Helpdesk

Hello,

during testing of the StromPi 3 and BAT XL module, several questions came up:

1. 
   

   Battery thermistor read-out
   Is it possible to measure or access the battery thermistor value via the StromPi 3 interface?
   Does the firmware or any of the accompanying scripts expose raw or interpreted temperature data from the BAT or BAT XL module?

   
   


2. 
   

   Charging state reporting
   When the BAT XL battery is fully charged (LED off), the script StromPi3_Status.py continues to report charging.
   Could the firmware ever distinguish between battery full versus charging?
   Reading the source code, I don't find any changes to charging based on charge current, a charger IC status pin, or any battery full condition.

   
   


3. 
   

   Safe shutdown via PowerOn button
   Most importantly, is there a supported way to trigger a safe shutdown by pressing the PowerOn button while the Raspberry Pi is running?
   Ideally, pressing the PowerOn button during operation would trigger shutdown.py, thereby turning the button into both, a PowerOn and a PowerOff control.
   In the documentation, I only find references to shutdown timers and power-fail shutdown triggers, but not to a simple, user-initiated PowerOff by hardware button press.
   Is such a functionality (single ON/OFF button) implemented in the firmware, or is it indeed necessary to implement a separate GPIO-based solution on the Raspberry Pi side?

   
   


4. PowerOn Button Shutdown Time
   The wording is mindblowing. I read about "Initialization" of the PowerOn Button. From my understanding, it only controls the time until the PowerOn button reacts again after a powerOff command. Is this understanding correct?


5. 
   

   CAD files for BAT XL
   Are STEP (.stp) or other CAD files for the BAT XL battery module publicly available?
   If not, is there a process to formally request them from Joy-IT?

   
   

Thank you very much in advance for clarification.

---------------------------------
Voltage-Levels:
---------------------------------
Wide-Range-Inputvoltage: 12.076V
LifePo4-Batteryvoltage: 3.452V [100%] [charging]
microUSB-Inputvoltage:  not connected
Output-Voltage: 5.136V

Strompi3 Rev 1.1

Firmware 1.8

Hello,

The battery thermistor is connected only to the charging controller of the BatteryHAT and cannot be read out directly.

There is no way for the StromPi3 to determine the actual charging state. If the battery is connected but not actively used as a power source, it will always appear as “charging.” The LED on the BatteryHAT is the only reliable indicator of whether the battery is still charging or not.

The PowerOn button cannot be used to shut down the StromPi. The PowerOn-Button Shutdown Time setting only controls how long it takes for the button to become active again after a power-off command.

I have uploaded the STEP file for the BatteryHAT-XL — you can now find it in the StromPi3 download section.

Best regards
Tim (Joy-IT)

Hello Tim,

Thank you very much for quickly uploading the .stp file and for your answers. Some of our needs (shelf time/RTC, mobile battery operation, RPi, GPIO usage) don’t seem to align well with the Strompi 3, but I really appreciate your quick support and clear answers.

Best regards