Pi-Top battery firmware / battery issues
Jon Abbott (1421) 2640 posts |
If you’re using a Pi-Top, be aware there’s a firmware update for the battery charger which might prevent or fix the “battery not charging” issue that some owners are experiencing. To apply the update, boot pi-topOS, open a command window and enter the following commands:
You’ll more than likely get “Error 5” with the last command, just repeat it until its successful, it can take over 10 attempts before it works. It appears there’s an issue with the battery charger which can leave the battery in a non-chargeable state. If this happens, repeatedly applying the firmware update can sometimes kick it back into charging by resetting the battery state. If however the battery discharges too much, the battery will possibly need replacing. In my case, the battery died over Christmas – ironically, whilst on charge. Contacting Pi-Top support they suggested the firmware update, which didn’t work in my case, but has for a few others going by the rather long thread (you’ll need an account to open this thread) on their community site. EDIT: I set the firmware update running in a loop and left it for an hour. This raised the charge to 1%, at which point it charged normally. EDIT2: My pi-top battery indicator is available on the JASPP forum. |
Raik (463) 2058 posts |
For a comparable problem I become the same infos / links from the Pi-Top team but nothing fixed my problem. |
Jon Abbott (1421) 2640 posts |
I believe that if the GPIO cable is suspect when there’s charging problems, attempting to Reboot within pi-topOS fails. I’ve now managed to resurrect my battery by leaving the firmware update running in a loop. What concerns me is that the battery circuit doesn’t force a shutdown when the level gets dangerously low, it’s relying on a software solution to do this. Moral of the story, never let your battery charge get too low and don’t trust the % given by software, as it appears the battery randomly stops replying and will continue to report the last % seen. If you reboot quite often this isn’t so much of a problem, but if you use it for long periods the battery may have less charge than you think. My battery lasts about 4 hours, so I’ve got into the habit of plugging it in every 2 hours to recharge. It would appear that the last time I did this however, it had stopped charging and was slowly discharging to 0%. |
Raik (463) 2058 posts |
4h seems to me very little. Should be at 8-10h. |
Norman Lawrence (3005) 172 posts |
@Jon My experiences with regard to battery life is very similar to Raik, around 10 hrs. I have found the Pi-Top support to be excellent, on separate occasions they replaced my keyboard and hub controller without any quibbles. They seem to ship direct from the manufacturers, so do not expect overnight service but even to Australia it was only about one month for replacement parts to arrive. @ Raik Is your SSD_HD fitted inside the Pi-Top and if so, do you use it for booting or just storage? |
Raik (463) 2058 posts |
@Jon @Norman |
Norman Lawrence (3005) 172 posts |
Raik looks a very compact solution. Are you using the Pi2Design shield or is there a better one? |
Raik (463) 2058 posts |
I use this shield and the same screws for mounting the board. |
Norman Lawrence (3005) 172 posts |
Thanks for the link will follow it up. |
Jon Abbott (1421) 2640 posts |
I use it to test games on Pi3, so heavily use the CPU and memory.
No, I purchased mine from RS as I only required the case. |
andym (447) 470 posts |
Which looks to be the same as the Lycom one here – same part number printed on the board. Price is about eqivalent but delivery is a bit of a stinger though! |
Raik (463) 2058 posts |
I mean only the Software. Is separatly aviable. If you expand the Status window you get something like this: |
Jon Abbott (1421) 2640 posts |
£79! I spoke to PiTop when I ordered and they pointed me to an open source solution, I coded the shell for it and then got sidetracked though. |
Chris Evans (457) 1614 posts |
As you found out Jon !HID is not essential so we do a slightly cheaper version: pi-topRO Software upgrade kit |
Jon Abbott (1421) 2640 posts |
I’ve put my pi-top battery indicator up on the JASPP forum: |