Battery Charging...OF or Rockbox?

[sansaguy]

Didn't know where to post this question so I put it in general questions....

Wanted to know if it's any better now with the upgrades to Rockbox if it is better to charge your player with Rockbox now or still use the OF?.

[advcomp2019]

I will say it works better in OF then Rockbox, but I have not tried it lately in Rockbox tho.

[kratonator]

November 23th 2007, Rockbox.org, Project News: New USB stack with limited capability. Currently it only requests full charging power. Ignore driver popups from Windows.

[Llorean]

Yes, it requests full charging power. But Rockbox doesn't yet tell the power control chip to start charging, so, depending on a few factors, your player still may not charge (or in fact is likely not to charge). Use the OF to ensure charging.

[Daveybaby]

It doesnt seem to charge for me. It looks like it's charging, but the charge level never actually goes up...

[saratoga]

Originally Posted by Daveybaby

It doesnt seem to charge for me. It looks like it's charging, but the charge level never actually goes up...

Which is to be expected, since as Llorean said, we don't enable charging

[major_works]

I like to play music from my Sansa through my clock/radio overnight at very low volume. If I do this, running Rockbox, with the Sansa connected to my Griffin wall-cube USB charger, I find that the battery level is maintained overnight. In other words, if I start at 90%, it's still at 90% in the morning even though it's been playing music for seven or eight hours.

So it does charge minimally for me. If I *really* need to charge it, I boot the OS.

[saratoga]

Originally Posted by major_works

So it does charge minimally for me. If I *really* need to charge it, I boot the OS.

That would seem to imply that theres no charging at all, since the charge doesn't change.

[major_works]

Originally Posted by saratoga

That would seem to imply that theres no charging at all, since the charge doesn't change.

No, rather, I think it implies that there is enough trickle charge happening that it offsets the power used in playing music all night. Not enough to charge it further, but enough to make up for what's used. It seems to me that if it wasn't charging at all, if I started at 90% and played music all night, in the morning it would be at some value less than 90%, right? But it's not... it's still at 90%.

[saratoga]

Originally Posted by major_works

No, rather, I think it implies that there is enough trickle charge happening that it offsets the power used in playing music all night.

If its plugged in, theres no drain on the battery at all.

[carpenter940]

Originally Posted by saratoga

If its plugged in, theres no drain on the battery at all.

right. It's getting it's power from the dock, so no drain, but the dock doesn't charge either.

[Llorean]

You seem to think the chain of events is "Power->battery->Player" but what you're looking at is more

       player 
power<
       battery->player

So the path through the battery isn't happening at all, but at the same time the player isn't drawing from the battery because it's getting power from the main source.

[rtech]

Just to ask... I usually recharge mine using one of those after-market wall chargers while it is still booted to RB. It seems to work fine. Not sure if it si taking "longer" because I just plug it in & go to bed. Are the problems you guys are covering here only using the USB?

[saratoga]

Your wall charger plugs into the dock connector, so its the same as using USB.

[rtech]

Originally Posted by saratoga

Your wall charger plugs into the dock connector, so its the same as using USB.

Hmmm. Well, that's the only way I charge mine & it works. I plug it in while in RB, pause it so it isn't running, after a few minutes it goes to sleep & charges. So something works, anyway.