Battery Charge Time

[Alibobar]

All specifications mention the battery life very clearly.
The Pandora Wiki is a good example.

But what I am wondering is how long it will generally take to charge it from empty to full.

 

[El Jefe]

depends on how much you want the battery to explode

 

[kloplop321]

I've seen videos of speed charging resulting in failure. Don't try. Just get a 5 volt DC adapter if you really want to be on the road.

 

[Alibobar]

^ I'm not talking about speed charging.

Just how long it will take to fully charge the battery using the included adapter.
I could not find any information on that.

 

[greendots]

View PostYoyobuae, on 25 November 2009 - 02:38 PM, said:
By the way, how much current will the Pandora charge it's battery at? 1.0C or 0.5C?

0.2C (800mA) for a 5-6 hour charge cycle. It can be manually increased or decreased and at some point it would be great to have a driver that would dynamically allocate the current based on system load.

source:

http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/50435-battery-voltage/page__st__30__p__777173&#entry777173

 

[Tom`]

View PostYoyobuae, on 25 November 2009 - 02:38 PM, said:
By the way, how much current will the Pandora charge it's battery at? 1.0C or 0.5C?

0.2C (800mA) for a 5-6 hour charge cycle. It can be manually increased or decreased and at some point it would be great to have a driver that would dynamically allocate the current based on system load.

source:

http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/50435-battery-voltage/page__st__30__p__777173&#entry777173

Isn't this going to be heavily dependent on whether the system is running? 800 mA seems low for charging while the device is off, but I think MWeston meant while it's on. The charger should certainly be able to supply at least 1A of current, although I don't know what factors limit this in terms of the Pandora's design.

 

[renwils]

I remember something about the pandora not being able to charge very well over usb. That's just a limitation of its own port, right? One of the first things I plan to do is get an extra psp AC adapter and hack the dc plug to a usb cable. This would provide up to 500 mA to the Pandora, which should certainly be enough to charge and operate at the same time.

 

[WizardStan]

I remember something about the pandora not being able to charge very well over usb. That's just a limitation of its own port, right? One of the first things I plan to do is get an extra psp AC adapter and hack the dc plug to a usb cable. This would provide up to 500 mA to the Pandora, which should certainly be enough to charge and operate at the same time.

I don't think it's a restriction of the Pandora. The 500ma is what a standard USB port can supply. If you try to charge from your computer, for example, you'll only get 500ma.
However, there are a lot of chargers that have USB connectors, supply USB voltage, but are capable of more than 500ma. Using one of these chargers, you could easily get up to 2a of power in through the USB port.

 

[Tom`]

I remember something about the pandora not being able to charge very well over usb. That's just a limitation of its own port, right? One of the first things I plan to do is get an extra psp AC adapter and hack the dc plug to a usb cable. This would provide up to 500 mA to the Pandora, which should certainly be enough to charge and operate at the same time.

few issues:
1. USB ports are only supposed to supply up to 500 mA of current. USB chargers (meant to be plugged into mains power, some cigarette lighters, etc.) can usually supply up to 1A or more, provided the device requests power correctly (I'm pretty sure the Pandora is able to do this). So the Pandora will not charge as well from a USB port as from a dedicated USB charger, unless the port can supply a non-standard amount of current (which some do). In other words, it can't charge as well from a standard USB port as from a dedicated charger (either USB or regular PSP-equivalent charger).
2. You have things backwards in terms of the AC adapter. The Pandora will almost certainly need more than 500 mA for standard operation (well, not if you underclock and turn off all unneeded hardware, but this isn't very useful). This means that you won't be able to charge and play at the same time from a standard USB port. You will, however, be able to do this from a USB wall charger (provided the Pandora knows how to ask for the added power) or the AC adapter.

And WizardStan beat me to it, and more concisely. :unsure:

 

[Nintendo]

All specifications mention the battery life very clearly.
The Pandora Wiki is a good example.

But what I am wondering is how long it will generally take to charge it from empty to full.

USB charge FTL!!!

 

[fischju2000]

It was confirmed a while ago that the Pandora can draw more than the normal 500ma over USB for charging, and that USB-wall chargers would be effective. If not powered on, the Pandora's 4000mah battery would take 8 hours to charge over regular USB. 4000mah/500ma = 8.

 

[renwils]

I guess I was thinking that if the Pandora can last 10 hours or so, it wouldn't be drawing so much power. But 4000 mAh over 10 hours (just a rough estimate) would be 400 mAh. Even more if it doesn't get such stellar battery life. It's still nice to charge over usb though. I did the same thing for my DS lite; it's a lot nicer carrying around a cable than a power brick.

ninja'd

 

[WizardStan]

From a completely empty battery, you could, in theory (assuming absolutely no inefficiency) plug it into a USB port, and make some use of it while it charged over the next 30-40 hours. A 1a adapter, in contrast, would take about 5 or 6 hours to charge while you were using it. I wonder if you could cheat, splice two USB cables into one so you could get two 500ma sources, giving the Pandora a more respectable 1a.

 

[Alibobar]

USB charge FTL!!!

I never said anything about charging over USB, this reply makes no sense.

However, now that people have brought it up I wonder how fast it would charge if using the AC-adapter and USB simultaneously, or is that even possible?

 

[Sturatt]

I wonder if you could cheat, splice two USB cables into one so you could get two 500ma sources, giving the Pandora a more respectable 1a.

haha picturing this in my head made me laugh. I like the idea though, would this actually work?

 

[Tom`]

I wonder if you could cheat, splice two USB cables into one so you could get two 500ma sources, giving the Pandora a more respectable 1a.

haha picturing this in my head made me laugh. I like the idea though, would this actually work?

Well, there are a number of drive enclosures that do exactly this to provide extra power. I don't see why it couldn't work.

 

[WhiteBat]

yaarg nevermind

 

[lulzfish]

I wonder how fast it would charge if using the AC-adapter and USB simultaneously, or is that even possible?

Um, no, I don't think it is.