Battery not charging

ONE UP
1

Hi,

I’m having trouble getting the ONE Up’s battery to charge properly. I’m using an official Pi 5 power supply. I think the issue maybe to do with have installing a stock RiOS Trixie image over the one supplied with the machine (a moment of poor thinking on my part). What should be in the config.txt relating to the battery, Argon firmware etc.? The behaviour I’m experiencing is that the machine charges to betweem 55-78% battery whilst turned off, and then the status light (next to the power port) goes from constant red to periodic flashing red. I’ve installed Argon tools. When powered on the machine says it is in laptop mode ( so running off battery, discharging), it does not recognise that the power supply is connected. Very occasionally it switches to charging mode, but then goes back to laptop mode. What should I do? It appears something is not set up right, and that I messed the system up when I re-installed a stock PiOS Trixie image. Any ideas how I can fix this? TIA.

2

i think you use official 27W charger.. OneUp need 45W .. if use 27W it will no get past 87% + take forever in my testing .. hope that help

“ Argon ONE UP Resource Page | Argon 40 Wiki “

Power Input

19

Minimum 45 Watts, PD USB-C charging
2 Likes
3

Thank you, I have found and ordered the 45W variant, oops, terrible brain fog. :frowning:

1 Like
4

You need a minimum 45W PD charger. However, not all chargers are equal. Initially I tried charging my 1Up with a 65W PD Xiaomi phone fast charger and it would not charge. The LED adjacent to the USB-C charging port showed the charger was connected but flashed on/off and a 3 second cycle. However, a 65W PD Lenovo power brick from a Thinkpad T480 would do the job. With this the LED adjacent to the USB-C charging port showed the charger was connected and charging the 1UP by being permanently on RED and the onscreen battery icon showed an increase in charge both in colour change and percentage.

5

I have found some lesser chargers will satisfy the OneUp as long as it is powered off. But yup, ideal solution is a decent/able charger.

Also that the LED by the USB-C charging port does eventually go green some minutes after 100% charge is reached.

6

Stock Rpi 45W charger ideal (if can get one) i have few but all in use , i could no get Rpi charger so my 2nd choice is Anker Nano (45W) around same price .

7

Xiaomi Phone Chargers even with higher rating are not compatible with ONE UP. Xiaomi seems to be using a modified PD chip to communicate and allow their phones to charge fast. A normal 45W PD Charger should work with or the Official Raspberry Pi 45W, or a Mac laptop charger.

8

As said before not all USB-C PD compliant Power Supplies are equal. It really depends upon which version for the USB-PD specification they comply with i.e. 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 & 3.1 and also with the variants of PPS (Programmable Power Supply), EPR (Extended Power Range), AWS (Adjustable Voltage Supply). Just saying the a normal 45W PD power supply is not sufficient.

However, when is comes to the Raspberry PI 5, 500 and CM5 Power Supplies being PD compliant alone again is also not sufficient. The requirement to provide 5 Volts at 5 Amps is the determining factor and even a USB 3.1 PPS compliant power supply will not meet this requirement and hence why Raspberry PI developed and sell their own 27 Watt and 45 Watt Power Supplies.

Raspberry PI have acknowledged this non-standard power requirement in their forum and have also stated that a few other manufacturers provide power supplies that can meet the 5 Volt at 5 Amp requirement. Notably Anker’s models 3C1A and A2341, Club 3D’s model CAC-1917, UGREEN’s model CD333, Lenovo’s model LA140, Baseus’ model 2C1A, Asus’ model ADOL AC100-01 and Satechi’s model ST-TC100GM. There may be others on the market now but it’s important that they meet the 5 Volt at 5 Amp requirement and have a minimum power delivery of 45 Watts for the 1Up.

I would think that Argon 40 knew this and why they themselves manufacture a 27 Watt charger that provides the required 5 Volts at 5 Amps to meet the requirements of the Raspberry PI 5. However, currently they do not manufacture a suitable 45 Watt power supply, possibly this will come later or maybe they will sell the official Raspberry PI 45W power supply in the same way that they currently sell the 27W unit.

Unfortunately here in Thailand the official Raspberry PI 45 Watt Power Supply is not available.

2 Likes
9

I went with anker 45w charger and it is charging fine with constant red light, and green light when it is fully charged.

I was wondering, if it is fine to have the laptop plugged in for longer periods, does this machine have some kind of power pass-trough?

10

This should not be an issue as once the 1Up battery is fully charged there is no longer any current drain associated with the battery and all current is used to supply the 1Up and any peripherals connected to USB or the GPIO ports.

1 Like
11

We made the Argon ONE UP Laptop able to accept any 45W PD, including the the non Standard Official Raspberry Pi 45W variant. The reason it needs 45W is because it will need to charge the battery that requires at least 13V to charge. From the battery the ONE UP’s power management it handles the CM5 requirement of 5V, 5Amps. We do not recommend the 27W PD because it can turn on the unit but it will not charge the battery.

1 Like
12

Really useful to have this reminder/insight - thank you!

I am to try sort better charging for my ONE UP in my campervan. I guess what you are saying is that PD chargers should have a good 20V option, 2.25A or better? (Because 15V has little headroom to step down to 13V - I am no engineer so expect I am thoroughly abusing correct terminology, sorry!)

And equally I should ensure any charger I buy for my campervan has proper step-up design to provide a robust 20V output from 12V input?