I have a MakerFocus Raspberry Pi 4 Battery Pack (Amazon).
Trying to figure out the serial interface for it but documentation isn’t great. I’ve found only this packet so far that the board sends: SmartUPS V1.00,Vin NG,BATCAP 61, Vout 5141
Could someone confirm if there’s any more to it I’m missing? Does the tx port do anything on this?
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I am confused. I read the product features web page and user guide and concluded that all the three USB connectors are for power, NOT for serial communication. Please confirm if I am reading the wrong user guide: (1) “MakerFocus New version Raspberry Pi Battery Pack User Guide”: drive.google.com/file/d/12_UCy6u5iaznpgSu-4YFTY0w-D2REM_4/view. Cheers. – tlfong01 14 hours ago
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1The serial interface is the 3 pins marked IO/UART slightly below the USB ports on the newer version of this board; the guide is referring to the old version that didn’t have it. – ieatpizza 7 hours ago
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Thank you for your clarification. So you are talking about the new version V2.0. However I did notice that there is the new version, and I downloaded the user guide from that product page. Looking back, it is that V2.0 product page not up to date. Anyway, can you give us the web link to the user guide for V2.0. By the way, my imgur image library is full and cannot upload any more images. So I have to put the image I want to add to this comment to the answer section instead. If I cannot complete my answer later, then I will delete my draft answer. Cheers. – tlfong01 2 hours ago
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I’ve only been able to find this so far for v2: github.com/rcdrones/UPSPACK_V2 which is where I got that sample packet. – ieatpizza 58 mins ago
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So I have added a reference list to my answer and include your user manual there. I read that the product is designed by “Raspberry Pi Club”, not sure it is official. 🙂 – tlfong01 37 mins ago
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I skimmed the python and C++ programs and found them premature, or seemingly still in development, so I am not keen to dig deeper to get the meaning of the error messages. Perhaps I might come back, say 6 months later, and see how their very smart UPS UPS is getting on. Anyway, my answer is coming to an end, if you don’t have any more helpful and updated references. I appreciate very much your question and comments in introducing this smart Rpi UART UPS PSU to us. Cheers. – tlfong01 just now Edit
Question
What is the meaning of the following UPS PSU warning message?
SmartUPS V1.00,Vin NG,BATCAP 61, Vout 5141
Answer
I have not yet found the version 2 of user guide, so I don’t know if the PSU is using UART serial AT commands to hand shake and then text string to report status.
For the following message:
SmartUPS V1.00, Vin NG, BATCAP 61, Vout 5141
My wild guess is the following:
- SmartUPS V1.00 = software name and version
- Vin NG = no idea
- BATCAP 61 = Wild guess- perhas Lipo high voltage protection capped to 6.1V
- Vout 5141 = Voltage output = 5.141V (90% sure)
I think if you used a DMM to confirm UPS output is around 5.14V, then there this smart UPS should be working OK. No worries.
/ to continue, …
References
(1) Amazon MakerFocus Rpi4 UPS Battery Pack V2 Product Page
(2) UPSPack V2 User Guide (seems out of date, referring to V1 board only)
Notes
Note 1: Draft answer to delete later
To the OP: Thank you for your clarification. So you are talking about the new version V2.0.
However I did notice that there is the new version, and I downloaded the user guide from that product page. Looking back, it is that V2.0 product page not up to date.
Anyway, can you give me the web link to the user guide for V2.0.
By the way, my imgur image library is full and cannot upload any more images. So I have to put the image I want to add to this comment to the answer section instead. If I cannot complete my answer later, then I will delete my draft answer. Cheers
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