Handtops, UMPC - Battery swap w/o AC & w/o shutting d

Battery swap w/o AC & w/o shutting d
handtops.com forums : OQO : talk about the OQO

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thread starter

07/08/07 + educationk12

Okay, I had this thought while trying to go to sleep, so I got up to type this...

I personally would like to just use the OQO without ever having to turn it off and without ever needing to plug it into AC power to swap out the battery. If I could do this then I would switch from using double capacity batteries to standard capacity batteries which would make the OQO a better option than the UX IMO.

So my idea goes like this...

The OQO simply needs power externally when swapping out the batteries, so couldn't you take the power plug that plugs into the OQO and cut the cord, then solder those wires to a 3.7Volt DC small battery source...just enough amp hours to do the swap. It could be quite small, and then you could just carry spare standard capacity batteries, which to me would make the OQO much more desirable.

I know there are 110volt xantrex power source/power pack stuff, but they are too bulky. I suspect you may be able to take apart a standard capacity battery and take out one of the 3.7volt cells and use it for a power swap and essentially have a very small battery source plug into the OQO.

Or would you need the full 5.0VDC that the OQO charger puts out in order for it to work? I suspect if (3) 1.5 volt AAA batteries might do the trick.

Well, back to bed...lol

Replies

07/08/07 + kyone

There seems to be a few spaces around the inside of the 02 and especially if you don't have a WWAN card.. this space could be used to house a dedicated OQO battery. As you said just enough to run the unit for only 1 minute while you swapped the battery out. Or if you really need the power to auto shut off the screen while you did the swap... and maybe put the processor into its lowest power state..

Your idea had also crossed my mind...

edited: Jul 09 2007 + educationk12

EXTERNAL BATTERY SOLUTION IDEA (This is doable and i'm going to do this, I just need to figure out the connectors...I'll take pictures later to see if anybody has any ideas for connectors...you'll see what I mean when I take pictures.)

Opening up the double capacity battery case was cake. The back metal shield just pops right out and pops right back in. It's two standard capacity batteries piggy backed on top of one another, which we all knew already...BUT they aren't adhesived together, which is why the DC batteries make a rattle sound when you shake them. They are simply "jumpered" together with a positive and one negative. Looking at this...this could be a very easy modification to be able to swap batteries without having to shut down...definitely without a doubt probably the most logical of solutions and it would definitely work and without much of a change in appearance to the oqo. If I can get this to work then I will be changing my tune about the UX being a better overall machine. I'll be using the standard capacity case for the oqo, yet with the capability to swap as many standard batteries as you'd like...u could do the same with a double but so long as you had a low battery alarm then the standard seems to make more sense.

EASILY REMOVABLE INTERNAL SOLUTION (I'm not going to attempt this)

An internal solution seems more complicated and risky than I have brains for...the external solution I know wll work quite well, but if someone is crazier than me and wants to attempt an internal solution then go for it....Radio Shack sells 3.6Volt Lithium batteries that are AA and even 1/2AA size. The 1/2 AA size is 850mah and the full AA size is 2100mah...which is quite impressive and there is room to put this in the device and remove it without having to take it apart...I'm just don't know enough to experiment beyond what OQO has made.
link

I suspect you could alsotake one of the cells or the oqo battery and replace the spinning hard drive with a 32gb ssd drive which is 1/3rd the thickness and then put the battery on top of it....but these ideas are beyond my smarts.

07/09/07 + MeanSquare

ed: Have you tried just putting the beast into hibernation and swapping batteries. That always worked on my 01+ and works on my UX as well. It takes about 1.5 minutes tops.

Recent Blog: MeanSquare's Review of the Sony UX (with comparison to OQO)

edited: Jul 09 2007 + educationk12

Meansquare, I am a complete idiot...lol I knew it stored your information, but I thought it would delete it if you took the battery out...all these years of turning it off...now i like my oqo much better.

Yep, that works great! Glad you stopped me from doing this mod...I have issues. LMAO

07/09/07 + kyone

u wern't aware of that ? It saves all data to the HDD where, unlike RAM memory, HDD retains all information when power is off as do SSD drives. oh well stil a one minute window to change the battery while still running would be nice, you would keep ur wireless connections and save you a couple of minutes.

07/09/07 + ecsk2

educationk12 said: "Meansquare, I am a complete idiot...lol I knew it stored your information, but I thought it would delete it if you took the battery out...all these years of turning it off...now i like my oqo much better.

Yep, that works great! Glad you stopped me from doing this mod...I have issues. LMAO"

So now this topic of mine makes more sence also?

link

07/10/07 + vadsoom

I recall Toshiba laptops implemented the internal solution for battery swaps. Connected in parallel across the main battery connections, Toshiba added a tiny lithium ion cell that would keep the laptop powered for a minute or so while the battery was being swapped. It was charged any time the power supply was attached. This solution might work equally well with the OQO.

Back in college, I bought a few "super" capacitors of 1 Farad each. They held enough charge to keep some of my low current projects alive for more then a week sitting in a lab drawer. Maybe this approach would work with the OQO.

Recent Blog: OQO model 02 hands on mini-review

edited: Jul 10 2007 + educationk12

kyone said: "u wern't aware of that ? It saves all data to the HDD where, unlike RAM memory, HDD retains all information when power is off as do SSD drives. oh well stil a one minute window to change the battery while still running would be nice, you would keep ur wireless connections and save you a couple of minutes."

Sorry, blonde moment. Please forgive my stupidity at times! lmao, you know I think I recall doing this years ago, but yeh I was totally oblivious to something that should be common knowledge. I was talking about this to a friend yesterday about how all the jokes about blondes are true, lol. He said his Alienware when it goes in hibernation, if it has been a long time and the battery is dead, then he will lose the stuff he was working on when he turns the machine back on...it's that 12" alienware...that machine is junk...case is falling apart, the fan is under the machine which means it's hot and makes the OQO 01 sound quiet.

I have a box of dozens of cell phones that I probably should just ebay in a lot...every single one of them have either a 3.6volt or 3.7volt battery which I find interesting since the OQO is 3.7volts...long with that lithium 3.7 volt AA and 1/2 AA battery...must be something to that voltage. The Sony UX is double that with 7.4volts....which must be why it last so long and is so thick. It's 2600mah while the oqo is 4500, so I guess double fo 2600 is 5200, which must be why the Sony standard battery lasts so long and why oqo picked the thinner 3.7 volt.

QUESTION:

The AC charger puts out 5Volts @ 5Amps DC, yet the DC car charger puts out TWO different voltages....it does the same 5V@5A, yet it also does 4.2V@5A. I wonder what the lower voltage is for???

5V&5A might be needed for the docking station, yet when it's not connected to the docking station it can power down to the lower...or is it when it's turned off. It's just 4 watts difference...so why would that be needed? I suspect the answer is the 4.2volt is for when the OQO is turned off and/or when charging a battery by itself, because I know certain components in the OQO such as the Maglev fan is a 5 volt fan which uses 1 of those 25 watts. The spinning drive uses 1.65 watts. And I think the Via chip uses 5 or 7 watts...forget. I'd be interesting to know what uses what so you could figure out battery life if you were to do x,y & z.

edited: Jul 10 2007 + educationk12

vadsoom said: "I recall Toshiba laptops implemented the internal solution for battery swaps. Connected in parallel across the main battery connections, Toshiba added a tiny lithium ion cell that would keep the laptop powered for a minute or so while the battery was being swapped. It was charged any time the power supply was attached. This solution might work equally well with the OQO. ."

It definitely makes sense and could still be done IMO with the OQO especially if you got rid of the thick spinning drive and put in a 32gb ssd drive. There are tons of cell phone 3.7volt batteries that are thin that I'm sure would work....but not sure how important that is to most people.

vadsoom said: "
Back in college, I bought a few "super" capacitors of 1 Farad each. They held enough charge to keep some of my low current projects alive for more then a week sitting in a lab drawer. Maybe this approach would work with the OQO."

Can you elaborate more? I'd be willing to try it! I'm not familiar with super capacitors nor do I know what Farad means..I'll google it.

07/10/07 + MeanSquare

Farad is the basic unit of measure for the "capacitance" of a capacitor (or a measure of how much charge it can hold). Most capacitors that are in use in electronics are measured in micro-farads (1/1000th of a Farad). A 1 Farad capacitor holds a sufficient charge to "arc weld" a quarter inch notch into a large screw driver if you were to short the contacts. (Yes, I know this from actual experience

)

For our purposes, you'd simply need a capacitor which would hold enough charge to keep the system running for about 30 seconds (long enough to swap batteries). The capacitor has to be hooked in parallel to the battery itself so it will charge when you have power and discharge to power the system when you don't. A lot of PDAs do this too, but they use a much smaller capacitor which simply keeps the system powered for standby mode. If you leave the PDA on and swap batteries, you end up with a hard-reset.

Recent Blog: MeanSquare's Review of the Sony UX (with comparison to OQO)

edited: Jul 10 2007 + educationk12

INTERNAL BATTERY IDEA

I can confirm that there is definitely room inside the OQO for two Nokia BL-5C batteries, which are lithium 3.7V @ 850mah each, which would give you 1700mahr...about 2/5th the time a standard capacity battery IF you used a 32GB SSD drive. The nice thing about using two instead of one large one is you could swap out the internal battery without having to turn the machine off by swapping them one at a time. They are also very cheap to buy on ebay. I've seen some 1,000mah ones that seem thin, I guess I need to learn more about batteries, because I'm 99 percent sure this could be done. It'd make the OQO very thin, faster and light because these nokia batteries are feather light and so is the SSD.

Nokia Batteries; link

There are ipod batteries which are all 3.7v. The 1st to 3rd generation ones were about the size of the oqo hard drive at 4mm thick and you can get those at 2200mah, but I like the idea of two batteries so that you don't hvae to turn the machine off when you swapped them out. I think the 4th & 5th generation are smaller like the Nokia batteries.

07/12/07 + GuardianZX9

Motion computing does this with both the LE1600 series and the LS800 series, they have a small battery/capicator in parallel, its enough to give you the ability of "Warm" swapping batteries, put it in standby swap and power back on. this would probably be the easiest solution, there are very small farad and half farad 3.7 volt caps you can get, they would probably fit inside somewhere.

G

07/14/07 + tchernev

Hi guys. Wouldn't adding extra li-ion batteries confuse the charging circuit? I though that even if the new ones are connected in parallel, they still need to communicate to the charger, and since the cell phone ones woulld not be compatible with OQO's charger, wouldn't that result in a dangerous (a.k.a. explosive) setup?

edited: Jul 14 2007 + educationk12

I do not know about charging, and I doubt I will attempt this as it could be dangerous especially with my lack of knowledge about these things. Nevertheless, it's a neat idea though, but even if you didn't charge the unit with the nokia batteries in the unit. They wouldn't give you but probably 40 minutes of battery life, and putting it into hibernation isn't such a big deal. I guess I just see all this space available after putting in an SSD and started coming up with explosive ideas. ;o) Although there are chargers that will charge a dozen or so nokia cell phone batteries at a time, but even then it's not worth the risk involved. It would be nice though to just switch batteries but not worth risking oqo and bodily harm.

So now I'm thinking of what else is the size of a hard drive and about 5mm thick....lol, dual SSD drives...haha, but then you'd have to use up the one and only USB port. I guess it'll be empty space unless I or somebody else comes up with something. I wonder how big that Streets and Trips 2008 GPS w/ traffic device is...probably too big.

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