I mentioned in my previous post that I replaced all the LiFePO4 cells in my Reform with new ones. I charged them all up to 3.6V with an external charger and ran them through one full discharge cycle in the Reform (took several hours) before it shut off with the cells around 2.5-2.7V. I put them back in the external charger, charged them back up to full, and put them back the machine. After running on batteries for a bit I plugged it in, but the batteries aren’t charging. When the AC adapter is connected, the battery status screen always shows the current draw as 0.000A, and mousing over the battery status icon in the swaybar shows “Not charging.”
This is a Reform v2 with the old non-protected battery boards with the latest system image, LPC firmware, and keyboard firmware (with some personal keyboard layout tweaks)
I haven’t poked at the LPC firmware yet to figure out why this might be the case, but I wonder if it has to do with the fact that two of the old cells fully discharged while the machine sat unused. Does the LPC has some stale state in NVRAM telling it that the cells are bad and not to charge them? Could it be a faulty component?
I’m happy to help diagnose and can dive into the firmware or post multimeter readings/scope traces, but does anyone have suggestions on where to start?
(Yes, I have a set of protected battery boards on order, but according to the shop they are several weeks out.)
I have the protected battery boards, but my Reform also doesn’t seem to charge new batteries after upgrading to RK3588.
When the power brick is plugged in, the battery status screen also shows the current draw of 0.000A. I’ve tried soft and hard resetting LPC, but that doesn’t seem to help.
@txsector have you found any further info about this problem?
Which DC adapter are you using to charge your Reform? Maybe your system somehow draws more power than the brick is able to deliver? I run my A311D Reform with motherboard 2.5 from a 100 W USB-C adapter because sometimes, the delayed-charging patch for the LPC would not work with the original adapter…
I’m having the same (or very similar issue). I had the unprotected battery boards in my reform, and lost 4 batteries after a power outage.
I ordered the protected battery boards, and 2000 mAh LiFePO4 batteries from Battery Space (LiFePO4 18650 Rechargeable Cell: 3.2V 2000 mAh (6.4Wh, 6A Rate)). I installed everything, and powered on the system. Everything looked OK. I then unplugged the reform and ran it for a couple of hours. It shut down, with about 2.6 V in each cell. But it won’t charge when plugged in.
I externally charged the cells, and they’re at 3.3V now, but 0.000A show on the display.
I have MREFPMOB20R02, and have tried with LPC firmware 20_R3
and git clone and compile the firmware with #define REFORM_MOTHERBOARD_REV REFORM_MBREV_20_R3. The CPU is the stock i.MX8MQ.
The charger is the 65W Mean Well that came with my reform.
I just installed reform-tools 1.35 and rebooted, but no change.
I can now observe a problem that sounds just like what you described. The cells do not charge anymore, in fact they discharged down to 2.2 V per cell (protected battery boards). The LPC shows the unit is off and 0A charging. This is confirmed by my USB-C PD supply which shows that 0 W is being consumed. It shows that for a few seconds, then switches to “waking up lpc” for a few seconds and then returns to the battery status screen for another few seconds. The cycle continues. Both red LEDs on the motherboard light up when I plug in power.
Lukas’ theory is, that the soft-start patch messes things up. It’s only supposed to apply to motherboard 2.5 and maybe it does something wrong with motherboard 2.0.
To try this out, I flashed the LPC firmware version 2023-11-24 and tada! Charging works again.
To try this out yourself, clone the reform git and then:
$ git checkout e864b86cd6f058e7c2bd17ae516df8034744b546
$ make -C reform2-lpc-fw lpcrc
$ make -C reform2-lpc-fw REFORM_LPC_OPTIONS="-DREFORM_MOTHERBOARD_REV=REFORM_MBREV_20_R3 -DFW_STRING3=\\\"20230703\\\""
$ env --chdir=reform2-lpc-fw sudo ./flash.sh
@josch Interesting! I had updated my of LPC firmware while waiting for my new batteries to arrive, so that certainly could have been the issue. When I get a chance I’ll try building and flashing that version and let you know how it goes.
Thank you for the suggestion! It’s charging indeed with lpc-fw checked out at e864b86cd6f058e7c2bd17ae516df8034744b546, but keyboard v4 no longer works (the circle key menu works, but i cannot type anything once the OS loads), any ideas why?
No idea why this happens, so how about instead of building an old lpc firmware version, lets put a commit on top which restores functionality on motherboard before 2.5 to what it was before the soft start patch:
Thank you for testing and thank @2disbetter for making this possible with his former motherboard 2.0 where I was able to observe this myself. Before, I only had motherboard 2.5 which does not have this issue and which is also why it took me so long to look into this. I’m glad things are working again for you!