Boost mobile? - Page 28

turbocad6 · 06-19-2007, 10:27 AM

hey thanks shotgun, I may try that if I can't have anything built for me, but I'd rather have a module built to do everything if I can...

shotgunefx · 06-19-2007, 12:04 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by turbocad6

hey thanks shotgun, I may try that if I can't have anything built for me, but I'd rather have a module built to do everything if I can...

You could probably handle the hourly button pushes as well with a few 555 timers (or the two in one 556), one an astable set to run every hour that would trigger the second, a monostable to push the button. The one problem I see with that is you really need to press the button twice (off, then back on).

http://www.eleinmec.com/article.asp?1

This is why I like PICs, etc, fewer components, much easier to tweak parameters. You want more delay? No unsoldering, just plop the chip back in the programmer and set the value to whatever, or even add a serial port for remote control

No reason you couldn't wire the input of that circuit to a PIC as an input btw (more on that in a sec).

The reason I originally started thinking about zeners for voltage detection (for another project) was that to measure voltage, you need to compare it against a reference voltage (vref), if the battery is the vref, then from my understanding, the problem is the reference changes with the discharge.

So to get around that, you'd have to have a constant vref, so a lower voltage, say a regulated 5 or 6v, but now you have to scale the input down to the range as well with a voltage divider like the above circuit. So it just seems simpler to use the zener.

But, on another note, you could just get a PIC that has a built in Analog/Digital Converter. The voltage has to be between 0-5v, but you could just wire the input (battery) through a pot like above to scale it down to the right range and then have it toggle the button as appropriate.

As an aside, if you are interested in learning about microcontrollers, you don't need to use PICs or AVRs, there are many that are made to be simpler to use, but the trade off is price and features.

Radioshack sells a Basic Stamp kit (A stamp is a PIC that runs Basic) for around $80, IIRC, it comes with an ADC chip to measure voltage a bunch of other stuff. This was my first MCU. Unfortunately, for what I was trying to do I hit all the limitations immediately so I had to go down a layer.

http://www.radioshack.com/sm-whats-a...i-2117994.html

Seeing I had no real use for it, I ended up using it for my startup controller in my car as I didn't feel like whipping up a board/regulator, etc.

turbocad6 · 06-19-2007, 11:54 PM

my thinking is, with button presses for off & on, that could be a problem.

off needs like 2s+ push, & then theres a pause as it shuts down, theres a period of time to wait before it can respond to an on again press.on is a 1s press, a setup like that would need to be able to monitor the state of the phone to be reliable, if there just dumb button presses theres always the chance of it going out of sync.

my thoughts are more like cut all power to the phone, hard shutdown, then repower & a 1s button press, I think it'll be more reliable that way. this adds a little complication as this break of power has to be between the battery & the phone itself... not just on the charger port, but I still think that's better than just button presses, I may try to just run it without the battery depending on the draw of the total setup anyway, I may run an aux battery for this setup, a laptop li ion battery'd run this phone for a week

hardest thing there is the charging circiut for the larger battery...

I always wished I had the time to learn pic programming, someday

shotgunefx · 06-20-2007, 07:21 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by turbocad6

my thinking is, with button presses for off & on, that could be a problem.

off needs like 2s+ push, & then theres a pause as it shuts down, theres a period of time to wait before it can respond to an on again press.on is a 1s press, a setup like that would need to be able to monitor the state of the phone to be reliable, if there just dumb button presses theres always the chance of it going out of sync.

my thoughts are more like cut all power to the phone, hard shutdown, then repower & a 1s button press, I think it'll be more reliable that way. this adds a little complication as this break of power has to be between the battery & the phone itself... not just on the charger port, but I still think that's better than just button presses, I may try to just run it without the battery depending on the draw of the total setup anyway, I may run an aux battery for this setup, a laptop li ion battery'd run this phone for a week

hardest thing there is the charging circiut for the larger battery...

I always wished I had the time to learn pic programming, someday

Well the timing on both devices is pretty deterministic, so I don't think it would in practice by an issue you ran into much if at all, you could always sample other points on the board to see if it's on or off to know for sure. You could also use one to do it the way your describing.

PICs take a bit of time, but things like the stamp are pretty easy...

Code:

'{$STAMP BS2}
DIR8=1		' set pin 8 to output 
OUT8=1         ' drive it high
pause 2000    ' wait two seconds
OUT8=0         ' turn it off

PURDooM · 06-25-2007, 03:26 AM

I recently downloaded RabbIT proxy server and installed it on my home computer (http://rabbit-proxy.sourceforge.net/). This lets me let my carputer look up all its pages through my home internet connection, and in the process my home computer is re compressing all the images and removing unnecessary content like background images. Now, the Minnesota traffic map which used to be 140k large is only 9k large. Quite an improvement!

W3bMa5t3r · 08-01-2007, 09:30 AM

I know this isn't really completely related to the most recent conversation in this thread, but since it was for my boost phone... check it out

http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/powe...r-modules.html

midiwall · 08-20-2007, 10:01 AM

Small sidestep...

Anyone else been getting "network errors" from the Mologogo java app (on the phone) for the past few days (weeks?).

Oh, and did anyone else get a prompt (on your phone) saying that the "map license expired, call 800-xxx-xxxx to buy?"

sigh...

Bugbyte · 08-21-2007, 07:38 AM

I used the mologogo app yesterday and it was working just fine. Check their wiki or their news page to see if there is anything going on.

midiwall · 08-21-2007, 09:21 AM

Thanks BB... I've been all over the Wiki and such. Looks like they had DNS issues back in June but nothing recent.

And you're still seeing maps on the phone as well? Hmmm...

smellygas · 08-25-2007, 11:18 PM

Just a thought - why not just leave the phone on 24/7? I just got an i455. The included battery is 3.6V and 780mAh or so (2.8 Wh), and should last 5 hours with every-1-min transmits. That comes out to about 14 Wh used a day.

My car battery is 12V * 70AH = 840 WH. So even IF I left the phone on 24/7 for a month, it still would only drain my battery by 50%.

Anybody have any thoughts/comments?

SG

muldrick · 09-03-2007, 01:15 PM

Doing numbers like that never worked for me. Sure, great on paper but not in the real world. You have to consider battery temperatures and other normal draws that a car has. Generally speaking, a vehicle a draw should not be more then 37 mAmps. If it's higher, it'll drain to quick.

Question: I need 2 phones. The Mologogo site has the family pack, but it's the 415 phones. Without going through 28 pages of posts...should I not get the 455? Is it faster?

muldrick · 11-06-2007, 05:36 PM

OK, got me the 455, and the wife a 415. She decided to get with Verizon, so I'm selling the 415...just about brand new: http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/vbcl...?do=ad&id=1020

tkd_guy90 · 12-27-2007, 05:21 PM

have a few questions about Boost Mobile. I was going to start a plan with them since the use of web services with my car pc is at a cheaper price. My question is the phone usable for web on my car pc? Has someone used the i425t or e? Also could someone explain what the monthly charges are because I did read the sticky but I was slightly confused. How much is it per month for just data only (as well as keeping it active?) I did find a the usb data cable for it on ebay.

(sorry wasnt getting any responses from the post I made so I thought maybe to post here instead)

So is it the minimum of 20 for 3 months to keep it active?
Then what is the price of data service for pc?

tkd_guy90 · 12-27-2007, 07:48 PM

Well did some more research on Howard Forums and someone else has used the i425e (and another used the "t" model) as a modem. Here is the link in case someone else would like to see.

http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php?t=1300389

Bugbyte · 12-28-2007, 11:09 AM

If you don't use the phone and just have the data plan, they deduct the charge on a daily basis from your account. So, if you have $30 on the phone, they deduct the .35 data charge from it each day.

IIRC, when you boost your phone it lasts for 90 days. I boosted my account on 12/5 and it expires on 3/4. Since the data charge is about equal to $10 a month, you just load the phone with $30 every 90 days and you are set.

If you live in an area with DEN service, I think it works fine. If you don't, it is slow. As in 2400 baud slow -several minutes to load a page when moving. I use mine with Mologogo and it works great.