AVR-based microcontroller to test with, that would be ideal.
I have Arduino based microcontroller only. In this case, I can choose only Universal e-Paper Raw Panel Driver Board, ESP8266 WiFi Wireless (https://www.waveshare.com/e-paper-esp82 … -board.htm) to test with Sparkfun babysitter because of epaper.
May I know what possible edits needs to do in the library? Appreciate for your hints.
Thanks
