I have a PDA that I use for sat nav but when I dont use it for a while the battery goes flat and I loose data. What I thought of doing was installing a cigarette lighter in the glove box (1995 Discovery) so I can have it on charge all the time. Is there a permanent live feed behind the glove box I can connect to? Or does anyone know of a reason I shouldn't have it on charge permantly?
Thanks Richard
Hi,
apart from a constant drain on the battery I've heard that if you start a vehicle with gadgets already plugged in it can fry the electrics in said gadgets.
might be an UL but I always unplug my mobile etc before starting the car.
Peter
The digital clock feed is permanently live and in that area. I suppose it could eventually flatten your battery but I doubt a PDA on standby uses much though the adapter probably sucks more juice down dropping the voltage. I would be more worried about whether the PDA adapter would not overheat certainly my mobile phone adapter gets quite warm. If your unit will recharge batteries while connected to an external supply I would be happier with a switched power source which would just top up when you were driving and get some decent rechargeables by choice NiMH type
Richard uttered summat worrerz funny about:
Is it a Mio? I have one of these, there are a number of things you can do to safeguard you data, especially if you are using Medion Navigator such as backing up all your saved destinations.etc etc.
Lee D
My mio always seems to loose all my tomtom favorites when the battery goes flat :(
Its a iPaq 3630. Tom Tom is ok when the battery goes flat. But I lose the Bluetooth manager and the program to run the Memory Map maps. I have to reinstall from pc. I have tried saving those two programs on to the compact flash card but they wont work from that.
Richard
Tom Woods uttered summat worrerz funny about:
Duno about Tom Tom but on the Medion Navigator Software there is a file called Favorites, every now and then I bung a copy over to the Memory card. As the Medion Nav will self install it's not a dead loss then if it dies away from home/PC. It also has a backup facility which again restores everything.
I found by switching all the settings I've managed to retain the battery quite well so far only having one hickup in just over tweleve months.
Lee D
Richard uttered summat worrerz funny about:
Have you got a Backup option? I've found this works well, but only as well as your most recent backup.
Lee D
It's best to use the switched method, Lithium Ion batteries of the type used in most phones and PDAs don't like to be on permanent charge, it damages the battery.
from
Due to the nature of the batteries used in all iPAQ models you can recharge as often and for as long as you like. Your battery will not be damaged by this practice nor can it be overcharged, constant charging of the iPAQ's battery will actually improve the battery's life span.
Lithium Ion batteries get hot if left on charge and can be damaged and even explode, either the FAQ above is wrong or the ipaq isn't using lithium ion batteries. Devices like laptops have a charger built-in which keeps them topped up, and the batteries themselves have in-built intelligence which uses a protocol called smbus or something like that to keep them within spec. Smaller devices like PDAs and phones don't tend to do that so much due to size. Perhaps the ipaq has more battery smarts but I'd tread that FAQ entry with caution. In general, if a lithium-ion battery gets warm or hot, it's being screwed by the charger.
As for improving the lifespan, lithium-ion batteries have a shelf life that drops with age, which is why laptop batteries and mobile phone batteries don't tend to be much use after 4-5 years or so. Quite how the ipaq faq thinks that keeping it on constant charge makes it better I don't know, absolutely no other battery FAQ of any kind I've ever seen has said anything like that regarding Li-Ion. That part for certain is total rubbish.
Here's one link that's from a fairly reliable source, there's others out there too if you care to do a bit of googling.
All very interesting. Here is what I have done, I have put a lighter socket in the glove box but its only live when the ignition is on. So the iPaq will only charge when the ignition is on. I assume this is ok?
Richard
Smart lithium chargers are single chip systems now, its quite conceivable the Ipaq has a "gas-gauge" circuit and can decide for itself if it wants to charge.
Steve
That's the best bet, you won't run down your car batteries, and won't f*ck up the ipaq.
Indeed, but ISTR someone saying that it gets warm when it's charging, Li-Ion batteries shouldn't really do that, although it does depend on the vintage! I know my Palm Tungsten T3 gets warm when charging even when the unit itself is turned off.
It's a bit daft to talk about the "ipaq" though, I think they've been making them so long there's loads of different revisions of it so what's true for one might not be true for a newer version.
I suggested the adaapter might get warm my phone also does tho less so,( its a Siemens about 6 months old) so they havent actually solved the problem yet Derek
Not sure about the iPaq 3630 - think its too old to have that technology...
The only sure way around this is to use a PDA with Windows Mobile 5. WM5 uses a fundementally different approach to memory which means that when the power dies your data doesnt.
On the 3630, use the ipaq file store for as much of your data as possible (its only a small chunk I know, but thats the same memory type as in WM5).
Dont think that WM5 solves all the problems though... For as many as it soves, ActiveSync4 (required to run WM5) introduces as many more!!! I think the problem it traditionally called Microsoft!!!
That said when AS4 and WM5 are working together its brilliant and a big step forward.
J>Its a iPaq 3630. Tom Tom is ok when the battery goes flat. But I lose the
It's not possible to make volatile memory non-volatile just through a software change. If the unit has some properly non-volatile memory, e.g. NAND memory, then the volatile memory could be backed up to it, like a laptop hibernating, but if the unit has no proper non-volatile memory then no amount of wishful thinking will ever change that.
Ian, I wasn't suggesting that a simple software change to existing hardware would solve the problem; more the newest iPAQs (which run entirely on NAND) now run WM5 OS and therefore to take advantage of this type of memory a Hardware change would be required. What you say about memory is 100% correct.
...Hope this hasn't just muddied the waters further!
The older 36xx series ipaq's have a small area of NAND, called the "iPaq File Store" which needs to be used to minimise any data loss when the batteries go flat.
We have this problem all the time with our HP 2210's. Regards,
Jon VentureOverland
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