You can say we are out of date, but we think when you buy a piece of hardware, it should work normally. Now don’t get us wrong. Like most of you, we are willing to tolerate occasional waste as long as the price is appropriate. However, when the things you just bought are in a mess and can’t work at first, the situation is completely different.
Unfortunately, this is what [majenko] found when trying out a usb-c power pack module he recently ordered. He seemed to charge the battery enough, but when he plugged a device into the USB output, he got nothing. We don’t just refer to low voltage. He is more and more convinced that the 5V pin on the ip5306 chip is not actually connected to anything.
So close, but so far away.
Curious to know what was wrong, he removed all the components from the circuit board and began polishing the welding mask. With the exposure of copper, his suspicion was confirmed. Although they did route from the chip to the through hole that brought the 5V output to the other side of the circuit board, they were not actually connected.
This is a very obvious mistake to stay on the board, but to be fair, similar things have happened at least once or twice, and almost everyone has designed their own PCB. Again, these people did not leave the above defects in the commercial release module
Anyway, [majenko] only needs to weld a jumper on a non sanded board, and everything should be fine. Well, not exactly. Adding a jumper will give some power to the output of the module, but only 3 V. Obviously, there are other problems in the circuit. After some additional research and some bigclive videos, he realized that some components were actually missing. Referring to the application diagram in the data sheet, it is obvious that the capacitor and resistor are cut off. Although the missing capacitor does not seem to be enough to cause the fault he sees, the resistance should be connected to the battery detection pin and explain why the chip did not raise the voltage.
When the resistor is in place, the module begins to operate as expected. [majenko] noted that he was still unable to get more than 1.5 amps from these boards, which were considered suitable for 2 amps, but that was quite another matter. Due to so many problems, the module seems to be a failed prototype and has never intended to be actually launched. However, as the shortage of parts ravaged the whole industry, it seems that even broken modules have been pushed out of the door.
Incidentally, this is not the first time majenko has found some wrong components on the so-called turnkey board. Earlier this year, he noted that adjusting some of the components used in the power supply of raspberry peel 4 helped reduce low voltage warnings.