Phone Charger Issue

V

Vince

Hero member
I have an issue with my Phone Charger on the bike. It's a typical Cigarette lighter plug wired into the bike. It's supposed to be the more powerful type, I forget its rating. It's connected with a USB cable with a Magnetic type plug to the phone. The original Mini USB phone end was so piss weak it would fall out easily so I replaced it with the much more secure Magnet connection, this battery issue happened with both cables. The issue is the phone using its GPS via a Tom Tom app goes flat usually from fully charged at 8am to dead flat and turns off around 1pm and earlier even after being constantly charged by the bike. Any sparky types have a fix for this, I like my Speed Camera alerts around Sydney where they are breeding like flies.
 
Not me. I had the bright idea of simply putting the phone in the tank bag window. Using GPS plus charging causes it to overheat and shut down within 20 minutes 🤣
 
Vince said:
I have an issue with my Phone Charger on the bike. It's a typical Cigarette lighter plug wired into the bike. It's supposed to be the more powerful type, I forget its rating. It's connected with a USB cable with a Magnetic type plug to the phone. The original Mini USB phone end was so piss weak it would fall out easily so I replaced it with the much more secure Magnet connection, this battery issue happened with both cables. The issue is the phone using its GPS via a Tom Tom app goes flat usually from fully charged at 8am to dead flat and turns off around 1pm and earlier even after being constantly charged by the bike. Any sparky types have a fix for this, I like my Speed Camera alerts around Sydney where they are breeding like flies.
Click to expand...
Ride within the speed limits.
Paul
 
We have this insanely stupid Government for want of a word Idea called Towards Zero. That's the idea behind lowering speed limits on great bike roads from 100kph to 60kph and lowering the limit to 30kph in areas around Liverpool that caught thousands and were removed just as quickly as it arrived. The Speed Cameras that are everywhere have a tolerance that is Insanely tight, 5ks over and it's $300 and 3 points. Get 12 points in 3 years and your walking for 3 months. The latest crap fest is called Casual Speeding, apparently not staring at your speedo and drifting 5ks over will immediately result in killing everybody around you. My problem is that's exactly been my strategy for the last 40 years staying safe while riding where I live, traffic central. I found that being 5 over resulted in much fewer close calls, you get noticed if your are not a static object but suddenly this is crazy dangerous and must be stamped out. So the GPS has speed camera alerts and so far I haven't Died or killed anyone else and at the moment I still have all 12 points. What a shock with all that Casual Speeding I do. And just to have some perspective, throw the book at actual dangerous shit like the 2 fuckwits in the twin cab utes aggressively tailgating the blokes heading home to Sydney on Sunday just before the Cambelltown turn-off. These Dickheads were trying to intimidate their way through heavy traffic, there was no were to go but these idiots hadn't noticed that.
 
The anti "speeding" ad shown in Norway shows a family car crushed under a tractor with all killed, because it was one km/h over the limit, showing the alternative one km/h less stopping easily in time. They say the limit is only safe for perfect road conditions, yet my nephew failed his licence test for dropping 5 km/h in torrential rain, the inspector said "if you can't keep to the speed limit in any conditions you don't deserve a licence", the lad should have appealed. They are finally getting tough on mobile phone use though.
 
We have a bunch of Safety Consultants that dream up crap to justify their jobs. Maybe if people concentrated more or stop driving like it was a video game the carnage might reduce. BTW I asked on another forum re poor phone charging and got this tip.
www.ebay.com.au

USB Charger Doctor Voltage Current Meter Mobile Battery Tester Power AU NEW | eBay

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When you address a community of millions of people to try and enforce rules that allow everybody to minimise risk to life and limb, you don't count on intelligence, you use the lowest common denominator, the fuckwit know it all with hormone and drinking problems.

Of course, you get a certain amount of fuckwits with hormone and drinking problems in uniform enforcing the rules and behind them a legal system with some fuckwits as well.
But globally, the system works because numbers even things out in the interests of all.

The alternatives are all bloody.

Peace and democracy are a daily grind.

Paul
 
Vince said:
We have a bunch of Safety Consultants that dream up crap to justify their jobs. Maybe if people concentrated more or stop driving like it was a video game the carnage might reduce. BTW I asked on another forum re poor phone charging and got this tip.
www.ebay.com.au

USB Charger Doctor Voltage Current Meter Mobile Battery Tester Power AU NEW | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for USB Charger Doctor Voltage Current Meter Mobile Battery Tester Power AU NEW at the best online prices at eBay!
www.ebay.com.au
Click to expand...
I don't understand what it's supposed to do. If it's just a meter (another thing to look at), how does that prevent your phone going flat?


On the other issue, I suspect the reason that governments regulate speeding to such extremes is because it's something that's easily measured and enforced. You don't even need to employ humans to do it. It can all be automated by roadside speed cameras.

I actually think the traffic police are better now than they've ever been, at least in Tasmania in the 55 years that I've been driving here. They're much more polite and better behaved than ever. They have strict guidelines on how to behave with the public. When I was a young bloke, I was as likely to get beaten up by them as booked (usually both). There were some real nasty and corrupt bullies in the force back then, who could punch you in the face with impunity. Thankfully they've pretty much been weeded out.

Sure, they're still obsessed with speeding because that can easily be measured at a distance by pointing a laser device at a target, and that's probably what their overlords tell them to focus on. But nowadays they also have devices to measure alcohol and drugs in the system. Although those are less easy to apply because they have to actually stop the target vehicle. But I'm really glad they're getting some of those dangerous buggers off the road and discouraging others from driving while affected by chemicals.

If someone invented a device that you could point at a car and detect a fuckwit behind the wheel, it would be very useful. Although it's not a crime to be a fuckwit, it would give the cops a clue as to who to keep an eye on.

I have a friend who amuses herself by listening to local cop radio while she's gardening (there's a phone app that patches into local police radio). It's quite evident that poor buggers are overworked. They have to deal with a lot of shit, like youths trashing supermarkets and threatening people with knives, domestic violence, murders, etc. Every day they have to deal with people at their worst. Many of them take time off for stress and PTSD and they have a high burn-out rate. They often don't have the time or resources to respond quickly to stuff like burglaries where nobody is in immediate mortal danger.

One interesting thing she's picked up on cop radio is that the traffic cops often apprehend a driver for something they call "DWA". It means Driving While Asian. Obviously, it's not an offence, but nor is it a racial slur. It's just that we get a lot of Asians driving hire cars while holidaying in Tassie. They don't own cars in their home countries, so they have no driving experience. Consequently, their driving is atrocious. The police often have to pull them over. They don't give them a ticket, but they spend half an hour giving them a driving lesson, including (I kid you not) what side of the road to drive on! It doesn't fill the police piggy-bank but it's time well spent as far as they're concerned.

Apparently (in China at least) you can get a driver's licence without ever having driven a car. It's all done on a simulator. I didn't actually believe that until I met a Chinese guy (who now lives here) who said that's how he got his licence. But the simulator was set up for driving on the right side of the road, as they do in China. For foreigners who don't know, we drive on the left side in Australia, same as UK.
 
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Oh shit, if you don't know and you know way more than me. My guess was to actually measure how much green gas comes out of the pipe and into the phone with the engine running if that has any effect. I don't know if it's too little to keep the phone charged too much overheating the phone and turning it off, turning it off is one thing but by the time I notice it's off the phone battery is flat.
 
2 GPS stories involving major city centres. We were late after municipal bike issues for the Tassie Ferry and following a GS BMW owner with his GPS, till he suddenly exited the insanely complicated Meolboure cross-city Expreesssway that we missed. As it happened I had my phone GPS on but not set to the Ferry. We found a place to stop and I set it up and off we went. I then got a speed camera alert for 80ks and slowed for that with some what the hell are you slowing for? I got a turn direction but someone missed my blinker and when past the turn so I stopped in the breakdown lane for a bit to then see the missing bloke had done a U turn and was riding back to the turn in the breakdown lane in the wrong direction. Scary. So 30 minutes later and a dozen turns down insanely narrow easy-to-miss lanes we arrive all down to my phone as a GPS. Exactly the same thing happen in Hobart looking for the back lane pub we stayed at mid-peak hour for traffic. I find them indispensable for safety reasons and keeping my licence also safe. I just wish the battery would stay charged. BTW I missed two major turns on last weekend's ride, the new section of the Expressway south of Wollongong has deleted the right turn to Mac Pass, it's now on the left. And the Nowra turn-off that used to be the 2nd after the bridge is now the first and I missed it, so I took the 3rd and though I was well past the big park so accidentally came out where I should have come into town and ended up 3ks down the road and over the traffic-clogged bridge again. The Billions being spent on new NSW roads change everything making old knowledge useless.
 
I don't like using my crappy old iPhone as a GPS. The screen is hard to see in daylight and the charging socket is too dicky to be relied upon to keep the charging cable connected anyway. I just use a TomTom GPS and keep the phone to use as a phone.
My iPhone 6 is now 8 years old, but apart from the dodgy charging socket, it still works OK. You have to wiggle the plug around at a weird angle in the socket for it to make contact, then gently put it down somewhere where it won't be disturbed until it's charged. If you move it even slightly, it'll disconnect.
 
Vince said:
Oh shit, if you don't know and you know way more than me. My guess was to actually measure how much green gas comes out of the pipe and into the phone with the engine running if that has any effect. I don't know if it's too little to keep the phone charged too much overheating the phone and turning it off, turning it off is one thing but by the time I notice it's off the phone battery is flat.
Click to expand...
It looks like it's just a fancy meter that tells you how much current a USB device is drawing at what voltage. I don't think it actually does anything smart like tell you if your phone battery is getting flat, or boost the charge rate when the battery is getting low. Perhaps if you disconnect it from the power source and leave it plugged into the phone, it'll tell you the voltage of the phone battery, but I dunno how useful that is anyway. The phone has its own battery charge indicator. I suppose it may be useful to compare the charging output from various chargers.

GPS devices do a lot of communicating and calculating, so tend to be heavy on power use. It doesn't surprise me that a crappy 12V phone charger can't keep up. Unless you can find a 12V-USB converter with a higher capacity than your existing one, there's probably not much you can do about it. It would seem logical that a higher charging current requires a higher voltage from the charge device. USB voltage is nominally 5V. Maybe you can use that meter gadget to find one that delivers 5.5 or 6V. But there must be a limit to the voltage level that's safe for the phone. I'd suggest you talk to someone in the phone business who actually knows something about phone charging (perhaps not the pimply faced kid behind the counter in a phone shop).

It all sounds like another reason to use a stand-alone vehicle GPS device (Garmin, TomTom, etc.). They have a charging system that can keep up with the current draw of the device.
022222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222.0000000 <--- my cat stood on the keyboard.
 
I was watching a TV show and one of the actors had his phone plugged into one of those bigger stand-alone batteries I could have it in the tank bag and plug it into the phone up on the bars. Rather than try and boost charging past the drawdown the phone is using doing GPS duty I think a bigger battery that I can charge on 240 overnight might be a better option. No heat is generated by charging as I go as well. Give it a go. BTW I was seconds from buying a proper bike GPS till I discovered they mostly don't have a 3.5mm earphone plug now. I use that with my wired ear mould earplugs. So that would mean GPS Bluetooth to my phone with the earbuds plugged into the phone, getting stupidly complicated. I listen to music a lot when I ride, especially on expressways. We did at least 4hrs of that nightmare on Sunday and my arse still hurts.
 
I have a USB socket wired into the battery on all my bikes, including my Falcone which has been converted to 12 volts.
Apart from when exterior temperature is above 30°C when the smartphone gets hot, no problems whatsoever.
I don't use the sound, not necessary, the just wind and the purr of the engine.

Paul
 
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