Alternate xPy powering from USB/Battery using Expansion Board 3

[agotsis]

Dear all,
I was wondering if there is a way to "dynamically" alternate the power source for an xPy.

Imagine a setup consisting of an xPy mounted on Expansion Board 3, and the board is powered simultaneously from USB and a LiPo battery.

Then, would it be possible to force the following operation scenarios:

• xPy is powered solely from USB and battery is just being charged through the surplus USB current;
• xPy is powered solely from the LiPo battery and USB power is being cut-off.

The only hint I get is from the Expansion Board documentation: To use the battery, pull P8/G15 high (connect to 3v3), but I am not sure what this implies...

Cheers!

[agotsis]

@jcaron I tried and indeed seems to be ok. I remembered from an old post tha this was not supported, but probably this is something from the old expansion board 2.0/lopy1 era.

[jcaron]

@agotsis Have you tried it? I don’t know about the expansion board, but on the Pysense which has a lot of common components that’s just the way it works: if USB is connected it will use it as a power source and charge a LiPo battery if there is one connected, and if USB is disconnected it will continue to run from the LiPo.