(re)charging control

Mon Nov 27 18:30:29 CET 2006

Salve Marcin!

On Mon, 27 Nov 2006, Marcin Juszkiewicz wrote:
> One thing which annoyed me in all cellphones is charging control. 

This is a very important point for the usability of a phone and
I 100% agree, have one of the greatest powerto make a user angry 

> How many 
> times you discovered that phone need charging but you have to go to work? 

How many times did your phone woke you up in the night with 
"beeb beeb beeb beeb" empty battery.....

> Or even worse you discovered it when you got important call to do and no 
> way to charge phone?
> 
> I'm thinking about adding posibility to warn user when:
> 
> 1. user is at home (where is charger)

There is no need for a propritary charger ;)))))

The charger will be a normal powerd USB port, so you can also 
- charge it at work,
- with your laptop 
- There are also cheap 12V car adapter to power up there...
- and I would like to see a small inexpensive adapter to AA / 9V 
  battery for contingency - just pick some batterys from another
  device or by normal batteries (gettable at every corner)

BTW does a battery dislike it when it is charged every day and
only discharged to the level 0.8 instead of chared every third
day and discharged to the level of 0.4?

If yes - two battery blocks with a software controled anlalog 
switch instead of one would be the better design - the user
could full discharge one battery before he charge it again.
When he started to discharge the second one (80%) before charging
the empty one, he could be ask, if 90% charging would be enough
at the moment and if battery 2 will be asked to charged after
it full empty ...

In case of trouble because the batteries would become to old,
or it would be to cold - the user should be able to choose
with his GUI that both battery will be used temporary
parallel.

Excange of one of the battery should be possible without
shutting down the smartphone.

Hardware hack:
- It would be handy when a smartphone could also be a voltmeter
and every phone does have the hardware to messure power of the
batteries 
- so behind the battery cover could be two 4 cm long wire to
messure diodes and < 12v
Cool would it be to have the full function of a cheap multi-meter,
but with the freedom to develope software for it 
- making the smartphone to a small oszilloscope and more....
With that modification, the phone should be isolated well and
resist 400V *g*

To find a infrequent error, service people could connect
this GSM/GPRS-multi-meter, leave the room and use it
- remote
- get voice calls when a trigger is been activated...

The Neo1973 could become a general remote analysing tool
and when every phone has this capability - owner machines
with this remote maintenance didn't need a seperate device,
just their normal smartphone has the analog/digital I/O
for be connected to 
- cars
- coffee machines
- copy machiens
- printer
- professional video/TV cameras

   Be using a professional JVC camera to film a anti-software patent
   confernence at the European Parlament I got the know how, that
   these cameras are logging very much - every press of a button
   and much more is be logged¹ internaly and could be used from the 
   service to analyse missbehavier of this cameras...
   (The camera was great and works fine but I caused a small problem
    beeing back at my university - so I heard about the service
    power.. - and I was more impressed by this camera)

   With open analog/digital interfaces on the Neo these companies
   could use a Neo1973 for service. Close source software could
   run on the device (in a jail of vserver-linux) and in case of
   trouble the internal device datas could be transmitted, the
   machine could get a new firmware or settings while the owner/operator
   is talking with the service.
   This could be also (encrypted) via BT - and mybe done with every
   Bluetooth phone - but USB, I2C, SPI and multimeter-power would
   make the Neo1973 #1 choose to become used for service cases.   

   Consider the prices of professional Cameras - It wouldn't hurt
   when a Neo1973 with such software and a GSM card for dialing
   only the camera service is be sold together with the camera
   or the service contract.

   So in case of trouble the camera man does have a Neo1973 JVC
   service phone in his camera pocket and call JVC when he has
   trouble....

But back to the hardware power, that is more likly to be
inside of the first Neo1973

> 2. battery is <'in 10-14h will be empty'

I wrote already about some ideas about this:
   Battery managment. I hate my phone because when I traval the phone
   switch off when it has to low battery - ok. But when I need the phone
   to announce a delay, to call a taxi or emergency - it has no power
   reserve for just one call, just 30 seconds... not to mention 15
   minutes.

   So when I have a Neo1973 my first crontab would be a small script,
   that it will check every 15 minutes if the battery has become lower
   then 7% - when there is no phonecall or activity - give a warning
   and switch of.
   That would be a 10 minutes hack - just a 3 line skript that would
   give me so much more comfort with my phone.
http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/community/2006-November/000000.html

Anouther idea would be a "semi-online status" when you are sleeping,
or travelling your device would be online only from time 
to time, e.g. 30 minutes intervall - asking your sever if someone
tried to call you - or did send you a SMS and then swich off again.
Because netlogin cost more power than "keep alive/log in communication
with the network" I would expect that intervalls of less then 30 minutes
does not have a great influence when you are not travelling.

This idea became more power, when you use call forwarding with an 
asterisk server and you even forwared your incoming SMS by using
a dual Sim card with a second GSM device at home (with your server
e.g. NSLU2).

Statisticaly analysis could support you to worry less about
your battery by knowing more exactly when you know much more
about your power consumpting....

I'm shure, much more good ideas about the battery case will possible ;)

Greetings
rob

¹ such a logging could be helpfull for OpenMoko developing as well 

> 
> so user is able to connect phone for charging and will get full battery for 
> next day.
> 
> What do you think?
> 
> -- 
> JID: hrw-jabber.org
> OpenEmbedded developer/consultant
> 
>                     If it happens, it must be possible.
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> OpenMoko community mailing list
> community at lists.openmoko.org
> http://lists.openmoko.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/community