Car charger - how to use any cable to charge - Nexus 7 General

After struggling with charing my N7 in my car for so long and spending a ton of money on car chargers, I realized that modifying the micro USB cable would allow any car charger, no matter if it's 1A, 2A or 2.1A to work. You can then use chargers that are designed for iPhones/iPads.
A USB cable is made up of 4 cables:
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The N7 will recognize the USB cable as an AC charger if only Red & Black are connected. For some reason, if White & Green are connected, the N7 reufses to charge.
So what we're going to do is cut White & Green.
What you need:
1. A micro USB cable. Get one which is thick and is fairly long. It'll be easier to work with the wires underneath.
2. A wire cutter/stripper.
3. Electrical tape (I used scotch tape)
Here's how:
1. Take any micro USB cable that you may have lying around. A longer one would be better as you will be cutting it.
2. With a wire cutter, cut the cable into 2. Anywhere is fine, not too close to the plug on either end.
3. Remove the black rubber part of the cable to expose the 4 wires. They should be Red, Black, White and Green. If they're not color coded, you may need to find another cable or find out which cable is which!
4. Strip the Red & Black wire on both cables and expose the copper wiring underneath. About 10mm should be enough.
5. Tie the Red to the other Red, and same for Black. You can solder if you want, I just twisted it up.
6. With some electrical tape, wrap up the exposed wires.
7. The White & Green cables can be ignored. You can trim them to the black rubber just for neatness' sake.
8. Try out the cable with your N7. It should read as "Charging (AC)". If you have some iPad or iPhone chargers lying around, this would be a good test as normally the N7 will not charge from these.
You're done! You can now plug it into any cigarette lighter / USB charger device and the cable will now charge your N7. 1A chargers will work, but will just charge the N7 lower. If your GPS app uses a lot of power, then I suggest at 2A otherwise the N7 will still drain.

Thanks for the tip, superdx.

Related

Not taking a charge in my car?

anyone seen this ...
my kaiser wont charge with my car charger (i've tried two now)
it will charge via usb on my laptop AND via the wall charger but it wont take a charge from the car
any ideas?
(running duttys latest rom if that helps)
edit: i've tried two cars as well
sorry to bump this but has anyone seen this happen before?
don't have my phone in front of me.. but I believe under the battery setting's there is an option relating to charging when connected VIA USB to a computer -- make sure that it is ALLOWING (obviously) it to charge while connected...
cameronm said:
anyone seen this ...
my kaiser wont charge with my car charger (i've tried two now)
it will charge via usb on my laptop AND via the wall charger but it wont take a charge from the car
any ideas?
(running duttys latest rom if that helps)
edit: i've tried two cars as well
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Your car charger may not be providing enough mAh's to charge your phone. Try a different car charger or try a different car (it's possible that your cigarette lighter port may be bad).
Iv had same problem
Iv had the same problem with mine, as i couldnt find an original HTC charger around the high street, i purchased a Motorola one instead as its the same connection, worked beautifully for about a week, then it just stopped. The car charger still works fine but it wont charge my kaiser anymore. strange one but i think the only way is to purchase an original charger (HTC).
I've got an old Motorola charger (for an MPX-200) and a Cingular-branded one for a RAZR and they both work fine. An HTC-branded charger shouldn't be required.
I had the same issue. Tried 3 different chargers. Finally called at&t and they
sent a replacement. If your USB/charge port looks like this, you'll probably have to have it replaced.
Top pick is my old tilt, bottom one is the new tilt
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http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b29/p51d007/Misc/USB_New.jpg
I had the same issue. Tried 3 different chargers. Finally called at&t and they
sent a replacement. If your USB/charge port looks like this, you'll probably have to have it replaced.
Top pick is my old tilt, bottom one is the new tilt

Battery Quits / Stops Charging - My findings and fix

So like many others, I have a AT&T Tilt, 8925 or HTC Kaiser that quit charging with some of my chargers. My symptoms were like everyone else. It will charge with a car adapter, or "X" brand of wall charger but for no reason just quit charging one day.
Here are the four charging methods I am using, and the different symptoms when this issue presented itself.
1. Wall A/C charger that came with the phone.
2. Car charger that I got from AT&T store.
3. USB cable plugged in to my laptop.
4. Wall A/C charger for "some other" device.
When I first got the phone, all of the above worked. Then after a few weeks, this happened.
Wall Charger
Still worked. No change.
Car Charger
Charging LED would not light up. Phone would not charge.
USB Cable
Charging LED would not light up, but I could Sync the phone with WMDM.
Wall Charger (other brand)
Charging LED would light up, but the phone would not charge.
So I went through and real a lot of posts and I first made sure I had "When device is turned on, do not charge the battery when connected to the PC" unchecked. This did not help.
Then I started looking closer to my phone. And I noticed what seemed to be one of the pins on the mini USB port was bent back in to the middle plastic piece that stands in the middle of the connector. When holding the phone face up, it was the pin to the far right. See my picture below. (I wish I had a before picture)
I removed the battery from my phone and used a small pick to VERY GENTLY pull the pin out a bit. I did my best to make it look like the other four pins to the left. You can also see in the picture, that the 4th pin is bent back a bit too but I left it alone. I did not think it was bent enough to cause a contact issue with the connector. After fixing this, I installed the battery and tested it out. And to my surprised, that fixed the problem.
So, the question is, how did this happen???
Well, I suspect it's from trying to stuff the stylus in to the reset button but missing and hitting the mini USB port instead. That middle "stand off" piece of plastic has some flex to it. So by stuffing the tip of the stylus in the corner of the USB port, that likely flexed that plastic back which also bent the pin. Note that the pins are not attached to the plastic piece, so that is why only one pin bent and not all of them.
Long winded sorry. But perhaps may help out.
And take this all at face value. This is just what was wrong with my phone. Mileage will vary.
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My Super Cheap super cool in car Nook Color Mount

How's it going everyone, I just thought I'd share the mount that I've created for my Nook Color. Excuse the pics, I took them with my phone.
Before I get into it I there is a list of requirements that I had for my mount
1. It had to be as cheap as possible
2. It had to be one that I could easily remove my NC from to avoid weather damage, theft, etc
3. I couldn't make any modifications to the vehicle because I may eventually want to sell my car.
The things that I used for the mount are
1. some double sided tape ( $4.00)
2. cable hooks ( $2.50 )
With that being said here are some pictures of them
This is the set up for my mount. It's pretty cheap but it is SUPER effective.
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If you notice, I've circled the top and the bottom to let you know how they work.
At the top you will notice two pieces on the left and the right, those are pieces of double sided tape, the reason that I put those there is because before in my first attempt, the NC would slide out and fall any time I turned my car, these add a decent amount of friction to reduce the sliding to when I make a sharp turn which is almost never.
The Velcro in the middle is from my first experiment, it doesn't do much anymore.
The bottom is 6 pieces of double sided tape, one side on the molding of the car and the other side is on the cable hooks that I used (pictured below)
Because of the shape of the molding I had to bend the hooks to make them conform. They are perfect because they are cheap enough and easy enough to bend that it wraps the NC with just enough grip so that it won't move.
Using this set up I have a mount that cost me less than 10 dollars and I love my carputer. Below are some pictures of the mount in action
Here's one during the day, you can't really see much
Here's one that I took of it at night, it's a little easier
For version 2 there are a few things that I'd like to add to take advantage of USB host mode but I have a few questions about it.
1. Does anyone know of a usb hub that I can use to be powered by and charge my NC at the same time? for example, I have a usb charger that I could use but when I use my hub I can't charge and use host mode at the same time, and I've enabled it in Nook Tweaks.
2. Does anyone know of a good enclosure that I can that has low enough requirements that the nook color can power it, or a 2.5 inch enclosure that can be powered by my cigarette lighter and then used with my NC?
Hey this is really cool. About what you were asking about how to power it, if you were going to use a hub you would probably need a high amp powered hub to be able to fast charge the Nook, otherwise it will only get a trickle charge. You would then need a cig adapter for the hub. I think a high power cig lighter usb adapter with two ports is more of what you are looking for. Keep up the good work and post your progress please.
very very nice idea..good for you
If you are fine with the regular trickle charge, you could just use a Y-Cable to add 5Volt from a external power source... that in combination with a normal USB to Micro-USB Cord + USB Genderswapper could give you the result you want...
However that way you will be limited to just one USB device, but seeing as you seem to aim for a external HDD this should be enough, right?
thanks for the suggestions, I'm looking for a good high powered usb charger for the cigarette lighter but I don't know of any that can fast charge a NC, do any of you guys have any ideas?
also the situation that I am facing with the external hd is that I can't find one that the nook can power on its own, If I could find an external powered hub to get it spinning I could use host mode that way, I just have no idea which one will do that
Edit: Can you guys see the pictures?
barnesk9 said:
thanks for the suggestions, I'm looking for a good high powered usb charger for the cigarette lighter but I don't know of any that can fast charge a NC, do any of you guys have any ideas?
also the situation that I am facing with the external hd is that I can't find one that the nook can power on its own, If I could find an external powered hub to get it spinning I could use host mode that way, I just have no idea which one will do that
Edit: Can you guys see the pictures?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes can see pics. Very cool idea, I tink I will give this a try...
other casisit
other casisit
Nicely done. You gave me some ideas....

Need help with unresponsive USB port

My Z3C's USB port has become unresponsive, it wont charge the phone nor connect to a computer.
The phone itself works as it should, apart from the USB.
It does sense that it is plugged into a charger when in an off state and boots into the battery charging screen however no charging takes place and there's no animation of the battery icon or change in the percentage. The magnetic charging port does work though.
I can't get my computer to recognise the phone in either standard mode, fastboot or flash. However when connected by USB I can get the phone into fastboot (steady blue) or flash mode (red/green flash), it's just my computer doesn't pick up anything.
I've tried several cables, chargers and computers so all that can be ruled out.
I've verified the continuity between the end of the USB port (that connects to the computer/charger) to the pins soldered to the main board of the phone. Everything seems fine. I reflowed the solder of the USB connector just to be sure.
I'm at a loss, anyone got any ideas?
doby_p said:
My Z3C's USB port has become unresponsive, it wont charge the phone nor connect to a computer.
The phone itself works as it should, apart from the USB.
It does sense that it is plugged into a charger when in an off state and boots into the battery charging screen however no charging takes place and there's no animation of the battery icon or change in the percentage. The magnetic charging port does work though.
I can't get my computer to recognise the phone in either standard mode, fastboot or flash. However when connected by USB I can get the phone into fastboot (steady blue) or flash mode (red/green flash), it's just my computer doesn't pick up anything.
I've tried several cables, chargers and computers so all that can be ruled out.
I've verified the continuity between the end of the USB port (that connects to the computer/charger) to the pins soldered to the main board of the phone. Everything seems fine. I reflowed the solder of the USB connector just to be sure.
I'm at a loss, anyone got any ideas?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
if phone has warranty use it, i had this problem in some phones sometimes mic fails as well and I had to change usb flex for galaxy s2 and 3. Sometimes is for humidity on usb flex.
I've just been inspecting the mainboard closely near the usb port and I think there's a component missing. No idea how it has become detached.
The phone is an ebay salvage project, but I'm sure when I received it I could charge it fine through the USB port although it wasn't soon after that it started having problems. Now I'm doubting myself that it ever charged in the first place.
Anyway I'm now looking for a high res photo of the Z3C mainboard (battery side). I've got a dead Z1C with the same components near the USB port but as the components are arranged in a different orientation I'm unsure of which way round to solder it to the Z3C.
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Edit: Found the pic I was looking for in the service manual, soldered missing component in place and it's now working!

Male USB Type-C to Female USB Type-C and 3.5 mm audio messed with my phone

My phone is LeEco Le 2 (X520) and it doesn't support headphones because it only has a USB Type-C port, and to my frustration, I bought this 2 in 1 connector that plugs in to a USB Type-C and splits it to another Type-C port and a 3.5 mm headphone jack adapter.
I tested the item if it works well by plugging in my speakers and my charger to the splitter and to my phone, it does charge and plays music to my speakers simultaneously and i noticed that my battery is charging slowly, I thought it might be caused by too much work done by the phone or too much traffic going on on the cable and splitter (idk just guessing) so I unplugged all of the cables and proceeded to plug back in my phone to the wall charger.
Here comes the problem, the phone started to charge VERY slowly, I noticed the indicator fluctuates from time to time like every 10 seconds. I tried to charge the phone while it was turned off and no luck, still charging very slowly, and it disconnects and reconnects very often.
Here's what I tried:
Phone off + original cable + original wall charger
Phone on + original cable + original wall charger
Phone off + alternative cable + original wall charger
Phone on + alternative cable + original wall charger
Phone off + original cable + alternative wall charger
Phone on + original cable + alternative wall charger
Phone off + alternative cable + alternative wall charger
Phone on + alternative cable + alternative wall charger
Phone off + original cable + laptop
Phone on + original cable + laptop
Phone off + alternative cable + laptop
Phone on + alternative cable + laptop
Nothing works, I tried everything above with the splitter between and still no progress, tried to connect to my laptop if I can manage my files in the phone but the device is disconnecting and reconnecting itself. I also tried to connect my OTG Thumb Drive to the phone and copied a single 1 GB file from the drive to the phone and it worked with no interruption (I don't know if this info helps)
It's very frustrating, did I fry my device by trying to split something? Is charging while getting an audio output through a single port bad? Help. Please.
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