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.

[UnixOutlaw]

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.

Sorry I must have missed the first time you asked how many pins.

I actually asked here on another thread somewhere, what the specs were for connecting a battery - and NOBODY mentioned I needed a middle pin.  The main reason I asked was that NONE of the pictures in any of the doco actually tell which of the 3 pins is which.

So - I hooked up a two pin 8000 mah battery to the correct pins on the board using the correct "jack"...  Android charges it - but when I pull the power (micro USB) it shuts off (not cleanly - it just goes dead).

If what you're saying is correct - I will NEVER be able to use ANY of the two wire batteries I bought for projects like this (I have 4 x 2000, 2 x 2800, and 3 x 8000)?  ALL of them work with NTC CHIP.

How about if I ripped a battery out of an old cell phone and ran 3 wires from it?  I've got about 50 or more of the connectors (both genders)...  I've got probably a dozen old phones with batteries still in them...

What sort of spec / product (links would be helpful) would I look for in a "10k resistor"?  I've no idea about electronics at this level.  I once had a job as storeman/two-way radio installer for a comms company...  I was forever giving the radio techs the wrong parts - because I'm colour blind - all the resistors and capacitors etc all looked kinda the same to me (or hard to tell apart anyway).

[pfeerick]

Sorry I must have missed the first time you asked how many pins.

I actually asked here on another thread somewhere, what the specs were for connecting a battery - and NOBODY mentioned I needed a middle pin.  The main reason I asked was that NONE of the pictures in any of the doco actually tell which of the 3 pins is which.

So - I hooked up a two pin 8000 mah battery to the correct pins on the board using the correct "jack"...  Android charges it - but when I pull the power (micro USB) it shuts off (not cleanly - it just goes dead).

If what you're saying is correct - I will NEVER be able to use ANY of the two wire batteries I bought for projects like this (I have 4 x 2000, 2 x 2800, and 3 x 8000)?  ALL of them work with NTC CHIP.

How about if I ripped a battery out of an old cell phone and ran 3 wires from it?  I've got about 50 or more of the connectors (both genders)...  I've got probably a dozen old phones with batteries still in them...

What sort of spec / product (links would be helpful) would I look for in a "10k resistor"?  I've no idea about electronics at this level.  I once had a job as storeman/two-way radio installer for a comms company...  I was forever giving the radio techs the wrong parts - because I'm colour blind - all the resistors and capacitors etc all looked kinda the same to me (or hard to tell apart anyway).

Hm... I must have missed that thread... sorry about that.

I can't say with 100% certainy, but I'm pretty sure that even on Android the Pine64 would *say* it's charging the battery (as it would dearly love to if the temperature and all else if good), but it probably won't. On linux, without the resistor (or a thermistor in a three wire battery I presume) it says it is charging, but at same time says there is no current (energy) going into the battery!!!! Duh... stupid pine64! 

Yeah, the NTC Chip doesn't have the thermal protection for the battery, so you could say it's better or worse, depending on how you feel about exploding lithium batteries!!! Having said that, I don't think the Chip is crash-hot how it deals with a completely flat battery - I'm nearly 100% it shorted the 5v input from the USB into the 5v output from the step-up circuit for when it runs from the battery, which blew out a diode, and did some other irreparable damage to the Chip

Anyway, for the 10k resistor, you're not after anything fancy there... it doesn't have to do any actual *work*, so can be the cheapest one you can get your hands on. Since I seem to remember from the NTC forum you're in Australia also (WA... where you had your own banana?  ), you could grab 25 from a NSW ebay seller for $2.60, or you could be evil and get 10 from RadioSpares for $0.66 with free courier delivery! 

Have you tried charging one up with the Chip, then connecting it to the Pine64, and powering up the pine64 via the power switch connection? Might be worth giving that a shot, as the pine64 *should* be able to run from the batteries, just not charge... unless the android image configures things differently?

[UnixOutlaw]

Sorry I must have missed the first time you asked how many pins.

I actually asked here on another thread somewhere, what the specs were for connecting a battery - and NOBODY mentioned I needed a middle pin.  The main reason I asked was that NONE of the pictures in any of the doco actually tell which of the 3 pins is which.

So - I hooked up a two pin 8000 mah battery to the correct pins on the board using the correct "jack"...  Android charges it - but when I pull the power (micro USB) it shuts off (not cleanly - it just goes dead).

If what you're saying is correct - I will NEVER be able to use ANY of the two wire batteries I bought for projects like this (I have 4 x 2000, 2 x 2800, and 3 x 8000)?  ALL of them work with NTC CHIP.

How about if I ripped a battery out of an old cell phone and ran 3 wires from it?  I've got about 50 or more of the connectors (both genders)...  I've got probably a dozen old phones with batteries still in them...

What sort of spec / product (links would be helpful) would I look for in a "10k resistor"?  I've no idea about electronics at this level.  I once had a job as storeman/two-way radio installer for a comms company...  I was forever giving the radio techs the wrong parts - because I'm colour blind - all the resistors and capacitors etc all looked kinda the same to me (or hard to tell apart anyway).

Hm... I must have missed that thread... sorry about that.

I can't say with 100% certainy, but I'm pretty sure that even on Android the Pine64 would *say* it's charging the battery (as it would dearly love to if the temperature and all else if good), but it probably won't. On linux, without the resistor (or a thermistor in a three wire battery I presume) it says it is charging, but at same time says there is no current (energy) going into the battery!!!! Duh... stupid pine64! 

Yeah, the NTC Chip doesn't have the thermal protection for the battery, so you could say it's better or worse, depending on how you feel about exploding lithium batteries!!! Having said that, I don't think the Chip is crash-hot how it deals with a completely flat battery - I'm nearly 100% it shorted the 5v input from the USB into the 5v output from the step-up circuit for when it runs from the battery, which blew out a diode, and did some other irreparable damage to the Chip

Anyway, for the 10k resistor, you're not after anything fancy there... it doesn't have to do any actual *work*, so can be the cheapest one you can get your hands on. Since I seem to remember from the NTC forum you're in Australia also (WA... where you had your own banana?  ), you could grab 25 from a NSW ebay seller for $2.60, or you could be evil and get 10 from RadioSpares for $0.66 with free courier delivery! 

Have you tried charging one up with the Chip, then connecting it to the Pine64, and powering up the pine64 via the power switch connection? Might be worth giving that a shot, as the pine64 *should* be able to run from the batteries, just not charge... unless the android image configures things differently?

Thanks so much pfeerik - you're probably the most helpful member of this forum I've had the pleasure of dealing with...  big thumbs up from me!

[UnixOutlaw]

OK - so I've got 10 x 10K resistors from RS - which side/end does the "resistance"? Dumb newb question I know - but - as previously stated - I'm colour blind - and never done this kinda stuff before... :-)

i.e. which end do I point at the middle pin of Pine's battery input? the gold end - or the end with two darker stripes (I can't tell what colour they are)?

I can post pics if that helps anyone help me....

[MarkHaysHarris777]

OK - so I've got 10 x 10K resistors from RS - which side/end does the "resistance"?  Dumb newb question I know - but - as previously stated - I'm colour blind - and never done this kinda stuff before... :-)

i.e. which end do I point at the middle pin of Pine's battery input?  the gold end - or the end with two darker stripes (I can't tell what colour they are)?

hi, resistors are not 'directional'  like a diode is.  Put it in either direction, does not matter.  The 10K resistor connects to the center pin, and runs to ground.  The positive RED wire goes in VBAT+  and the black  negative wire goes in VBAT-

[pfeerick]

OK - so I've got 10 x 10K resistors from RS - which side/end does the "resistance"?  Dumb newb question I know - but - as previously stated - I'm colour blind - and never done this kinda stuff before... :-)

i.e. which end do I point at the middle pin of Pine's battery input?  the gold end - or the end with two darker stripes (I can't tell what colour they are)?

hi, resistors are not 'directional'  like a diode is.  Put it in either direction, does not matter.  The 10K resistor connects to the center pin, and runs to ground.  The positive RED wire goes in VBAT+  and the black  negative wire goes in VBAT-

What Mark said And please don't tell us you can't tell the difference between red and black (as you said you were colour blind)... otherwise I'll start to cry knowing a pine64 is about to suffer it's demise (50/50 chance) :

Well, my generic 8000mah battery seems to be no-where near it's rated capacity - is lasting about half the time I would have liked (basically overnight). I had intended to make it so the pine64 was charged from solar when the sun was up, and run from the battery overnight, but the battery is only just making it overnight, so won't last long with that near total usage, and doesn't leave any room for the pine64 do actually do some work.... this was with the pine64 idling. 

So much for 8000 / 300 = 26 hours (or 20 hours if you base it on a 400ma load). Either this battery is not up to spec (likely), and/or the pine64 is lying about it's power consumption (also possible). I'm getting 15 hours of runtime (and it saying 3% capacity when the power cuts back in!!!), so not happy jan! Maybe I'll have to strap on a second cell in parallel give it the capacity bump it needs. I'm liking the idea of using 18650 cells in holders... 5 or 6 of those at 2200mah should do the trick (and be about the same size as the pine64 to boot!

[MarkHaysHarris777]

Well, my generic 8000mah battery seems to be no-where near it's rated capacity - is lasting about half the time I would have liked (basically overnight). I had intended to make it so the pine64 was charged from solar when the sun was up, and run from the battery overnight, but the battery is only just making it overnight, so won't last long with that near total usage, and doesn't leave any room for the pine64 do actually do some work.... this was with the pine64 idling. 

hi pfeerick, I am working with SLA batts at the moment. I posted in the DC POWERIN subforum;  I'm using the CPT module I received from Pine. I built a low_pass filter ( PI ) and have been playing around with powering via 12v on via CPT via PI filter on the euler buss. 

My interest of course is robotics.  I need some beefy batts for the 12v motors I'm going to use, plus I need it to keep the electronics up (for several hours, while the robot patrols the house). 

But, I was thinking the 12v system is the answer to a solar system also. The lith-ion batts aren't going to cut it, but a bank of 12v SLA batts I think is just the ticket.   Let me know what you think.

[pfeerick]

Well, my generic 8000mah battery seems to be no-where near it's rated capacity - is lasting about half the time I would have liked (basically overnight). I had intended to make it so the pine64 was charged from solar when the sun was up, and run from the battery overnight, but the battery is only just making it overnight, so won't last long with that near total usage, and doesn't leave any room for the pine64 do actually do some work.... this was with the pine64 idling. 

hi pfeerick, I am working with SLA batts at the moment. I posted in the DC POWERIN subforum;  I'm using the CPT module I received from Pine. I built a low_pass filter ( PI ) and have been playing around with powering via 12v on via CPT via PI filter on the euler buss. 

My interest of course is robotics.  I need some beefy batts for the 12v motors I'm going to use, plus I need it to keep the electronics up (for several hours, while the robot patrols the house). 

But, I was thinking the 12v system is the answer to a solar system also. The lith-ion batts aren't going to cut it, but a bank of 12v SLA batts I think is just the ticket.   Let me know what you think.

Yeah, the flat lipo batteries that claim to be for tablets are pretty useless at best. This one I have here, which should just about last 24 hours is now down to about 8 hours, so pretty pathetic. I've had much better luck with the 18650 (cylindrical) lithium batteries - they can provide a lot of current in a short time if you need it, or can simply potter along. 

If you're system needs 12v due to the motors, I'd go with either the 12v SLAs you have if the weight isn't an issue. If you want less weight, a 3S lithium setup is the way to go. Stick the 18650s as they are easy to get hold of, and if you use cell holders, can be replaced as easily as AA batteries. There are plenty of protection circuits you can get that will stop the cells being over or under charged, and automatic chargers (as in plug in and it charges) for them are pretty cheap also. Either way, since you're making a roving robot, I'd be also trying to work out how to make an automatic charge dock (like the Roomba) that it can trundle back to when it's starting to get flat.

[MarkHaysHarris777]

Good to know, thanks for the tip !