@Goss66 The fact that the LED is still fading in and out indicates that the communication between the RPi and the PowerBlock is not working for some reasons. It the the PowerBlock driver on the RPi that signal that the driver is loaded. In that moment the LED that is attached to the PowerBlock should change to a steady state.

Do you have other peripherals connected to the RPi? Or other device drivers that might interfere with the PowerBlock driver?

Hi! Sorry that I missed your post. I messed up my watching settings of this thread.

It sounds as if the one PowerBlock somehow got broken, I am sorry for that!

Unfortunately, I only have the PowerBlocks already assembled. Too few people were asking for the bare ones so far. However, I am planning for a next revision that offers more variants when it comes to the connectors, e.g., no connectors, Molex connectors, etc.

I could offer to desolder the header(s) for a small allowance. Please get in contact with me if you are interested in that.

@Folly Thank you so much for the info!!!! I'm going to buy a better power supply.

Rob

Sorry for this delayed reply.
Thanks for the images! Just to confirm, the PowerBlock needs to have the USB micro connected to the PowerBlock PCB.
To rule out any software configuration issue, you could try and load this RetroPie 4.6 image that already comes with a readily installed PowerBlock driver: https://www.petrockblock.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/retropie-4.6-rpi2_rpi3-powerblock.img_.gz

In addition, I would suggest to remove any USB device except a keyboard to be sure not to get any interference from an USB device. The overall goal I have in mind with these actions is to find a stable status with a working PowerBlock.

Can you give me an impression until which point the boot sequence comes?

For me it is the first time to hear of such a behaviour. Does the PowerBlock work fine afterwards or has it become just unreliable at all?
Maybe there was some sort of voltage transient that caused the malfunction of the PowerBlock IC.

Worked for me too! Thanks!

If you power the RPi using the microUSB of the RPi itself you will loose the power switch and reset functions on the Powerblock. When the Powerblock is used as designed using its microUSB connector, power to the RPi is controlled by the Powerblock and routed to the Power and Ground pins of the GPIO connector. When the RPi is booted up the driver and control service of the Powerblock will initialy interrogate the status of the Powerblock board and intitiate the boot up process. If the microUSB on the RPi is used to as power source, all of this is bypassed and the RPi will power up as if the Powerblock does not exist.

The only way to use microUSB on th RPi together with the Powerblock is to isolate the RPi's micrUSB connections from the RPi itself (cut the traces from the RPi) and rewire them to the Powerblock's microUSB connector. Doing so is a mute, waste of time, potentially damaging to the RPi exercise.

It is important to note that the switch and the optional status LED need to be connected to the 2x2 pins header in any case. The signal break outs S1 and S2 are not meant for the switch and the LED, but rather for the communication between the PowerBlock and The RPi. Here is a summary for the connection between the break outs and the RPi:

S1: pin 12 S2: pin 11 5V OUT +: pin 2 or pin 4 5V OUT -: pin 6 or pin 9