Continuing the discussion from LoRa APRS Tracker (Part 10) - #100 by G4TGJ.
Previous discussions:
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I’ve been away for a few weeks and only found time to try the capacitor mod for the Heltec tracker today. I had a small, 400uF 16V electrolytic to hand so used that on a short flying lead. I just managed to fit it into the case, beneath the SMA socket for the antenna. I’m pleased to report that it appears to have fixed the boot-loop issue…for now at least 
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The problem I’ve found is that when the battery gets low the tracker tries to transmit a spot, the voltage sags and it reboots. When it comes back up it tries to transmit again and immediately reboots. It keeps doing this until the battery is properly flat. The worst thing is I think it actually does transmit and so spams the APRS server.
The fix may be to set the battery low setting so it shuts down before this happens.
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I think this added capacitor might have really fixed mine It ran, on a fully charged battery, for just over ten hours. The cell dropped to 2.95V before the tracker died. It didn’t exhibit any boot loop issues before it died, it just stopped working. I’ve fully charged it again today and it’s working again just fine.
I think the cap I added had a greater value that some folks suggested so perhaps that’s sufficient to smooth out the voltage snags on transmit?
Cheers,
Denis
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