Charging an Archos 101 G9 tablet

[Trevor White]

Hi all. 

I have had the IOIO working with a Archos 101 G9 tablet. Unfortunately it only has one usb socket and it only charges via that usb socket. Unfortunately with the IOIO the charging does not give the tablet more than 500mA or rather the tablet only takes 500mA from the IOIO. This is not enough to keep the tablet alive though. So after 1 day of being connected the tablet will shut down. It only has the one usb connection. I wanted to do some data logging with the tablet and have it sitting there for several days. 

I suppose one option is to maybe try the bluetooth connection so that I can plug the charger in to the only usb socket. Not sure how reliable the bluetooth connection is at present? Does bluetooth drop out a lot? I am really impressed with the USB connection. I did a test leaving the tablet on for 10 hours receiving data over the UART. It worked non stop. No lock ups. Just seemed to work really really well. 

Any ideas would be great. 

Many thanks

Trev

[Ytai Ben-Tsvi]

I've run Bluetooth for hours as well with no drop outs. There has been one report on this thread for Bluetooth disconnection after hours, but I don't know if it is something about the specific setup of the reported or a more general problem.

The fact that the tablet takes 500mA is not a IOIO limitation - the USB spec forbids the tablet to draw more than 500mA, so that's what it's doing. It is very likely that the proper charger has some hack to let the tablet know this is not a proper USB connection, and thus it's taking more current. This is a very common trick and the reason why most Androids would charge faster when connected to their stock charger than when connected to a USB port / generic charger.

Gosh, is it consuming >500mA with the screen off? Have you tried some tricks to cut down consumption (turn off backlight, Wifi, 3G, etc)?

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[Trevor White]

Hi Ytai

I left my tablet on over night connected via usb to the IOIO board. I turned the screen off and I think I might even have had it in airplane mode so all radio was off. It dropped 10% power over 6 hours. So its right on the edge. I was running data through the UART so it was processing away. 

Thanks for the info on the Bluetooth. I have actually been trying to connect a bluetooth dongle today. I had success with HelloIOIO. That is controlling the LED fine. But my own application which uses IOIO in a separate service as a thread does not seem to have the same success just yet. I am still trying to compare it with HelloIOIO to see what I am doing differently. I was under the impression as long as the lib is added and the permission for bluetooth is set that the application does not need to care if its usb or bluetooth? 

Thanks

Trev

[Ytai Ben-Tsvi]

Where to the 500mA go???

Your application will be completely agnostic to Bluetooth if it (correctly) uses the application firmware provided.

V3.22 IOIOLib has a IOIOService abstract class as well as a HelloIOIOService example. Check it out. You can do so without upgrading your firmware if you want.

Thanks

Trev

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[Trevor White]

I have no idea what it is doing with all that current. 

I did actually try the latest firmware download via programming the bootloader with a pickit2 and then using IOIOManager to download the application. But after I did this my dongle seemed to act differently and so I went back to 3.11 which works with the bluetooth. It is quite possibly something I am doing but I was under the impression the application 3.22 would be better? 

Anyway, thanks for the idea of trying the new IOIOService. I may well end up giving that a spin. My code was working perfectly well with usb though. 

Trev

[Trevor White]

Checking my application it seems that the IOIOConnectionRegistry is not bootstrapping the Bluetooth connection properly. Probably time to try the new IOIOService

[Ytai Ben-Tsvi]

There's a know problem with v3.22 firmware and some dongles. I'm working on a fix. This doesn't prevent you from using the v3.22 software with v3.11 firmware. Give it a try.

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[Trevor White]

I have IOIOService implemented and bluetooth has come to life in my
application. Brilliant, thanks Ytai. I am absolutely hammering it with
data over bluetooth. I shall leave it on for now and see what happens
in the morning. I have the normal charger plugged in so hopefully it
will keep it's charge now.

Will let you know.

I did try the 3.22 firmware again and it did not work so I went back
to 3.11 and life is good.

Thanks

Trev

On 13 Mar, 18:06, Ytai Ben-Tsvi <yta...@gmail.com> wrote:
> There's a know problem with v3.22 firmware and some dongles. I'm working on
> a fix. This doesn't prevent you from using the v3.22 software with v3.11
> firmware. Give it a try.

[Trevor White]

Okay, well my application has closed a couple of times. It has done it all very cleanly and it does not appear to be a crash as such because everything has a chance to close properly. There are no messages saying the application closes unexpectedly. The service requests a disconnect and does shut down. Everything seems to work fine and then it randomly closes. I can open the application again and things continue working again. The bluetooth itself seems very robust. It almost feels like the Android system deliberately close the app. This is just a guess and it really could be my application but these are my initial observations. I will keep testing. 

I experimented unplugging the bluetooth dongle and it handles things fine. The application just waits for a reconnect. And when I plug the dongle back in within maybe 10 seconds it reconnects and everything continues like nothing had happened. Its very good that way. 

Trev

[Trevor White]

Well my bluetooth dongle started freezing. The dongle was very old and something I found in a box. Luckily I had two more arrive today to try. I have not had a lockup with the first one yet today and my application has not crashed either. 

On the thought of why the application might have crashed. I notice that if the screen gets too dirty in the bottom left corner where the back button on the Archos screen is ( running ICS 4.0.3 ) this can sometimes close my application down and anything else that is trying to open. I have no proof it was this earlier but it fits the bill for me right now. I have cleaned the screen and not had a problem since. I will keep testing and let you know. 

Trev

[Peter]

The issue with the tablets may be less about current, and more about charging voltage. I had some problems trying to charge using USB power my ASUS TF300, which would happen but only when not in use and over a considerable period of time. Then I looked at the charging pack and it charges with 15V. That may be the issue why some other Tablets dont charge with IOIO. I havent tried with a 15V supply on Vin as I dont have one.

Peter

[Jeff Eberl]

You should be able to test that by seeing if it stays on from a computer's USB port. USB 3 doesn't have 15V does it?

On Sep 9, 2012 8:20 PM, "Peter" <peterm...@gmail.com> wrote:

The issue with the tablets may be less about current, and more about charging voltage. I had some problems trying to charge using USB power my ASUS TF300, which would happen but only when not in use and over a considerable period of time. Then I looked at the charging pack and it charges with 15V. That may be the issue why some other Tablets dont charge with IOIO. I havent tried with a 15V supply on Vin as I dont have one.

Peter

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[Peter]

I've tried on a USB 3 port with no success. Not sure of the USB 3 spec. I could only see on the Wikipedia article that USB 3 increases the charging current to 1.5 amp. With a max of 5 amp. I would have thought changing the voltage spec to 15v would be pretty dicey as some older USB peripherals may not be sufficiently protected against over voltage?