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powerboost

Turn on and off an Adafruit Powerboost using a Feather.

Sketch

The sketch can be found here.

Hypothesis

The EN pin on the Powerboost when shorted to ground turns off the board. A 10kΩ can connect the EN pind and GND to cause the Powerboost to be off all of the time and the Feather can be used to drive the EN pin high, thus turing on the Powerboost.

Assumptions

  • It is fine to keep the resistor between the EN pin and GND all of the time.

Procedure

Circuit

Adafruit Feather Huzzah32 with the Bat pin connected to the Bat pin of the Adafruit Powerboost 1000 Basic and pin 14 of the Feather connected to the EN pin of the Powerboost. All GNDs are connected together and the a 10kΩ resistor between the Powerboost EN pin and GND.

Circuit made with Circuit Diagram.

Code

task test:compile-upload NAME=powerboost

Output

test: powerboost
1
0
1
0
1
0
1
0

Green PWR LED on the Powerboost blinks every second.

Analysis

Overall, the Feather was able to turn the Powerboost on and off without any issues.

Conclusion

The Feather can be used turn the Powerboost on and off. A button connected to the Feather may be used to turn the Powerboost on and off. One issue is that the Powerboost can only be turned on if the Feather is also on. Sometimes when the current draw is to high from the Powerboost will cause the Feather to turn off which will cause everything to turn off. Perhaps a manual switch may be placed between the resistor and ground that will completely float the EN pin causing to Powerboost to be turned on manually.

References

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