Re: SolarJolla
 

Wonder how much is the answer accurate or if they want to just get rid o the problem. He says "the phone cannot sleep". It would be useful to know which part of phone (CPU?) and which work exactly is done to control the charging. Are all the possibilities really exhausted? E.g. couldnt the phone go sleep for 5 minutes then wake up for 1s and do the work and go sleep again?

Btw on my old openmoko i connected the solar panel straight to the battery and it worked pretty good. Overcharing the battery can be quite easily done in SW (just wake the phone when battery is over 95%). Wonder why this does not work for Jolla - the battery seems to be not charging by default - maybe it needs some command to start charging?

For me "solar charging not possible" is disappointment - it's one of the reasons i bought jolla, because i believed it would be working. Thankfully the rest of Jolla is very possitive for me, so i dont regret buying it :)

Re: SolarJolla
 

I also wonder if there's really no way to work around this "phone doesn't go to sleep"-issue. I remember that in the earliest phase when this idea evolved, someone published a kernel patch... So we know there's at least one way. Playing around with the kernel might not be what most users are comfortable with. so maybe there's something else that could be done?

The idea is just so appealing, the project was so much fun and so much work was invested... It just cannot be that some software issue now reduces its usefulness.

Think, people, think! :)

Re: SolarJolla
 

But the kernel patch didnt help much. I am quite sure that CPU was sleeping, but there can be other HW which has to be put to idle mode (USB controller?).

Having good kernel sources would might help here - those sources on github are really crippled because of missing commit history. Is it some legal problem to publish commit history?

I aggree that having this working would be cool - we have nice HW, but it's quite useless for now...

Re: SolarJolla
 

As far as I saw the problem seems to be the phone trying to charge while there's not enough energy. I wonder if that behavior could be tuned, a quick look showed maybe relevant interfaces at /sys/module/pm8921_charger/parameters - Did anyone try to play around there yet?

//EDIT: On the other side I just discharged the phone with the original charger, so energy design seems to be just bad.

Re: SolarJolla
 

I been very interested in solar stuff lately. I have setup a big solar panel at my balcony since balcony is on the south side in my new home :D I am still tweaking with it. Right now I have one too small 12v battery. I plan to upgrade ASAP. I will use it for charging my laptop, mobile, and hopefully also lighting(leds only) in my home in winter. Will be interesting to see how well this work in winter since I live in north european :/ Anyway back to topic:

Do you have any plan to add a tiny NIMH/Litium battery to your solar in next iteration of your project?

I think it could be an idea. Why? Because when you phone is fully charged you can use sun to charge the extra battery. Also it make charging of the phone more stable if there is a "backup battery"?

I don't know how much extra electric needed to make that work. I realize the costs will get higher and the solar heavier but....

Re: SolarJolla
 

@mikecomputing, your suggestion sounds a bit like one of those solar charged power banks. That may be an even better idea as it is a separate device. You can leave it charging in the sun whilst keeping your phone with you (in the pocket/purse, using it, whatever...). If someone "finds" (read: steals) it, they have only got your charger but not your phone.

Re: SolarJolla
 

Actually as it happens this will counter the nasty problem that currently haunts the solar TOH; on low lighting the TOH produces so little current that the Jolla device actually consumes more than it gains as it has to keep in active state to moniotor the charging process.

How this concept should work:

• If there is not enough current from the solar panel, the system is separated from the input circuit of the Jolla phone and the solar panel charges the TOH-integrated LiPo battery with trickle current.
• When the charge in the TOH-integrated battery is high enough or input of the solar panel is sufficent, the system connects to the Jolla phone and starts charging it.

Re: SolarJolla
 

Got mine, seems to work from what I've been able to test. However, the green colour of the plastic has already become quite yellow in the places where it touches my hands after just a few days. Is this normal, how do I fix it, does it fix itself, etc?

Re: SolarJolla
 

I wonder if this could be hacked to our already existing SolarTOH.
To charge a lipo bat from solar there is max1811.
Sadly it is at least 1.3mm thick according to the sheet so we would need another 3d printed TOH also.
My ideal solution would be: .stl files available to selfprint a thicker version of the TOH with space to hold BL-5C or other standard lipo we all have laying around or can acquire cheap.
Plus a pcb with max1811 or comparable to charge the toh-bat via solar and a yet "undetermind" circuit/IC to release charge from toh-bat to jolla-bat if enough juice is available. Some selfsoldering and adaption would be acceptable for this "upgrade".
Already throwing money to my screen but nothing happens :/