battery power in android

[pfeerick]

This really is a joke!  Surely you jest sir?

Do you mean my board is only partially assembled?

I got 2 x 2 GB boards - and ONLY ONE switch in the package and it was loose floating around in the packaging.

Seriously - if this was mentioned when I pledged to the kickstarter (you will have to partially assemble the board yourself with a soldering iron - NOTE - competence with board level soldering skills required to utilise this product) - I never would have backed it!  If I try to solder tiny little components - I can almost guarantee you that I will do more harm than good!

So you're telling me I need 4 x switches (only 1 supplied for 2 products in packaging) and that I need to locate a local "system board competent" solderer - just so I can use batteries?

Forget about it buddy!  Will use the batteries on CHIP instead.

Can someone suggest a reputable online retailer of suitable switches?  I might buy some anyway, perhaps solder jumpers onto the switches -and connect them via "EXA" headers...  Because there's NO WAY I am going to try and use a soldering iron near a system board!

The boards are completely assembled. One of the stretch goals was to add the facility for a power switch. Enough people asked for it to NOT be installed that instead it was provided as an extra. If you wanted to mount it on the board as provided for, you solder it on. If you want to mount it externally (maybe because you have a nice case), you connect any momentary-on switch to the EXP(ansion) header instead. Prior to that strech goal, you would only have been able to power it on or off by issuing a shutdown command, and switching off the power manually. Or just switching the power on or off at the wall, which is generally not recommended!!!

For ease of installation, something like the switch xalius recommended is good, as it has the lead and jumper connector on it already, so you just need to plug it in. You only *need* the reset button if you have an aversion to switching the power supply off, or disconnecting it, as that resets most devices pretty well! :-O 

To get more switches like the one provided, you can get 20 for less than $2 on eBay.

I'll ask again - does your battery have a two or a three pin connector? If it only has a two pin connector, it will NOT charge (unless you consider 2-3 ma of current charging when charging a 2200mah cell!!!, although that is probably just measurement inaccuracy on the Pine64s part). This is why you need the third wire, which is connected to the thermistor on the battery so the pine64 knows the battery isn't about to set on fire. If you don't have a thermistor (temperature sensor) on the battery, you can trick the pine64 into charging by connecting the temperature sense pin to GND via a 10K resistor.

If your battery is charged, you can disconnect the power from the USB port, and the pine64 will continue to run from the battery. As you would have been expecting, due to the electrics being based on tablet designs, which do exactly the same thing. You can see if the battery is being charged or detected if you check the script I posted earlier in this thread. Note it will may say charging since that what the AXP803 chip is reporting but, if when you look at the current listing it says less than 5ma, so it ain't charging! In my case, when I add the 10k temperature sense trickery, it immediately starts charging, like shown below.

Code:

Pine64 reports battery detected!                                                                    
Status: Charging                                                                                    
Voltage: 4.20v                                                                                      
Current: 425ma                                                                                      
Capacity: 32%                                                                                       
Health: Good     

I agree that the Pine64 is not as refined or ready for use as the Chip is, but it is slowly improving, and it won't be long before it is just as refined and easy to use as the Raspberry Pi or Chip. Once the user generated documentation kicks off on Pine Pro, or somewhere else, it'll be a completely different environment.