LauBen Posted January 2, 2009 Share Posted January 2, 2009 Hi All, I have two questions :) been reading through the other posts and have run into a small problem . I set up my old Fon and had it all working with the guides from this site, but found the need for mains power to be a bit binding :( so I followed the threads and decided to build the battery pack. All went fine until I connected the pack to the Fon, first off the pack would not power the Fon, not even the lights :( I checked the Fon was working still on the mains and it did, then checked the power being supplied by the pack which was around 6 Volts. Then for some reason (aren't friends great ) the polarity of the power pack was reversed, still no joy and now the Fon will not work, even on the mains power supply. I would imagine that something has blown and needs to be replaced anyone got any ideas?? Secondly, fearing the worse I have ordered a new Fon from Dabs (a UK supplier) but the one thats turned up is a Fon+ the one with a Ethernet and Internet port a 2201 I believe. Now has anyone been able to get the 2201 working with Jasager ?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digininja Posted January 2, 2009 Share Posted January 2, 2009 The 2201 works fine, I started a set of instructions and Rob has his own set somewhere on this forum. These both use Gargoyle as a base firmware. If you know a bit about what you are doing the openwrt 8.9 firmware works on my fon+ out of the box so you could install that then just follow the normal Jasager install instructions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LauBen Posted January 3, 2009 Share Posted January 3, 2009 Ok thanks for that, I have to give it a try and see. Anyone got any ideas on what bits of the old Fon may need to be replaced?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digininja Posted January 3, 2009 Share Posted January 3, 2009 Have a google for fon and sd card you should find something. Fonerahacks website will probably have things as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdogherman Posted January 7, 2009 Share Posted January 7, 2009 I purchased a Radioshack model battery and charger that was rated for 6v 1000 mAh for 80 cents. RS system just keeps dropping the price till it is free. The price tag was 4 bucks. I bought 2 so i could mount one charger to the fon and the other for power. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MajickMan Posted March 20, 2009 Share Posted March 20, 2009 why dont you guys wire as many battery packs as you want (i think 2 would do the trick for extreme amounts of time). after wiring as many battery packs as you want get them on a small circut with a plug then you can run high powered things for longer! i have seen this done and it is very useful. Cheers, IC3 Yeah I was just thinking a couple of these xpal Harry II's linked together could be a good long lightweight alternative. http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-XPAL-Harry-II-Port...90226114004r460 Battery Cell: Lithium Polymer Power Capacity: 2000 mAh USB plug for sending power and comes with USB charger cable so you could plug on into the other Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
underhole Posted March 20, 2009 Share Posted March 20, 2009 I'm ordering my fon later this week, but has any one made their battery pack module and then rigged it with a switch and put connectors on the standard power adapter so you could easily switch back and forth between the two as necessary? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
loneferret Posted April 11, 2009 Share Posted April 11, 2009 First time poster here, nice site and I'm happy to have rediscovered the show (my GOD it's changed since the last time I watched it!!!) Anyway, after reading this thread I suppose no one tried building a small 5v power regulator and attaching that between a battery pack and the Fon. Once I order my Fon, I'll be doing this. Figure that the regulator will supply the Fon with a steady 5v, which is later dropped to 3.3v by the Fon's circuit. Would also permit to add many more batteries so I suppose longer life... Of course this is all theory on my part. The only times I've built these 5 volt regulators were to power LEDs displays in various objects. What I'd like to know is, how many amps those the Fon use? Since my idea of using a 7805 for the regulator, it would need a heat sink for anything over 1amp. Have a good day guys... I hope to learn and eventually contribute in the future. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdogherman Posted April 11, 2009 Share Posted April 11, 2009 The think that I would worry about is that if you bump up the voltage too much there would be a lot of loss though the regulator. What I would like to see is a battery pack with a charging switch. plug it in and it charges the batteries, un plug and run of them till they die. ( like a laptop batter system) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
loneferret Posted April 11, 2009 Share Posted April 11, 2009 The think that I would worry about is that if you bump up the voltage too much there would be a lot of loss though the regulator. What I would like to see is a battery pack with a charging switch. plug it in and it charges the batteries, un plug and run of them till they die. ( like a laptop batter system) True... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jkdelauney Posted April 15, 2009 Share Posted April 15, 2009 Anyway, after reading this thread I suppose no one tried building a small 5v power regulator and attaching that between a battery pack and the Fon. Once I order my Fon, I'll be doing this. Figure that the regulator will supply the Fon with a steady 5v, which is later dropped to 3.3v by the Fon's circuit. Would also permit to add many more batteries so I suppose longer life... Of course this is all theory on my part. The only times I've built these 5 volt regulators were to power LEDs displays in various objects. What I'd like to know is, how many amps those the Fon use? Since my idea of using a 7805 for the regulator, it would need a heat sink for anything over 1amp. There's no reason to put a 7805 between the battery pack and the Fon as you're just doubling up on regulators, and as most 78XX units need about 1.5V to 2V more than the output voltage you'd have to use 5 AAs or 6 if you're using rechargeable cells. (4 rechargeable AAs is already cutting it close to under powering the Fon's internal regulator) That also wouldn't give any longer life. To extend the life you'd want to add parallel arrays of batteries. So two sets of 4 AA series wired in parallel, or just using 4 C or D cells would give you more mAh and thus more run time. As for a charging system, that wouldn't be too hard, though designing the charging circuit so it would fit in the pineapple along with everything else might be a little tricky, but certainly doable. Would likely have to use a trickle charger though, as the caps needed for a rapid charger would really cramp the Fon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ADM1NX Posted April 21, 2009 Share Posted April 21, 2009 I'm ordering my fon later this week, but has any one made their battery pack module and then rigged it with a switch and put connectors on the standard power adapter so you could easily switch back and forth between the two as necessary? That's what I did. i put a switch in to swap between the two power sources. If i flick it fast enough, it doesn't even turn off on me. What i did was keep all the ground wires connected, then i had a switch that had battery on the left, wall wart on the right, and the center pin was to the 5v line on the board. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xyzzy Posted June 24, 2009 Share Posted June 24, 2009 Here's a switching 5V regulator offered on ebay that will take anything up to 24V input and has over 90% efficiency: http://bit.ly/tIUbd The cost is $4 but unfortunately the shipping from Shanghai is $10. I think they were pulled from some other assembly line as some identifying info on the PCB is scraped off. It works as advertised. Anyway, they're quite small and would fit in the pineapple easily and allow all sorts of battery options. To take it a step further, there's a little trimpot on the regulator to allow the voltage to be adjusted from 1-10VDC, so it might even be used to supply 3.3 volts & bypass the fon's first regulator. That would improve the efficiency because a linear, non-switching regulator going from 5V to 3.3 volts is only 3.3/5 = 66% efficient. There's a second linear voltage regulator on the fon that drops 3.3V to 1.9V for the processor (1.9/3.3 = 57% efficient) so maybe even a second one of these switching regulators might be used to advantage. Seems like most of the heat is in that area, so that's probably the bulk of the current draw. Maybe using two of these regulators is overkill, but I'd guess it would improve battery life overall by maybe double. Looking at the size and function of this regulator, I wonder if they are meant to be used in a car USB power adapter (e.g. http://bit.ly/pc9OG). Maybe just cannabalizing one of those things would be cheaper, although it might be fixed at 5V and who knows what efficiency. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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