Restart loop when battery is not connected

[ovidiu4]

This project is meant to be powered by small batteries (< 500 mAh).

Because of the small capacity and the internal physical design (battery touches the PCB) a choice was made to limit the current through the TP4056 to 250mA.
A 5.1K resistor was used to program this current limit.

During startup the ESP32-S3 can spike to more than 350mA for a short period of time which triggers the protection circuit.

You should always have a battery connected to this board. There is no power path optimization, USB current is limited even without charging the battery.

As an alternative you could replace R19 with a lower value, like 2-3K.
Keep in mind that you may exceed the battery max charging rate if you do that. Things WILL get hot!