Maker Pro
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Simply Sunday afternoon project turned nightmare!

Flatstone

Nov 12, 2018
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Hi

This might be a very simple question but I'm going around in circle try to google an answer and not getting anywhere.

Basically I've turned an old iPhone sat in a drawer into a tracker for the car and this works perfectly fine. The problem is battery life as you would expect. I thought this would be easily fixed by putting in a battery pack that allowed pass through charging and job done. But it's not that simple, all power pack I can find that allow passthrough charging auto shut off once the phone is 100% charged. Therefore it charges once and thats it, the phone drains again but never starts the charging process again.

I've seen one suggestion of butchering the charge cable and putting a small resistor on the power lead, to trick it into always discharging but I'm not keen on this. I've also thought about installing a second aux lead acid battery and split charger and running it off that, which would be a easy option and did want to put an aux battery in the truck at some point. but its just annoying that it not a simply solution.

any suggestions? I'm I missing the obvious?

any help would be great.
 

Harald Kapp

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Nov 17, 2011
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I'm I missing the obvious?
Connect a suitable charger with DC 12 V input (e.g. one of those that can be plugged into the cigarette lighter) directly to the car's 12 V battery?
 

AnalogKid

Jun 10, 2015
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I don't have apple devices. From what I've seen, most of the charger brains are inside the phone, not the wall wart, so defeating this "feature" will be difficult.

ak
 

Alec_t

Jul 7, 2015
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I don't do Apple either, but this might work :
1) Measure how long (Tdis hrs) it takes for the phone battery to discharge to, say, half charge,
2) measure the recharge time (Tch hrs),
3) use a 12V timer module to switch on the charger every Tdis+Tch hrs, and power the charger for Tch+1 hrs.
Charging.PNG
 

Flatstone

Nov 12, 2018
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Connect a suitable charger with DC 12 V input (e.g. one of those that can be plugged into the cigarette lighter) directly to the car's 12 V battery?

This would run the risk of running the start battery down, hence the idea of an addition leisure battery sat in the back of the truck somewhere.
 

Flatstone

Nov 12, 2018
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I don't have apple devices. From what I've seen, most of the charger brains are inside the phone, not the wall wart, so defeating this "feature" will be difficult.

ak

You're correct. The phone has all the battery management needed to keep the phone safe. Its the auto off feature of the power bank I'm trying to overcome(or find a power bank that doesn't have the feature ). Just so I can have the 5v from the USB output on the power bank until it's BMS shuts it off to protect it's battery.
 

BobK

Jan 5, 2010
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This would run the risk of running the start battery down
Have you veriftied this, or, at least, done a calculation to estimate it? If you drive your truck every day it is not likely to be a problem. If you go a week or more without driving, it probanly is.

Bob
 

BobK

Jan 5, 2010
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True enough. If ypu are going to have to change the power bank every couple of days, might as well run the truck instead.

Bon
 
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