Now, it could be that my brand new sherpa is defective. I can’t get it to provide any power at all from the C ports (not even baseline 5V, 500mA). If I plug my phone in, the phone starts charging the sherpa (even with the port set to OUT).
Type A ports are fine.
Wow, that’s odd! 5k1 resistors on the CC pins to ground is all you need for it to start supplying the 5V / 3A on USB-C, so that sounds odd. Does it negotiate charging over USB-C at anything higher than 5V? I wonder if the USB-C sub-boards are defective just as you say… They both behave the same way?
Yes, it does start fast charging from the USB-C ports.
What I find odd is that it would charge itself from my phone, at 5V, 800mA, even though the ports are set to OUT (sounds like a software issue?).
Behaviour is the same on both ports. Haven’t been digging much, yet, but just know that my previous statement about the PPX could be wrong.
This whole unit seems to be cobbled together with no thought or control over the production process. Who if anyone for that matter was in charge of overseeing the manufacturing process? I’m so happy that I have not received the PPMax yet. I would be livid receiving a half baked product.
I can confirm that this one works : 2019 NEW Xiaomi mi Power Bank 20000mAh 3 USB C 45W Three Ports Output PD Quick Charger Powerbank Xiaomi 2C External Battery Pack|20000 mah powerbank|mah powerbank20000mah power - AliExpress
This is exactly why systems engineering is so complex. It’s one thing to get a prototype working and a radically different thing to bring a finished product to the market. This is especially true when subcontractors bring in pieces of the solution without really taking the complete product into consideration, think auto focus and light engine as two of those pieces in this case.
I wonder if it’s the systems team in China that is responsible for the systems design in this case or if it’s some form of shared responsibility.
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Thank you Werner for your reply. It is really difficult for me to understand that reading all this comments where people received a product which should never have left the factory, that Screenio thought it was acceptable to ship a half finished product.
Now this is scary. Someone posted about projector not working to which PhilipsPrashant responded using faulty charger or incorrect charger.
This is the exact reason I want him to respond here regarding what spec charger and external batteries should work with Ppm so that we don’t end up breaking it. (And if possible few tested samples too)
Understandably that you might want to use Philips provided charger to be on safe side. But share some examples for external batteries at least.
Well, technically they have only shipped their “perks”, not products. A few days back it sounded like that general commercial availability won’t happen for several months. Maybe the most pressing firmware issues can be worked around until then without requiring a complete HW re-spin. Also there’s been time to sort out the factory process and improvements in packaging. Maybe a way to predict focus drift during warm-up, passively monitoring focusing (given that the subsystem is flexible enough, we already know it doesn’t have to use the default focusing pattern at least).
What has been produced so far looks to me basically like a pre-series/prototype run but with a more polished packaging. The marketing team makes it sound like a finished product and I think that does the device a disservice. It seems like there were some major issues encountered during the R&D phase but someone was determined to push “something” out. If you push a prototype out too early you have to be prepared to replace them with a new batch after fixing your hardware issues. That should preferably be done before you have over 10k prototypes in circulation unless there’s an extraordinarily large budget allocated though.
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Again, Werner, thank you very much for your reply and explanation, seriously Screenio needs someone like you in their team.
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Tried an older ZMI PD power bank today with the USB-C cable that came with the PPM and the red LED goes on and the UI Show charging. - Funny thing is that I think this power bank is to weak to hande charging.
https://www.gearbest.com/power-banks/pp_662137.html?wid=1433363
Input: 5V - 20V, 45W max
Output: USB-C: 5 - 20V, 40W max; USB-A: 5V 2.4A, 9V 2A, 12V 1.5A, 18W max
Would be nice to have an app that shows actual battery percentage to verify whether it really charges or not. Just looking for it…
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You’re welcome! These engineering issues aren’t uncommon, it’s just that the general public rarely gets to experience it. It can be extremely frustrating from an engineering perspective when things are being rushed out the door.
I would definitely have wanted to implement the PPM differently (and I believe I can read between the lines in posts by @Philips_Support_P that he also has quite a few things he wanted to change as well), but as always it’s a compromise. Engineering rarely wins over marketing and the bean counters. Remember that R&D is a “just” an expense in the eyes of the bean counters.
(I love how Discourse informs me that I’ve posted more than 21% of the replies in this topic 
It wasn’t my intention to hijack the thread in any way)
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Let me just say in my career I’ve never shipped a “finished” product ever…
I’m not commenting yet because I don’t have confirmed information. I only have “recommended” specs at the moment. Until 10 Feb everything is on hold: info requests, repairs, software updates etc.
(I’m the only one from R&D on the forums but many other people and teams are involved. I loosely oversee it, but not every detail.)
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Definitely. Preferably debug information including actual charge current and VBUS voltage should also be available. Whether this information can actually be accessed depends on how the charging circuitry is hooked up to the SoC though.
Exactly, there’s always room for improvement - especially in consumer electronics.
Totally agree. I am a Product Manager myself and been in this situation at times. There is a clear distinction between an unfinished product and product with room for improvement with future upgrades.
The thing is I try to be transparent with my customers as much as possible. It would have saved so much effort and commenting had you posted this earlier.
And also totally understand that you are probably only one of the few mods from Philips side responding to tons of queries at once. But seeing so much activity on this post, I’m sure it would have caught your attention earlier.
Regardless, I won’t bother till 10 Feb.
Thank you!
Finally I found a battery monitor app on the aptoide store that seemed to work. It protocols every 5 min the battery level, temperature and also shows the 5 min delta in percentage.
It even seems to get values when the device is switched off…
In the battery chart you can see the following stages.
- PPM connected to charger, but switched off,
- PPM switched on, playing a movie on normal mode, power supply disconnected
- PPM switched on, playing a movie on normal mode, 40W max ZMI power bank connected.
This proves that the 2 year old ZMI power bank is capable of charging the PPM. - Perfect for me, since I bought 2 of them for my Mibook Air. So no more money to spend…
https://www.gearbest.com/power-banks/pp_662137.html?wid=1433363
That depends to some degree how much of a perfectionist you are. A lot of engineers considers the product unfinished until it’s perfect (therefore never really completing the product). On the other side of the scale you have the engineers that only perform the exact task given to them, flagging it as complete when bare minimum functionality is there. I see this second kind mainly in large corporations where there’s very little connection between the output of the engineer and the shipping product. In a smaller company the engineers can typically see the direct impact of their work making it easier to stay motivated.
I agree on the transparency, clearly marketing wanted to control the message. This was a mistake in my book when the product appealed to a very mixed crowd (due to the marketing work). If there would have been a more technical discussion earlier without the marketing filter less people might have pushed the time frame and there would have been another HW revision, while also giving the software team more time to improve the user experience. I don’t think management expected the very raw unfiltered user feedback you can get from this kind of crowdfunding. Many backers also missed the fact that Philips Projection/Screeneo Innovation isn’t a mega corporation, and the PPM isn’t the only product they have to support. Consider this first campaign a lessons learned and we can all hope there will be more transparency from the very beginning should they try again.
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My replacement Sherpa arrived and indeed it does power the picopix.
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