Registered: Feb 2001
Location: SJ, CA
Posts: 6

how to make V. dlx into rechargeable unit?

Howdy,
other than using rechargeable batteries and a separate charger, does anyone know of a way to make visor deluxe into a rechargeable unit like his pricier compadres?
Tired of buying batteries,
A.

Registered: Oct 2000
Location: Las Vegas
Posts: 11

Re: how to make V. dlx into rechargeable unit?

I posted a reply to this type of question not to long ago. Either hunt down that thread, or go to www.techtv.com and search for project faraday. It gives complete instructions to convert your VDX and USB cradle to a recharging station. It works great, and is very easy. It takes little skill or knowledge to do.

Registered: Feb 2000
Location: Noblesville, IN
Posts: 96

There are a couple of solutions that use rechargeable batteries, but also replace or modify the cradle so that it can recharge them. Look in the Products & Reviews >> Accessories >> Power section of VisorCentral. Specifically, check out the Power Station, Full Charge, and Charge-N-Run.

Briguy

Registered: Apr 2002
Location:
Posts: 24

The simplest mod I've seen (and, yes, I've tried it out on my Deluxe and it works beautifully) can be found at http://www.felesmagus.com/visor . It involves soldering two diodes into your Visor and a resistor into your USB sync cradle. As far as I know, you can also use any other charging cradle, whether it's the Prism/Neo/Pro cradle or a travel charger.

I usually go through a set of batteries every three weeks. Now I've been using the same set of rechargeable alkalines for the past month and a half, and the power is still over 3 volts! How cool is that?

Also on that page is instructions on how to add a blinky-light (similar to the TaleLight) to the inside of your Deluxe. Of course, you need a translucent case. I tried this mod out as well with a tiny blue LED, and it has some serious geek-cool factor.

Registered: Apr 2002
Location:
Posts: 24

BTW, all the mods, including a set of four Pure Energy AAAs (Renewals in the US), cost me about $10 CAD, which is about $7 USD.

Registered: Nov 2000
Location: sOuThErN kaLi
Posts: 462

How difficult is the modification? I read in the warnings that an error could kill your Visor. I've never used a soldering iron before and taken apart any PDAs before, do you think I could do it?

Also...how does the Saitek PowerStation work? $20 is not bad, but I want to know how it works. They give you 2 battery packs, and you put on in the back to recharge while the other one is in use?

Thanks in advance for your replies!

__________________
nelson.hsieh
good artists copy, great artists steal. . .

Last edited by AzNCoMpUtAnErD on 09-18-2002 at 01:57 AM

Registered: Apr 2002
Location:
Posts: 24

hmmmmmm... I did it with a minimum of soldering experience... the best thing to do to prime yourself is to read a few books or websites on beginning electronics, especially things that deal with soldering. Another thing you can do is take your Visor apart, seeing as it's such an easy machine to pull apart and put together again.

From my experience, the biggest precautions are:

(1) don't yank on anything
(2) don't lose the screws
(3) don't put the screws back in too tightly -- I've created a couple of hairline cracks in my Visor from over-tightening
(4) be VERY careful of the black rubber microphone on the left hand side of the button board! I've pulled the button board off the motherboard about ten times, but the tenth time was too much for the fragile wires -- now I'll never be able to use my Visor as a cellphone
(5) follow the instructions religiously. Make sure you know the polarity of the diodes you use -- for regular diodes, the positive side is the one with the stripe; for LEDs, the negative lead is the one closest to the side with the nick taken out of it. (If that makes any sense.) Make sure you've soldered things onto the right spot. I made a mistake with the TaleLight mod, soldering it onto the wrong contact, but fortunately nothing bad happened. If you did the same with the charging circuit, however, you could toast your Visor.
(6) Use thin-gauge wire (e.g., 30-gauge), becaue you don't have a lot of room there. Don't be skimpy with the wire, either, because you may find when you put the Visor back together that you have to snake the wire through tiny crannies and electronic components. I did.
(7) Make sure nothing is touching something it shouldn't. Most of the things you'll be soldering are relatively far apart from other things, but take care that you use small amounts of solder and insulate those diodes from the rest of the HotSync connector!

I hope I haven't scared you too much; it's really not very difficult. Like I said, most solder points have a relative amount of room around them, so there's not too much danger of bridging things that shouldn't be bridged.

Hope this helps! If you have any other questions or guidance, you can e-mail me at paul @ heliosville . com or Stephanie Maks (the designer of the mod) at stephanie @ felesmagus . com -- I've found her to be incredibly helpful, if not entirely punctual. After all, she does have her own life :-)

Registered: Nov 2000
Location: sOuThErN kaLi
Posts: 462

Thanks for your reply! I'll take all that in consideration as I go for it! I'll tell you how it went.

I also had a question about the batteries. Should you keep them "topped off" or should you only recharge them after they have been fully discharged? How long do AAA rechargables last? A set of two AAA's should be enough right? Thanks again!

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nelson.hsieh
good artists copy, great artists steal. . .

Registered: Apr 2002
Location:
Posts: 24

That was a good question to ask; I'd forgotten about that. How you treat the batteries depends on what batteries you put in. If you choose NiMH batteries, it's better if you allow them to come close to deep discharge -- NiMHs have less memory effect than NiCads, but the effect is still there. Don't forget that if you discharge them too much, however, you run the risk of losing your data (NiMHs have a quick dropoff).

I would thoroughly recommend rechargeable alkalines if you have the opportunity to leave your Visor in the cradle every day. They work best if they're constantly topped up -- I've found that if I deep-discharge them, they only last about three to five discharge cycles, which is a small fraction of their expected life. If you top them up constantly, they should last the equivalent of fifty or more cycles. And they're much cheaper than NiMHs. And they have a more gradual dropoff than other types.

NiCads are pretty worthless for your Visor -- they last for more cycles than either of the other two, but they don't deliver a full 1.5 volts and their dropoff is steeper than that of NiMHs.

And, yes, you only need two AAAs. What I did was buy a package of four, which I'm guessing should last me at least two years, maybe more.

One more caveat: never put your Visor into the modified charging cradle without batteries into them!

Good luck; I hope you do well!

Registered: Nov 2000
Location: sOuThErN kaLi
Posts: 462

Thanks for the tip on the batteries, I'm gonna get the Alkaline ones.

Anyway, I've checked out the insides of my Visor, very cool, and I'm just about ready to do the mod, but I'm still unsure of all the materials I need. The TechTV site and Stephanie's site seem to be different in one item. This is what I've read I need...

1. (1) 10 ohm resistor, .5 watts
2. (2) 1N914 diodes
3. (2) AAA Alkaline recharcgable batteries

As for the fourth item, one site says I need a "heat shrink tube" while Stephanie's site and pdaoust reference a wire. I'm guessing the wiring connects the two diodes from the #7 connector to the positive battery ring. Could you verify what I need pdaoust? Thanks!

Still waiting for my friend to lend me his soldering iron...so I can't head to RadioShack quite yet!

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nelson.hsieh
good artists copy, great artists steal. . .

Registered: Apr 2002
Location:
Posts: 24

Hey there! Good to hear you're going through with it! The heatshrink mentioned in TechTV's article is to insulate the two diodes from the HotSync connector, since it lies right on top of it and there's a lot of exposed metal on both parts. I've never used heatshrink before; I just put a piece of Scotch tape over the connector and anywhere else I thought that metal might touch metal accidentally.

So both mods require a wire; it's just that TechTV adds a fifth item.

And, yes, the diodes do indeed go between pin 7 (VDOCK) and the positive battery springy terminal thing. Of course, pin 7 is also pin 2 if you count backwards but in Handspring's specifications, it's called 7.

You'll notice Stephanie's photo has a purple wire connecting the diodes to the battery terminal, and that wire is cut in the middle and apparently soldered to something. Ignore that; it's not actually soldered to anything; she just made the same mistake I did -- too short of a wire, and then had to graft another bit on.

Have fun!
Paul

Registered: Nov 2000
Location: sOuThErN kaLi
Posts: 462

Went on down to Radio Shack, but I couldn't find any of those items! I saw 2 AAA alkaline rechargable's for $7! And they were only 1.2 volts...how many volts are the batteries you got?

I found wiring, but the highest number I could find was 22-gauge. I'm going to try the other Radio Shack in town, and if not, I guess I'll just have to buy the materials online...

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nelson.hsieh
good artists copy, great artists steal. . .

Registered: Apr 2002
Location:
Posts: 24

hmmmm... as far as I know, all rechargeable alkalines are 1.5 volts, and $7 for a set of two sounds way way too much. Wal-Mart Canada sells the Pure Energy brand; look for the Renewal brand (made by Rayovac) if you live in the States.

You'll probably have to go to a hobby electronics store to find the diodes; I haven't had much luck with Radio Shack. And good luck on finding a blue SMD LED! I had to look everywhere before I finally found one. (That is, if you're creating the TaleLight mod as well.)

That reminds me! If you're going to add the TaleLight mod, and you don't have the dexterity to solder it onto that tiny chip resistor in Stephanie's instructions, you can solder it onto the serial TX pin (see Stephanie's instructions). That's what I did, because I couldn't conceive of even trying to solder it onto such a tiny resistor with my shaky hands. If you do solder it to TX, though, do it BEFORE the charging mod, or you'll end up having to remove the charging circuit just to get at TX.

I had a hard time finding a 5v LED; I eventually went with a 3v LED. Try a 1000 ohm resistor (Stephanie's instructions); I have a suspicion 1000 ohms is too much, because I soldered in a 250 ohm resistor to the LED and it's a little dark.

Registered: Nov 2000
Location: sOuThErN kaLi
Posts: 462

Man...this stuff is hard to find! I've called all these stores and they either don't know what I'm talking about or just don't carry "that small" sizes of those types of parts. Eeeek...you know a good place to buy online, where I don't have to buy 50 packs of the parts!?

I think I can get the batts at Wal-Mart, but everything else...

__________________
nelson.hsieh
good artists copy, great artists steal. . .

Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada
Posts: 415

smt leds are hard to find individually. just buy a 3mm led, and take out your microphone or something to make room.

__________________
-thorin

I have a webcomic. You should read it, or I may do something rash. <b><a href=http://driveby.keenspace.com/>Drive-by Loitering</a></b> is updated every monday, wednesday and friday.

<!img src=http://www.frontfly.com/myrouter/vcsig2.gif alt="Soundsgood is too elite for the punks."><img src=http://www.frontfly.com/vcsig.gif ><!img src=http://www.frontfly.com/myrouter/vcsig2.gif alt="Soundsgood is too elite for the punks.">

Registered: Mar 2001
Location: Nebraska- the Good life
Posts: 695

You can get the parts you need at www.mouser.com. The Shack will not have the right LEDs for Stephanie's mods. Mouser is not too expensive, but the website is also not too user-friendly (when I last looked and in my opinion). The catalog is a lot better!

Save some money by buying enough stuff for several mods and sell the rest to others here as a package deal!

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Do what you can, with what you have, where you are at!

Registered: Feb 2002
Location: Melbourne, FL
Posts: 42

I did the mod and it worked well. I plugged in the VisorPhone charger and and burnt out everything I did melting the back of my case. Luckily the Visor worked again after I took out the mod. Has anyone here done the mod and charge their visorphone! Maybe I did something wrong?

Registered: Nov 2000
Location: sOuThErN kaLi
Posts: 462

Ahhh!! What specific type of wire do I need to buy? And where can I find it!?

__________________
nelson.hsieh
good artists copy, great artists steal. . .

Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada
Posts: 415

it doesnt matter what kind of wire you get. it could be a staple chain with tape over it for all the electrons care.

__________________
-thorin

I have a webcomic. You should read it, or I may do something rash. <b><a href=http://driveby.keenspace.com/>Drive-by Loitering</a></b> is updated every monday, wednesday and friday.

<!img src=http://www.frontfly.com/myrouter/vcsig2.gif alt="Soundsgood is too elite for the punks."><img src=http://www.frontfly.com/vcsig.gif ><!img src=http://www.frontfly.com/myrouter/vcsig2.gif alt="Soundsgood is too elite for the punks.">

Registered: Nov 2000
Location: sOuThErN kaLi
Posts: 462

I did the mod! But in the process...I destroyed my cradle. Haha, I was trying to open it, and the screws wouldnt come open, so I kept turning and turning until the screws just eroded away. Then...I tried to pry it open (I dunno what I was thinking) and the casing is all messed up and the hot sync button fell out, and I can't get it back in! I'm gonna have to buy a new cradle and finish off the mod on the cradle...

As for the visor, everything seems ok, the visor still turns on and all. Haha, I had to melt away some plastic to get the wiring to fit! You were right about not skimping on the wire...its tight in there...

Anyway...I hope to finish the mod and see if it really works! Thanks for all the info guys!

__________________
nelson.hsieh
good artists copy, great artists steal. . .