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+--- Thread: Recycling pinephone as home server (/showthread.php?tid=20075)
Recycling pinephone as home server - mdk - 11-11-2025
Hi!
I have an old pinephone that I stopped using (due to broken battery pins).
I'm trying to recycle it as a home server, without a battery (I don't want it to catch fire) but:
- Either I plug it using an USB-C charger, it boots, but does not gets Wi-Fi (known behavior), so I'm stuck.
- Either I use the Pinephone convergence dock to use RJ45, but it looks like it lacks power or something as the phone bootloops.
I though about using a voltage regulator to fake the battery BUT I fear the moment the phone tries to "charge" it, lol.
Can someone try to boot its pinephone without a battery and with a convergence dock to see if there's any chance this way?
Or is there another way I missed?
RE: Recycling pinephone as home server - zetabeta - 11-11-2025
(11-11-2025, 10:12 AM)mdk Wrote: Hi!
I have an old pinephone that I stopped using (due to broken battery pins).
I'm trying to recycle it as a home server, without a battery (I don't want it to catch fire) but:
- Either I plug it using an USB-C charger, it boots, but does not gets Wi-Fi (known behavior), so I'm stuck.
- Either I use the Pinephone convergence dock to use RJ45, but it looks like it lacks power or something as the phone bootloops.
I though about using a voltage regulator to fake the battery BUT I fear the moment the phone tries to "charge" it, lol.
Can someone try to boot its pinephone without a battery and with a convergence dock to see if there's any chance this way?
Or is there another way I missed?
somehow dock is recognized by operating system. some cases detection works and there have been other cases it does not. but charging connector messes this even further. i had cases where dock works but not if i put charger in it. and if i use a dock, and connect charger afterwards, it recycles stuff on a dock, disconnects and connects.
generally speaking, using charger thorough dock without battery is a bad idea.
3 ampere charger is recommended though.
voltage regulator may work, but maybe diode might be good idea.
lack of wifi might be because of bad drivers or kernel. bluetooth could be used for networking, but it is slow. you could update the system with bluetooth.
i may test dock and non-battery later, but i expect it fails somehow.
RE: Recycling pinephone as home server - Kevin Kofler - 11-12-2025
The lack of WiFi is because the PinePhone circuitry has the WiFi (and also the modem) attached directly to the battery, not to the main power circuit. So no battery implies no WiFi and no modem.
RE: Recycling pinephone as home server - biketool - 11-12-2025
(11-12-2025, 10:20 AM)Kevin Kofler Wrote: The lack of WiFi is because the PinePhone circuitry has the WiFi (and also the modem) attached directly to the battery, not to the main power circuit. So no battery implies no WiFi and no modem.
There are instructions from maybe 3-4 years ago somewhere on the wiki, but there is a trick where voltage, I think 5v+ is fine, needs t go to a battery pad.
RE: Recycling pinephone as home server - mdk - 11-20-2025
(11-12-2025, 11:18 AM)biketool Wrote: There are instructions from maybe 3-4 years ago somewhere on the wiki, but there is a trick where voltage, I think 5v+ is fine, needs t go to a battery pad.
I was unable to find that. If connecting 5v to the battery pad is enough, it's probably easy (by picking it from the USB charger directly).
But I fear burning something (fully charged battery is still less than 5V IIRC), and I fear the reaction of the charging parts: we can hope thay by providing 5V the phone will never try to charge the "battery", but what if it tries? As said previously adding a diode could protect this, but am I forgetting something else that could go wrong?
Did someone ever tried?
RE: Recycling pinephone as home server - biketool - 11-20-2025
(11-20-2025, 07:14 AM)mdk Wrote:(11-12-2025, 11:18 AM)biketool Wrote: There are instructions from maybe 3-4 years ago somewhere on the wiki, but there is a trick where voltage, I think 5v+ is fine, needs t go to a battery pad.
I was unable to find that. If connecting 5v to the battery pad is enough, it's probably easy (by picking it from the USB charger directly).
But I fear burning something (fully charged battery is still less than 5V IIRC), and I fear the reaction of the charging parts: we can hope thay by providing 5V the phone will never try to charge the "battery", but what if it tries? As said previously adding a diode could protect this, but am I forgetting something else that could go wrong?
Did someone ever tried?
5v+ in is within the engineering spec of all changing hardware I have ever seen over the last 30 years.
RE: Recycling pinephone as home server - mdk - 12-01-2025
(11-20-2025, 09:04 AM)biketool Wrote: 5v+ in is within the engineering spec of all changing hardware I have ever seen over the last 30 years.
Right but we're not speaking about applying 5 V to the battery, we're speaking of applying 5 V to the components that **think** they see a battery. According to the pinephone datasheet, it's a https://files.pine64.org/doc/datasheet/pine64/AXP803_Datasheet_V1.0.pdf.