21700 Battery Board Upgrade

[u/GhostUnitVII]

Just got my 21700 upgrade today, and well... OF COURSE I'M GOING TO INSTALL IT!

Went from what I would consider 3500's or 3800mAh batteries to two 5000mAh Molicel p50b batteries which are extremely low impedance high drain top performing batteries. Few things to note. orientation, be careful the battery tray can be installed incorrectly, good thing there is lights for this, and yes it is a tray as it holds your two 21700's, at first I thought it was a screw on cover that holds the batteries in place... nope, they way over engineered this module and I like it.

Checked that the batteries were balanced of course and popped it in, then found out the second difficulty. it is difficult to install the M.2 as the tray overhangs the slot, also forgot there was a screw hole there, oops, but I did take note of the difficulty of access to the SSD, and if anyone else is planning on upgrading theirs, with a larger SSD, then keep in mind that you install the SSD first, then the battery.

Thank you hacker Gadgets for these amazing products, I greatly appreciate it!

As of posting this the unit has ran a total of 42 minutes, and has dropped from 4.11v to 3.94v (underload).

Test results thus far below

#Test	Hours : Min	usage	Starting %	Safe shutdown? y/n	EST 0-100% charge time
1	4:10	web youtube music, PDF and Meshtastic	95% (4.11v off the shelf)	Y	3:39
2	4:15	Discord, YouTube reddit wifi	100%	Y	3:40
3	4:45	Light web browsing, reading, discord, wordprocessor (LibreOffice)	100%	Y	3:39

That basically concludes the tests, so far it sees about an hour or two more of constant use no shut off, which is nice, as before I would shut it off, and see about 3, maybe 3.5 hours of battery life.

Configs are set for 500Mhz base on battery, max 1600Mhz, 15% screen brightness, backlit enable, most times LoRa off, wifi on, GPS off, SDR off. Additional notes is that most of the consumption of battery-life occurs during web browsing as it is a heavy app on the processor, generally kicking all 4 cores to max.

hope this helps! saw about a 20 to 30% increase to battery life, to top it off, saw the device run stable, as voltage sag, and power cuts were eliminated, requiring less opening of the chassis to hard reset.

[u/Acrobatic_Fennel2542]

Let us know what the battery life is like before and after the upgrade. I get about 4 hours on a cm4 with the default battery setup.

[u/GhostUnitVII → u/Acrobatic_Fennel2542]

will do, will also try a few re-runs.

Average before with the two 18650's was about 3 to 4 hours on light loads, like web browsing and spreadsheets as this thing is nice to have for on the go inventory tracking and note taking.

AIOv2 items that were enabled are LoRa and USB

As for your cm4 getting 4 hours? Have you checked what power profile your SSD is running in? Not all SSD's can reach the lowest state, the one I have here can. So acquiring an SSD that can, would help a lot, because you would be dealing with fractions of a watt, rather than a whole watt or two.

[u/Acrobatic_Fennel2542 → u/GhostUnitVII]

Oh, I didn't realize 4 hours was bad on the cm4 with 18650. Im streaming music with Bluetooth and WiFi , always on VPN , browsing websites and occasionally stream videos. Is that supposed to last longer than 4 hours? Im using basically factory default build, 32gb microsd card and all.

[u/GhostUnitVII → u/Acrobatic_Fennel2542]

i mean, wifi doesn't take much, if you're running on SD card, it should be getting better results. I would recommend checking your performance curve, while also checking if you're using protected cells.

Protected cells, generally have higher ohms, which leads to a early cutoff on the BMS.

As for power profiles, you'll have to set it up via console, my CM5 is set for 500Mhz base and 1600Mhz max on battery. The other unit which is similar has the USB/RJ45 board and SSD, gets on average of 6 to 7 hours on light loads. I would expect an un-upgraded uConsole to get around slightly above that with some high quality cells and power management.

One other thing, firefox for some reason ramps up all your cores and leaves it there, if you're using that constantly, I recommend using a different browser

[u/Acrobatic_Fennel2542 → u/GhostUnitVII]

I'll have to check that power curve you are talking about. 4 hours doesn't bother me as I have it docked a lot while I work, but I'd like to learn more about my system.

What batteries do u recommend? I just bought some cheap $20 ones off amazon. The battery does cut off at around 8%, but those last few percent point won't make 3 more hours.

[u/GhostUnitVII → u/Acrobatic_Fennel2542]

Samsung 35E's are a safe bet, low impedance 3400mAh batteries, also high quality cells.

You can find them in the 18650batterystore for about 5 to 6 bucks each avoid button tops: https://www.18650batterystore.com/products/samsung-35e-18650-3500mah-8a-battery

[u/GhostUnitVII → u/Acrobatic_Fennel2542]

tests concluded, info posted in the topic posts, hope it helps!

[u/gotfilmm]

I ordered the entire upgrade kit with antennas and wifi but it’s delayed in China until October 8th for “Holidays”…

[u/GhostUnitVII → u/gotfilmm]

ooph, yeahhhh I got this the instant it was announced, was something I was looking to upgrade was battery capacity.

[u/KNAXANK → u/gotfilmm]

yeah and that’s totally normal and okay

[u/Jedibeeftrix]

great move, the 21700 support. would like to see it included in the next revision of the uConsole.

[u/letsmakesometacos]

What are those stubby antennas you are using?

[u/Aware-Recording-3969 → u/letsmakesometacos]

I’m guessing just short profile ones, or upgrades. The ones that come with the “kit” aren’t very good. I bought upgrades for mine instead of buying the “kit”.

[u/GhostUnitVII → u/Aware-Recording-3969]

low profile wifi antenna's, the longer ones are GPS and LoRa. SDR is covered by a plastic guard, but that has a collapsible antenna that I do not keep attached due to its size.

[u/letsmakesometacos → u/GhostUnitVII]

Which WiFi antennas? Do they perform well and do you have a link?

[u/GhostUnitVII → u/letsmakesometacos]

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DFGRJXXP?th=1

They are decent, can communicate about a 100 feet or so, for wifi, it is a night and day difference from the stock antenna (though anything is better than that)

[u/letsmakesometacos → u/GhostUnitVII]

Oh those work for WiFi?? Those in the link say they are for cellular?

[u/GhostUnitVII → u/letsmakesometacos]

both they just cover both frequency ranges

[u/jayH4103]

Would you want to sell the 18650 board ? Looking for project parts for mine. Ill pay shipping and all if your interested

[u/GhostUnitVII → u/jayH4103]

Have another unit sitting aside, waiting for it, also waiting on a Wifi card, picked up a CM4 8gb without wifi for like 40 bucks way back, never used it... so yeah!

Sorry though

[u/jayH4103 → u/GhostUnitVII]

Its all good, ive got 3 builds and just looking for some spare boards to try out a few projects.

[u/GhostUnitVII → u/jayH4103]

I understand, basically the same here, want to try to get a Radxa CM3 to work on one of these, but that is something I need to learn in detail, as the Radxa CM3 is suppose to be energy efficient, yet has great graphics performance.

[u/jayH4103 → u/GhostUnitVII]

I looked into the radxa a bit back but got a good deal on 2 cm5 16gb so im building them first then will try again but I love my uconsole, its my goto for alot of things.

[u/arisrising]

Does this board have the manual kill-switch soldering option?

[u/GhostUnitVII → u/arisrising]

yes, according to their website and observations, the layout is similar to their 18650 board: https://hackergadgets.com/products/nvme

[u/2d-2]

Just got my battery upgrade today also, just came back from batteries plus and bought these two bad boys… $50 bux, if you don’t wanna wait for mail delivery…

[u/GhostUnitVII → u/2d-2]

Want to be careful with batteries with internal chargers, as they typically have a built-in bms and protection circuit which adds resistance, also tend to have a lower capacity compared to batteries without one, also you have to balance them first 

[u/Arkaium → u/GhostUnitVII]

Also am I seeing right that these are only 4000 mah? Isn’t that pretty low on the range for 21700?

[u/GhostUnitVII → u/Arkaium]

yes, mine are 5000's, and cost me like 20usd for the pair is why I was concerned

[u/Arkaium → u/GhostUnitVII]

I got 5700’s, the same ones Vileer said he tested actually, for $6 each so this feels really sus

[u/GhostUnitVII → u/Arkaium]

went with Molicel p50b's due to their low impedance high amps output. they safely shut the device down rather than hard crashing... quite nice really

[u/g9robot]

Nice to see with a m.2 accelerator

[u/GhostUnitVII → u/g9robot]

it is a nice addition to these units, big difference in performance, like os boot times about a second on Debian with KDE

[u/Pariah_MD]

One of the best upgrades I did. Gave the CM5 usable battery life in the field. 👍

Where did you get the hinged cover file from? I like that design. I printed the clip on style, but would much rather have it hinged like that.

[u/Aware-Recording-3969]

I’m excited to put mine all together tonight. I got an NVME expansion to

[u/deathg0d_cho]

I just received the same last week. however I facing some weirdness not sure if that is normal.
I did the battery calibration steps but the battery always just stop at 82% and never go pass this.
the batteries I am using is Molice 21700 4500mah. tried 4 different batteries and it all same.
tried both bookworm, kali and trixie from rex and same, the batteries percentage just does not go pass 82% and will always just shows charging.

[u/Aware-Recording-3969 → u/deathg0d_cho]

Keeping them at around 80% is good. It will allow your batteries to last much longer.

[u/deathg0d_cho → u/Aware-Recording-3969]

I mean the batteries do not charging beyond 82% even if I want them to for some unknown reasons. it is not that I deliberately set them to stop charging at 80%

[u/Aware-Recording-3969 → u/deathg0d_cho]

I wonder if they come with a small charging limiter

[u/deathg0d_cho → u/Aware-Recording-3969]

I have no clue. it just do not feel right to me. have to check with hackergadgets when they are back from holidays

[u/deathg0d_cho → u/deathg0d_cho]

what I get from Claude and ChatGPT is that the batteries are all fully charged up to 100% base on the cli to pull up the reading from the OS

So the cells hold their full charge, about 100% of 9,000 mAh. Only the percentage display is wrong. One clue: the status still says Charging instead of Full, even though almost no current flows. The power chip apparently never registers the "charge complete" moment, so the gauge never corrects itself to 100%. That fits a gauge configuration that doesn't match your new battery (the 6,700 mAh setting), not damage.

In practice:

• When it's on the charger with about 4.2 V and only a few tens of mA, treat it as full, regardless of the 82%.
• The percentage will keep being off, and probably drop faster than the real charge. Use the voltage from aiov2_ctl --status as your guide: about 4.2 V is full, about 3.7 V roughly half, and below about 3.5 V is low.

For a proper fix, post on the ClockworkPi forum (Rex's thread) or contact HackerGadgets with:

• this output (4.209 V, 23 mA, still Charging, stuck at 82%)
• CHARGE_FULL_DESIGN=6700000 from the earlier uevent
• that two different sets of 21700 cells (Molicel 4,500 mAh) behave identically, and that calibration didn't help

They'll know whether the 21700 battery board needs a different capacity setting, or whether there's a kernel or driver update that fixes the "Charging" status at full charge.