Registered: Nov 1999
Location: California
Posts: 108

Quoting from VisorCentral News off of my AvantGo site (for those who never read the news on the main site):

There is no power drain when the Visor is off. When the Visor is on there is power drain up to 15 mA) because the USB chip sees the PC usb hub. Serial cradles do not have any power drain because the USB chip is off all of the time.

This opens up a new range of possibilities, and questions. I have listed a few of mine here.

1) Now that means we can leave our Visor's in the cradle and have the computer perform a USB hotsync in the morning before we wake up. If using avantgo, the modem can also help wake us up. :-) Does anybody know how to have the computer do an automatic hotsync?

2) Why didn't handspring build the USB chip into the cradle, and power the cradle using the USB's on-demand power supply, and use an interface between the visor and the cradle that would, for example, provide power into the visor's port telling it to "wake-up" and start communicating rather than having to activaly monitor the port, or even better, power the visor completly during hotsyncs, causing zero power drain. Heck, it could even charge nimh's, or heres an idea: Put in a Lithium battery (charged via the cradle) add the option for a seperate adapter connected to an external pack which would hold alkalines, for extended trips away from the computer. And it could, in theory, charge the Lithium through the USB port rather than an external power port. OK, I'm going on now, but I still think it would have been a good idea. Mabee for the next visor, which will probably have a color screen too, forcing them to have some means of recharable power source to keep the power consumption from killing your batteries. :-)

Registered: Sep 1999
Location: Texan in Calgary for a while
Posts: 1361

Don't quote me on this, but I think I remember reading somewhere that Handspring or another company may at some point come out with a cradle that can recharge the Visor.

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James Hromadka
VisorCentral.com
Personal Website: http://www.Hromadka.com

Registered: Dec 1999
Location:
Posts: 52

James,

Yes did read that they May come out with a charger cradle. Its from Handspring's site, under the Tech FAQ. The is where I got the Pin Assignment for my charger cradle.

Registered: Dec 1999
Location:
Posts: 52

here's a dumb question...how do I get visorcentral news with avantgo...I can't seem to find it on avantgo....

Harry

Registered: Sep 1999
Location: Texan in Calgary for a while
Posts: 1361

Harry, goto the Visorcentral front page and look towards the bottom right.

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James Hromadka
VisorCentral.com
Personal Website: http://www.Hromadka.com

Registered: Nov 1999
Location:
Posts: 70

Recharging in the cradle is possible, but charging using the power from the USB channel would be unwise. It wouldn't be a problem until you started hooking up a couple power-demanding USB devices on the same bus before there's not enough power to do everything at once. Let's stick to the ol' power brick for charging.

Registered: Dec 1999
Location:
Posts: 18

I believe the tech faq says that there is a pin connected to the springboard slot that could charge a springboard module's batteries.

It does not say that there is a pin connected to the batteries of the visor itself.


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-Cyrus
[email protected]

Registered: Oct 1999
Location: Baltimore MD, USA
Posts: 717

Harry said:

quote:

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here's a dumb question...how do I get visorcentral news with avantgo...I can't seem to find it on avantgo....

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Registered: Sep 1999
Location: Texan in Calgary for a while
Posts: 1361

Do you have Avantgo installed? It doesn't work until you do.

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James Hromadka
VisorCentral.com
Personal Website: http://www.Hromadka.com

Registered: Dec 1999
Location:
Posts: 52

Darn, I hate those fig newtons of my imagination. Better get rid of my glowing cradle then. The NiMH must be charging via solar or something.
http://discussion.visorcentral.com/...TML/001040.html

Registered: Nov 1999
Location:
Posts: 70

While somewhat off-topic, I have the same AvantGo problem listed above. I have AvantGo installed on the Palm and the PC, and I'm using Netscape Communicator 4.7. The "C++ looking code" that transfers the channel parameters is displayed rather than actually adding the channel. I haven't really had this problem elsewhere.

I manually took the information in the resulting page and simply entered the information as a "custom" channel at the AvantGo website. The results are the same, but it's not quite as easy. Just FYI.

Registered: Dec 1999
Location:
Posts: 79

Right click on the "Add channel" and save it to your desktop. Then run it.

Heyday

Registered: Sep 1999
Location: Texan in Calgary for a while
Posts: 1361

I have seen similar issues before in Netscape, esp when opening a .prc file (instead of a zip). Somehow NS corrupted it. Creating a custom channel is another option.

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James Hromadka
VisorCentral.com
Personal Website: http://www.Hromadka.com