I got my pocket reform working today (it had an incident en-route and arrived broken - got the new motherboard and screen today and it’s working now) - and when in use even if plugged into USB it’s struggling to hold charge when running firefox or chromium.
It’s plugged into a framework 180W adapter from my 16" framework laptop, and when turned off it’s charging. But as soon as I start running anything significant it’s not able to draw enough power to charge.
Unfortunately, my generic USB-PD charger doesn’t seem to work with it at all, so this is currently the only thing I have that can charge it. Is this normal? Or is there a better recommended charger?
Okay, I’m pretty rusty on actually having to build stuff prior to install. The instructions say “Make sure the pico-sdk submodules are initialized, otherwise serial usb support will be missing.”
However, having run ./install-fw-dependencies.sh
the next instruction is to change to the pico-sdk directory - and there isn’t one.
(Is this a I should install pico-sdk - or is this a redundant instruction?)
Sorry I should have linked the last build artifacts. https://source.mnt.re/reform/pocket-reform/-/jobs/7432/artifacts/download?file_type=archive
You should be able to download, uncompress and run the script.
BTW what firmware do you have installed? It is the second line on the keyboard display system status. Old numbering was the date of build, New numbering is SHA from source gitlab tree(i think)
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When running the update-sysctl-firmware.sh script in …/script I get the error: RP0240 System Controller device not found or more than one found, exiting.
[BTW, did try power cycling with the physical power switch, too]
Also - just in case it’s important, it turns out I was wrong, it’s actually displaying the same behaviour on my generic USB PD device as it does with the Framework 60W and the Framework 180W chargers. It just didn’t like the cable I had on my USB PD charger. Testing it with another cable and with the battery status showing on the display it shows a momentary period of charging at 1.8A, then immediately ramps down to 0.0xAmps.
Hi, it sounds like you’re already on the latest fw and usually you can expect that to be the case nowadays as we ship in small batches and always try to ship the latest fw.
What kind of voltages are shown in the battery status screen? (OLED menu and then “b”). Are the cells quite dysbalanced perhaps? (i.e. one at 3.6, the other at 3.9V)
What usually helps is letting the batteries drain to 0% and then charge up again, and doing that a few times until it’s able to reach 100%.
So - I’ve tried four cycles of running it down until it automatically turns itself off - currently in the middle of the a discharging cycle (as you kindly suggested on mastodon)
The batteries are pretty out of balance - at the end of the first round (1%SOC indicated) it was at 3.4V and 3.7V. After that first cycle it charged to ~60% which is where it’s topped out every time since.
End 1st cycle: 3.6V / 4.0V stopped at 60% SOC
End 2nd cycle: 3.6V / 3.9V topped at 61% SOC
End 3rd cycle: 3.6V / 4.0V stopped at 59% SOC
End 4th cycle: 3.6V / 4.0V stopped at 59% SOC
On the last (5th) cycle when it stopped charging at 60% SOC the batteries were at 3.7V and 4.0V respectively.
Thanks for the detailled testing and reporting. I agree with your assessment that the cells are out of balance. While I’m looking into the balancing features of our charger board, I was researching a bit into cheap and easy solutions for people to charge+balance their batteries outside of Pocket Reform in the meantime. I found that Adafruit make a bunch of little USB adapters that exactly fit our battery plugs:
These are also available at several resellers around the world and cheaper than replacing the batteries themselves. Could this be an option for you to try and fully recharge both cells and then plugging them back into the device?
That’s definitely something I could try - although eventually (23 cycles I think - I may have got a bit off with counting) - if you want actual data (at least voltages, etc) it’s in this thread: Vaguely here 🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈: "Alright, we hit power off from being discharged (…" - LGBTQIA.Space) ) it got to 100% SOC and I think the batteries are slowly coming back into balance with use. The key seemed to be not just letting it power off - which it does with a few percent left - but turning it back on after that and letting it run down to a reported zero percent and second time it powered off. Doing that seemed to lead to more rapid balancing.
I’m being meaner to it than I normally would - mostly using it until it’s actually completely flat (turns itself off) then powering it back on until it powers off a second time - then charging it to full and it gradually seems to be pulling it back.
Last night it was at 3.6/3.7v in the 50’s % although the batteries are definitely still further apart when fully charged.
If you think the lipo chargers would be better then I’m happy to give that a go - and always happy to support Adafruit
For what it’s worth that’s how my pocket reform arrived. I was fairly convinced the balancing wasn’t working (it was marginally getting closer, but not fast), and then over a pair of charges or so, the cells got back into balance with each other. I’d probably done at least 10 discharge cycles prior to that, but it did seem like once I gave up, it got there. But I know that’s also a not a terribly useful anecdote.
