Internet of Things Phone Smart Charger

I pre-ordered one of the Samsung Galaxy Note7 phones. The ones in the news recently for being an explosion hazard.

I love the new phone – pocket computer really, the way I use it. I wasn’t about to give it up over some silly thing like spontaneous combustion.

I had read that Tesla runs their car batteries between 40%-80% for normal use to maximize the lifetime of their very expensive car batteries. I figured that cell phone batteries would benefit from similar treatment. A bit of research generally confirmed this, with http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries being the most concise write-up. The first half basically demonstrates that you can get the same amount of total power to flow through the battery regardless of how much you charge it – summed over the total life of the power draw in the data tables. The 2nd half is more interesting. It says that high voltage charges and heat shorten the overall lifespan of the battery.

The Note7 is a sealed phone wihtout a replaceable battery. I can’t pull my usual trick of replacing the battery after a year of abusing it.

Heat seams to be the trigger for the phone explosions. So I can make my phone more safe, and make it last longer by managing the top voltage and heat in the battery.

I can do this.

I bought a wireless Qi charger to charge the phone because it charges slower. The fast charger can charge the phone crazy fast, but it gets HOT when it does this. Hot is bad. Thus, slow is good. The wireless charger will also reduce wear on the USB C port. A nice side benefit. No phone explosions while I sleep and burn the house down – this is a good thing.

I bought a Belkin WEMO wifi controlled outlet. It is If-This-Than-That (IFTTT.com) capable so I can control it from my phone. There are other smart plugs available that will work, this is simply the one I could find in a store that I could verify would work with IFTTT.

I configured IFTTT to have 2 different actions. One for turning the WeMo on, the other off. I set these up as Maker Channel triggered recipes. There are other triggers that you can use such as email or SMS, but I am a web developer, so web-based triggers are a natural fit for me.

Image of The Rules set up in IFTTT
The Rules set up in IFTTT
Photo of the IFTTT Off rule
The OFF rule in IFTTT. It uses the Maker Chanel for the trigger, which means a web request will trigger this. It turns off the WeMo controlling the wireless phone charger.

I installed Tasker on the phone and configured it to monitor charge state and battery temperature.

I created 3 tasks, one to turn the charger on, and two to turn it off.

photo of Tasker rules
The rules in Tasker to control the phone charging.

The ON trigger looks for the battery to be below 80% charged, and below 35 degrees Celsius. This will make a request to the IFTTT.com Maker Chanel URL for ON.

One OFF trigger looks at the battery temperature. 35.1 degrees or higher. The other OFF trigger looks for the battery charge to be 90% or higher. These two both make a web request to the IFTTT.com Maker Chanel OFF URL I set up.

So now as the phone battery heats up or gets close to full, the phone tells the charger to turn off. I let the phone have a 10% charge window so I am not toggling the switch and charger on and off all night long.

Tasker with both OFF rules turned on. The phone is both charged to 90% or more as well as running hotter than I would like.
Tasker with both OFF rules turned on. The phone is both charged to 90% or more as well as running hotter than I would like.

I also programed the WeMo to turn itself on a little while before my alarm is set to go off. This is to let the battery be closer to 90% charged rather than 80% charged when I wake up. I haven’t found the right time for this yet. I still need to play with it a bit.

I know there are other ways to make a smart phone charger. This is what I came up with. I will be getting an additional smart plug and building one for at the office so I don’t over-charge my phone when at work. I will try a different brand likely to see if I can come up with a cheaper way.

I recently picked up a used CNC Router

It's a big machine for the hobby side of things. I think they call it a 60150. It will hold a 2 foot by 4 foot piece. 220v water cooled spindle. It's a solid machine.

It had been suffering from disuse – not neglect, just simple not getting used enough. Rust pitting on the important bits and some rusting on the threaded rods. A couple of years in an unheated garage without being used to re-coat all the parts in oil will do this.

Not too much work to clean it up. It took a couple of evenings over a couple of weeks. Last night I got the electrical stuff all sorted and got it to move!

So I dug up a bucket, and connected water and electricity to the same spot on the machine. This is generally a bad idea in my experience.

It cuts! A little bit of tweaking, and it cuts correctly!

About an hour into running it, it gave an error and shut down. Not really sure why, but I think it's because the controller got hot. There was a reading of 75c on the screen when I was pushing buttons. I think I found why the controller box was open.

Next project is to improve the airflow in the controller box. I have a plan for this. I will install rubber grommets around the holes the wires poke through too.

I also need to learn about "Speeds and Feeds". CNC Routers have an ideal window where they work well for a given material. The 3D printing methodology of slowing down, sorting things out, then speeding back up does NOT apply to CNC Routing it appears.

Lots of photos in the album. Each one is captioned.


CNC Router Refurb
27 new photos · Album by Mike Creuzer

Adventures of a door.

Over the last few weeks, my front door has gotten a little blue.

I think it turned out pretty good. My wife picked out the color, I just applied the paint. I don't think she realized that I am going to get some white letters for above the door and label the door "Police call box".

Having seen all the kids and junk I've crammed inside, it is indeed bigger on the inside than it would appear.

In album 5/24/16

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