I’d call this a success so far. Power module is recharging the battery. It started at 3.61V … it’s now sitting at 3.86V and slowly climbing. Next checkpoint will be when that red LED shuts off at the 4.2V cut-off. I need a glass of wine.
Charges battery: CHECK!
NPN/PNP control VCC to strings: CHECK!
5V from boost: Uh … 18V? Woah!
Yah, 49.9 Ohm != 49.9K Ohm. GROWL
Gone through a few discharge/recharge cycles now and learning how the charging circuit works. No issues. Does a quick charge to 4.0V (and turns off the charging light), then trickles up to 4.20V on the dot. Need to fix the mistake mentioned above before I can test the boost controller properly. In the mean time I think I’m going to go ahead and build a test controller and mess with that. Both pieces will have a revised version and will need new boards again.