Charging break out plus esp32 plus adxl345

Slight hurdle. I have created a project and am near completion of testing phase...but I hit a hurdle and I have no idea what the problem is. Yes this is ESP32 but I have tested and get the same reaction on my Arduino Nano and Arduino Uno.

ESP32 with only a single device attached, the ADXL345 which is an accelerometer. It works, I get my code loaded and can see coordinates. Great. Let's add the charging circuit.

Adafruit LIPO charging break out board no battery added just yet. Wire the Battery post and ground to Arduino, put back in my USB cable to test code and all I get in the serial output is garbage.

Remove charging circuit and it works. Add it back and it is garbage. I flip the baud rate to 115200 and can see what I assume is the boot information, and it is cycling so fast I cannot see it clearly. Took screen grab, and behold it is resetting with what it interprets is button press...but 30 times faster than a finger could press it.

Now, I know these three individual devices work because I have tested them with other boards and situations...but for some reason I combine and all I get is the constant reset and garbage.

What is funnier, I had a step down module connected earlier and was able to get everything to work okay but went to add it to my prototype board and accidentally burnt it up because it is super tiny. Ordered more but when I was reading about all the specifications of these three main boards I have technically I shouldn't need a step down.

I know this is a long shot, but I am curious if anyone knows what I am missing. Could be literally anything. Spent 15 hours on this today and just cannot get that hurdle fixed.

Thoughts and advice...always helpful.

Thank you.

I should add what my ultimate goal is.

I want to both charge the battery and communicate with the microcontroller at the same time...with one usb. So when I added in the USB cable to the mix I use a modified cable that is wired up with the power and ground going to a common ground and the 5V on the charger break out from that break out it comes back to the ESP32 on the 5V, it is a ESP32-WROOM-32U.

I have confirmed the issue even with the step down mod. In fact the only way I can get the AXDL345 and ESP32 to play nice is to completely disconnect everything but the usb tether and the obvious axdl unit. This is maddening. I have googled my brain out. The only thing I turn up is a GPIO short on 6-11 which is not the cause in this case.

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