DIY- Battery Backup Hubitat- under TEN bucks-NO soldering

The C3 and C4 are identical, both using a 5v barrel connector.

Curious, what did you find as far as voltage on the side terminals?
Was it a bad unit?

@Rxich

I bought three boards total. First board was bad. Second produced 5.1v. Third same as second.

Tested battery and it produces 5.2v.

HE ver3 uses a 5v power supply. But when I move it over to the board and battery it doesn’t power up.

Not sure what else to try.

What amperage are the boards putting out? Maybe they are not providing as much as the power supply the HE comes with?

It's labeled 5 volts, 4 amps. The hubitat included power supply is 5 volts, 2 amps.
As long as you have a proper 18650 cell (no xxxfire cheapo cells) it shouldn't be a problem. I'm running a c5 and a c4 hub both off these devices using a genuine Panasonic 18650 for months now

So you did it now, made me curious. I powered the hub with wall wart, and checked power. During boot time the ~4.8v output spiked at 0.7amps and once booting was complete the power settled down to about 4.9v and 0.3 amp, if my little USB power tester is accurate

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Wow, that's a cool device. Nice.

Hey Aaron, can the little board with battery installed charge a cellphone or a headset or any USB device?
Do you have a brand name 18650 in the device? Like LG or Sony, samsung or Panasonic?

Lastly I'd check the USB A to barrel connector wire for continuity. See my 3rd grade art project below, any multimeter can work, as long as the probe can fit into the tiny connectors.

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I purchased a Panasonic battery. It came in Saturday and I have it charging on a known good board. But, I am traveling this week and will not be able to test until this weekend.

Great , hoping for better results on Saturday !

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Ok so the Panasonic Battery gave better results but the hub still doesn’t boot. Now the hub and zwave stick light up blue but the hub continuously power cycles going red then blue then back to red.

You could always try to connect a second battery in parallel and see if that solves the problem. This would tell you if the hub is trying to pull more power (amperage) than a single battery can supply.

Hmmm, may I ask where you purchased the battery from? There are a tremendous amount of fake and recycled cells out there. Sounds like your hub is not getting enough power, as the power requirements spike during booting, and without a good enough cell, you won't get the required 0.7amps.
Genuine panasonic 18650 cells weigh 45.8 - 46 grams. Any less and it's an old dry cell or a fake. Take a close look at the cell, especially the top connector. Real Panasonic cells have a distinct top button, with 3 attachment points. Look at the battery date code, see picture, put date code into website at ::

![Screenshot_20191101-201531_Gallery|243x500(upload://o0fzzxzonENIQHYaZwzLDmpCjS9.jpeg)

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Sounds interesting. I just ordered 2 :slight_smile: Thanks for the post.
I hope they include a real battery monitoring/protection circuit. I'm hoping coming from Wemos there of decent quality.

UPDATED
I found this like which goes into detail on what this board can do. Interesting it may not be a Plug-in solution after all. will have to see when the boards arrive.

Banggood Wemos 18650 Board

Regarding fake batteries from China, I found that remove 18650 batteries from old laptops are really a true bargain: made with genuine batteries (sanyo, sony, panasonic) and normally a dead laptop battery has only one defective: you remove them all (3 or 4), you test them all and you discart the defective. And dead batteries are almost free or totally free from vendors on the street.

I have now a stock (50+) of good and tested 18650 batteries and I use them in battery banks, flashlights and all those nice cheapos devices sold on aliexpress but running on [my own genuine and tested] 18650 bateries...

Add a nice Nitecore 18650 battery charger and you're good for years. Good chargers are also important in life/performance of your batteries !

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This is very true, old laptop packs are usually a good source for quality batteries.
But a WARNING
these cells pack a tremendous amount of energy, and you must be careful extracting them and handling them. Even a momentary short for 1 or 2 seconds can heat a wire to red hot, enough to burn the hell out of your hands. And even worse a prolonged short or very high current drainage can set a runaway reaction, resulting in much smoke and even fire.
Check YouTube if you'd like to see.

TLDR exercise the utmost caution when working with lithium batteries

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This is very true :slight_smile:

Reputable local supplier of name brand 18650 batteries. I have purchased from them multiple times:

https://www.illumn.com/batteries-chargers-and-powerpax-carriers.html?___store=default&battery_size=292

Was looking to set up a few of these for my Xbee devices.
Was planning on ordering the USB power cable connectors from AliExpress, and was hoping to just order the ESP32S Charger board from there too.

Trying to do one stop shopping if I could, but not a 100% sure which one of these boards would be comparable to the one from Banggood site.

https://www.aliexpress.com/af/18650%252dshield%252dv3.html?d=y&origin=n&SearchText=18650-shield-v3

I have one of the Banggood devices coming. I plan to use it on my Hubitat Hub. The ones at aliexpress look the same as the Banggood. From my experience with other Asian sourced breakout boards, if the look the same they are the same. I suspect they all purchase them from one mfg.

What I like about this board is, if you are powering a 3.3V device you don't need to engage the boost converter.

I plan on posting the results of my testing once I receive the device.

John

It's actually a WeMos board, and most of then on Ali look identical.

PS- Mine maxes out at about 900mAh, which is plenty for the HE hub

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