Customer:
I have some original Inkplate 6 units and suspect I may be drawing too much power from the easyC port. How much power can it provide? I currently have 7 sensors daisy chained and the power lights on them are not a constant brightness. One of the units also goes into a reboot loop when running off battery, which may be related.
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Originally submitted via email support on 21 September 2022. Migrated to the forum for community visibility.
Soldered Support:
What kind of sensors are you using? The easyC port can provide a maximum of around 200mA. Does your unit go into a reboot loop when you are using sensors and also without sensors?
Customer:
I don’t believe I am above the current limit, though it’s marginal. Some of my sensors will crash the I2C bus if their voltage drops too low, or if their libraries are included but the sensors aren’t there. After removing them and adding exception handling for missing sensors, the restarts have stopped. The voltage drop must be on the fringe of being acceptable because not all my Inkplate units suffer from it. I read an article about the reset capacitor not being the right size on early models and went down that path, but that wasn’t the issue.
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Soldered Support:
There is a catch: even with an easyC splitter it won’t work. If you are using Soldered’s sensors, they all have pull-ups on the I2C lines. When you connect more sensors together you get a small total resistance and huge current that you can’t sink.