The problem with non-standard USB charging (was: Re: Price of the Freerunner spare parts)
joerg
joerg.twinklephone at gmx.de
Fri Mar 28 19:43:21 CET 2008
Michel,
this is a perfect description of the current situation.
You have to wear the t-shirt yourself! :-)
cherrs
jOERG
Am Fr 28. März 2008 schrieb Michael Shiloh:
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the big problem is that there is no
> standard for reporting current capacity other than the USB protocol,
> which is not supported by dumb chargers.
>
> What this means is that the various tricks that we and others play
> (shorting unused data pins, adding resistors of specific values between
> two pins, etc.) are all completely non-standard meaning there is no
> agreement between manufacturers and most importantly NO PROM
> iSE THAT FUTURE DEVICES OF THE SAME MODEL NUMBER WILL USE THE SAME
> TECHNIQUE!
>
> In other words we could test a given Motorola charger today, find that
> they have a resistor of value x between two pins, write the code to test
> for this value and then bump up the current draw to the value that we
> know the Motorola charger can provide.
>
> But then next month Motorola might change the value of this resistor.
> They might send a firmware update over the air to all their phones to
> make existing phones compatible with the new charger.
>
> We, of course, do not get this update, and suddenly the charger that we
> had tested no longer works.
>
> For a good example of this problem see Lady Ada's discussion on her
> Minty Boost. You will see a string of reports from people saying they
> needed to modify the resistor value and/or location in order to get
> Minty Boost to work with different models of iPods. And any solution is
> always temporary, until Apple changes something and then the resistor
> must change again.
>
> Thus the only way we can guarantee safe charging at higher than the USB
> maximum of 500mA is with our own charger.
>
> I would love to see a technical report, a white paper, written on this
> issue. Would anyone like to take on the challenge? Winner gets an
> Openmoko t-shirt (http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/SWAG)
>
> Michael
>
> Kevin Dean wrote:
> > O> > community at lists.openmoko.org
> > http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
>
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