RTK Facet not charging battery

GPS/GNSS Development Boards
1

I may have a bit of a unique situation as I could not find my exact issue through a forum search. If this has already been addressed elsewhere, I apologize.

I have 4 RTK facets that I got back in Oct 2022. All have been working properly up until a few weeks ago.

The main issue is that one of the facets (call it A) is not charging the battery when plugged into USB power. It will turn on and operate properly when plugged into power but doesn’t seem to charge the battery in the process. I disconnected the battery from the main board and swapped it with a freshly charged battery from another facet (call it B) and it turned on with no problem. My first thought was that the battery itself (from A) was completely dead and just not holding a charge. I also noticed the battery light on facet A wasn’t turning on either, so I took the battery from A and plugged it into B to see if it would charge. After an hour I returned to see that facet B had charged the battery from A by at least 25% and so now I believe it may be the ‘external connections’ board that is having the issue. It seems that the USB connection isn’t getting to the battery to charge it, but I have no clue why or how to fix the issue.

Another Facet (call it C) is having a similar issue in that the charging light does not come on when plugged into USB power. It does, however, hold a charge, so I think it is probably just an issue with the LED light on the board.

Not sure what to do about facet A, and C isn’t hindering anything so far, but I would like to know if there is any solution to this problem that too.

Thanks in advance for any helpful information.

2

UPDATE

I have done some additional voltage testing and I can see that the LiPo charger for Facet A is only getting 2.9-3.5 V depending on the input voltage (5v to 6.6v). If I test the same connection (both input voltages) on a working Facet, I get 4.3v, which explains why the battery isn’t being charged with Facet A (I believe). It seems as if I may have a dead component somewhere in the circuit between the USB input and the LiPo charger that is causing a drop in voltage. Not sure where and not sure how to get around this without needing a new connection board.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

3

Thanks for reporting and my apologies for the hassle!

I’d recommend you return some or all of the units for a check out. Start here for an RMA: https://www.sparkfun.com/returns

I suspect your intuition is correct and that all are experiencing slightly different failure paths. So I worry trying to pin down any one of them might become confusing.

We can get most repairs turned around in 24-48 hours.