Struggling to figure out how to use ATOM tailbat

ESPHome
1

Hi

I have recently purchased bunch of M5 ATOM lites for ESPresence which are working very well. :slight_smile:

I just purchased an ATOM tailbait as a battery pack for the ATOM . I’m having problem with the Tailbat that it “turns” off after 45 mins. It seems to have some “power saving” mode and turns off.

Does any one have any experience with the tailbaits ? Does any one know how to get it to stay on all all the time ?

There is very little documentation out there.

Cheers

John

2

It’s tailBAT not tailBAIT. Try googling that :smile:

3

Ah that might help . :slight_smile:

4

Still not finding much info on how to turn off low power mode .

5

The m5stack site shows that it has a battery management chip, the ip5303.

This chip will turn off the power if it goes below a certain current draw.

There are posts on the forum about tailbat, which explain all this. I don’t see one that gives a solution to being permanently “on”, other than to increase the power draw. However of course that leads to more draw on the battery.

As I don’t have either the battery or the microcontroller, I can’t tell how long the uC will last on battery anyway. That is the power draw of the uC?

6

There is also a comment from a user on the tailbat page ATOM TailBat - Battery Accessory for ATOM | m5stack-store (Review 12/08/2022 by Chris Hammond)

ATOM TailBat

Nice and compact battery package that is great for small devices or sensors using the M5Stack ATOM processor. Only issue is if the M5Stack ATOM is the only device connected to it or the processor and one sensor, not enough power is drawn to keep the battery awake. Maybe a future version will allow the ATOM to communicate with the TailBat to keep it awake. But unfortunately, at this time, in my case at least they will not perform the function of a backup as they will go to sleep and power down do to insufficient power draw.

7

I managed to find the conversations and I have downloaded the code to see if I can change the chip speed to stop it from switching off.

My initial testing has failed ie . the atom still turned off after 30 mins but I will keep tweaking the code to see if I can find a way to keep the battery on. My goal would be for it to last 2-3 weeks. I don’t mind charging the battery at that frequency.

8

Any update on this? I was planning on getting a few to use for some remote sensors.