March 20, 2012
You'll get a charge out of this (or maybe not).
At the end of the February 6 entry about getting the dynamo hub in Portland and the Reecharge unit to connect to it, it seemed the next step was to wait to see if the scheme would work out on the trail. So that would mean a rest from the topic for a couple of months, actually. That was not to be. The fact is, a huge amount of time has been spent trying to suss out how or if the parts will perform when (and if) they get out there in the real world.
What's the beef? It's just the innocent observation that when the Reecharge unit is connected to the Nokia N8 smartphone, the phone produces the expected charging animation - of a battery being filled. Only thing, the battery charge declines rather than increasing! That certainly got my attention, and spawned the following topics and observations:
The Reecharge, the cell phone, and many other small chargers and devices work with the USB standard. That calls for a certain few form factors of plugs, and about 5V,500 mA power. However, the fact that USB lines can also carry data and that USB connections may or may not involve computer ports, makes the area complicated. Smartphones, being little computers, like playing the USB game like the big boys. That is, they use their processing systems to think about the charging process. Apple phones, of course, play in their own park (err, campus). Also smartphones like the N8 can take in power (and data) through a USB port on the side or a pure power port on the bottom. This Wikipedia article has more of the gory details, but we see there is an undercurrent of complexity to the simple observation of the phone battery draining.
On the other hand, a seemingly simpler portable charger (smaller, anyway) - the Energiser XP2000 seems to charge the N8 just fine. It's basic features are just like the Reecharge, at least in that it receives 5V input and outputs power from a standard USB socket.
Ah, so how about chucking the Reecharge battery and subbing in the Energiser, connected to the dynamo through the Reecharge voltage regulator? Two problems: One, the Energiser takes in power through a USB mini plug. The Reecharge regulator puts out power through a 1.5mm (I think) coaxial male power plug. Half a day spent running around in the car shows that no adapter from one to the other exists on Vancouver Island. Actually, I did cobble together a string of USB plugs that did the conversion, but Dodie vetoed it as too fragile a construct. Problem two: no way to tell if the dynamo (with its on and off power from the bike stopping and starting) will actually charge and not damage the Energiser.
Well now, it is also true that the Reecharge battery can succeed in charging the Energiser. So if the Energiser will charge the phone (and the dynamo will charge the Reecharge), maybe we have a team? Actually, the technical term for such a team is "kludge".
Kludge is defined as kludge (/ˈkluːdʒ/) Also kluge. [J. W. Granholm's jocular invention: see first quot.; cf. also bodge v., fudge v.][2] 'An ill-assorted collection of poorly-matching parts, forming a distressing whole' (Granholm); esp. in Computing, a machine, system, or program that has been improvised or 'bodged' together; a hastily improvised and poorly thought-out solution to a fault or 'bug'. The word 'kludge' is...derived from the German adjective klug, originally meaning 'smart' or 'witty'.... 'Kludge' eventually came to mean 'not so smart'.
I poured out my sorrow in a email to Todd, at Clever Cycles, and he replied quickly, holding out a slender thread of hope. Todd's experience is that the Reecharge indeed reduced the charge of his iPhone, but only to a point. After fighting it out, Todd's Reecharge and iPhone would come to an equilibrium, at about 60% charge. From there, they would form an alliance and hold 60% for a long time, maybe forever, if connected to the dynamo. So now the electrical/programming complexity more resembles a story of 19th Century political alliances. I asked my Reecharge and Nokia to work out something similar, and actually they did seem to quit fighting at about 60%. The dynamo is asleep in its suitcase, so no telling what it will make of this. Meanwhile the Nokia is playing all of Season 3 of Big Bang Theory to test the loyalty and support of the Reecharge. (Season 3, of course, can test anybody's loyalty and support.)
After listening to these and a lot more fevered speculations about the charging system, our resident computer expert, Marius, went out and picked up yet another portable charger to throw into the mix. This elegant newcomer, marketed by NOMA, touts an impressive 3200 maH of storage, enough, they say, to charge a device up to 6 times (or I would say maybe twice, for the N8). The NOMA, like the others, offers a standard USB output, and presumably scads of mA of current. But Oh, oh, it also seems to drain the N8! Worse, it requires 8.4V to charge. Sadly, the NOMA therefore did not come to the rescue. It was, however, good for several hours of playing with its many supplied connectors. With a blade knife and a soldering iron I plan to convert two of them into something the Energiser can use to link to the dynamo.
So where does this topic stand? Not sure, really. With the connector made from the bones of the NOMA I will eventually connect the Energiser to the voltage regulator/dynamo. If the dynamo charges it, we are happy. If not, the crying will be heard all the way from Vienna to Venice (Venice, California that is).
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