I recently received my order of the Blues Starter Kit for Cell+WiFi and started trying it out this weekend. Everything was working fine when I was going through the tutorials by connecting the Swan MCU to my computer via USB, but in practice I’m not going to have a USB port.
I have some 4.2V 300 mAH Li-ion batteries that I thought I could use. If I plug them into the VBAT socket on the notecarrier F, the notecard itself gets powered up and sends system events to notehub, but the Swan MCU doesn’t seem to get any power. If I connect to the JST connector on the Swan MCU itself, nothing happens on either board.
How am I meant to power the MCU without a USB connection?
Make sure the FEATHER_EN dip switch on the back of your Notecarrier F is set to ON. This will ensure power is flowing to the feather socket at all times:
If the FEATHER_EN switch is on, the MCU in that socket will be receiving power. Are you positive it’s not powered on? The onboard LED won’t necessarily light up, so I’d recommend writing a short sketch that turns the LED on (like what’s in the Swan quickstart) just to check.
I’m pretty positive it’s not getting power. I uploaded one of those LED blink sketches and the board doesn’t do anything when it’s on battery power.
A: Connect something to the Swan’s USB port (everything works)
B: Connect 4V source to Featherboard’s VBAT (Notecard works, Swan doesn’t)
C: Connect 4V source to Swan’s VBAT (nothing works)