D1 Mini - ESP8266 not booting with powerbank

[absolutebeginner]

Hello,
I am using a D1 Mini ESP8266 with a DS18B20 temperature sensor an it is working fine as long as i power it with a USB power supply or connected to my PC.
I tried to power it with a powerbank and that did not work.
I tried several power banks and all showed the same effect.
The blue LED lights up at startup but the device does not connect to the Wifi network.
With one powerbank i did a test and connected the powerbank to a USB power supply and then the D1 to the powerbank. That combination worked.
Ist it possible that a 10.000 mAh powerbank has not enough power to startup a D1 mini or to delivery enough power for the wifi.

I have some basic knowledge about electronics, but i am an absolute beginner in the field of the ESPs.

Any help is welcome.

Thanks in advance.
Michael

[TD-er]

I think your power banks are not supplying a constant 5V, but might be "pulsating".
Whenever you connect an USB device to a computer, this device may start to identify itself.
It also should "request" some power profile.
On older USB devices (from before the USB Quick Charge standards existed), this identification was just some resistor between 2 of the USB pins, to either request 100mA or 500 mA range.

I think your power bank is slightly "too smart" for powering an ESP board as it might try to also communicate with the device as if it is some computer.

If you have some USB hub, you might want to test the following:
Power bank -> USB hub -> ESP
This way the USB hub does request the power from the power bank instead of the USB to serial chip on the ESP.

Another option is to use some USB cable which doesn't have the data pins connected, but I can imagine you won't have one of those present.

It is also possible your power bank is doing something fancy to detect whether there is some QC device connected and if not, only then try to give continuous 5V. But by then the ESP may have crashed a few times already and is now in some limbo state from where it can't continue without a power cycle.

[Ath]

Does pressing the reset button, after it has been powered via power-bank for say 1 minute, make it work? By then the power-bank may have concluded that some 'dumb' device is connected, and stop trying to communicate with it, and just delivers the power.

[chromo23]

These powerbanks are usually not very intelligent. They simply switch off (after a delay) when the current falls below a certain threshold.

Edit: Try to add something that draws more power and it should work..
Unfortunately there is almost no powerbank that shows a different behavior.

Edit2: unless of course it has usb-c outputs, then i agree with the others

[TD-er]

Those really cheap power banks often just output 5V, no matter what's connected.
Drawback is that they will discharge over time even without being used.

I had printed a few of those (credit card sized) power banks as some kind of "bussiness card".
Those can be used to power ESP boards and I intended to use them for this too, so they would showcase some setup and also show the ESPEasy logo on the battery pack.
Sadly those have to be recharged every few months or else they inflate like a balloon when you try to charge them.
This makes them actually quite hazardous.


I did a quick Google search and found this blogpost: https://blog.adafruit.com/2020/03/09/ke ... -currents/
Links to this: https://blog.zakkemble.net/smart-power-bank-keep-alive/

[absolutebeginner]

Thanks for all the hints.
I tried to use an usb hub as connector between the powerbank and the ESP.
The usb hub is a really old one and that device showed clearly that the powerbank was switching off after a few seconds.
So i think the problem is, that a device that takes too less current cannot be powerd by the powerbank.

One of my older powerbanks seems to work a little different.
The usb hub stays active even if there is no device attached.
The problem with this powerbank is that it does only have a small capacity and it unloads pretty fast.

So maybe i try something like you recommended to get my other powerbank working with the ESP.