gumstix

Caveat: Some CF cards _need_ 5V. I know my CF WiFi card will make my
Gumstix barf (reboot/fail to boot) on a stack of three
nominally-1.7-volt Lithium primary cells (Eveready L91's) in an
annoyingly short time. I would bet money that it wouldn't do well with
a single 3.7 volt Li secondary cell.

My CFstix has a "green wire" to feed power from its own coaxial
connector; I conjecture that the board's original +5 path wasn't fat
enough. That's OK. It's been mentioned here that WiFi is a bit of a
power pig. As a stopgap, I'm constructing some alpha-hardware that
uses a 5v "buck" converter, originally a car phone charger I bought at
Walgreen's for about $11.

Eventually, I'll report what the minimum battery stack for that turns
out to be, and what sort of "juice use profiles" I get. Or should I
call those "juicy details"?

--
      Michael M. Butler  :  m m b u t l e r  ( a t )  g m a i l . c o m
Churchill once said, "When you're going through hell, KEEP GOING".

Michael M. Butler wrote:

>Caveat: Some CF cards _need_ 5V. I know my CF WiFi card will make my
>Gumstix barf (reboot/fail to boot) on a stack of three
>nominally-1.7-volt Lithium primary cells (Eveready L91's) in an
>annoyingly short time. I would bet money that it wouldn't do well with
>a single 3.7 volt Li secondary cell.
>
>My CFstix has a "green wire" to feed power from its own coaxial
>connector; I conjecture that the board's original +5 path wasn't fat
>enough. That's OK. It's been mentioned here that WiFi is a bit of a
>power pig. As a stopgap, I'm constructing some alpha-hardware that
>uses a 5v "buck" converter, originally a car phone charger I bought at
>Walgreen's for about $11.
>
>Eventually, I'll report what the minimum battery stack for that turns
>out to be, and what sort of "juice use profiles" I get. Or should I
>call those "juicy details"?
>
>--
>      Michael M. Butler  :  m m b u t l e r  ( a t )  g m a i l . c o m
>Churchill once said, "When you're going through hell, KEEP GOING".
>  
>
What about using two & a 5V reg?

-- 
Keith Olson
K-Soft Consulting

I wrote:

> >Caveat: Some CF cards _need_ 5V.

My intent was not to talk about battery stacks. I wanted to warn
regular folks who could be thinking: "Oh! gumstix stuff just needs { 4
| 3.x } volts, in fact _5v is too much_". <-- That's not necessarily
so.

I wonder what a CF WiFi card would do with a "newer" gumstix-supplied
4 volt supply.

Perhaps someone should find out and report the result.

--
      Michael M. Butler  :  m m b u t l e r  ( a t )  g m a i l . c o m
Churchill once said, "When you're going through hell, KEEP GOING".

Michael M. Butler wrote:

>I wrote:
>
>  
>
>>>Caveat: Some CF cards _need_ 5V.
>>>      
>>>
>
>My intent was not to talk about battery stacks. I wanted to warn
>regular folks who could be thinking: "Oh! gumstix stuff just needs { 4
>| 3.x } volts, in fact _5v is too much_". <-- That's not necessarily
>so.
>
>I wonder what a CF WiFi card would do with a "newer" gumstix-supplied
>4 volt supply.
>
>Perhaps someone should find out and report the result.
>  
>
Good points.  Perhaps they should offer an optional supply with a 
switch( like you can get at Radio Shack)  for 5v, 4.5v, 4v, 3.5v, etc.

-- 
Keith Olson
K-Soft Consulting

On 10/30/05, Keith Olson <ksoftconsulting@...> wrote:

> Good points.  Perhaps they should offer an optional supply with a
> switch( like you can get at Radio Shack)  for 5v, 4.5v, 4v, 3.5v, etc.

Simpler, I suspect, to just stock and sell a CF power supply and a
non-CF power supply, and document what is best used where, and why.

The company's value-added isn't really power supplies per se. :)

--
      Michael M. Butler  :  m m b u t l e r  ( a t )  g m a i l . c o m
Churchill once said, "When you're going through hell, KEEP GOING".

On Oct 30, 2005, at 8:05 PM, Michael M. Butler wrote:

> On 10/30/05, Keith Olson <ksoftconsulting@...> wrote:
>
>
>> Good points.  Perhaps they should offer an optional supply with a
>> switch( like you can get at Radio Shack)  for 5v, 4.5v, 4v, 3.5v,  
>> etc.
>>
>
> Simpler, I suspect, to just stock and sell a CF power supply and a
> non-CF power supply, and document what is best used where, and why.
>
> The company's value-added isn't really power supplies per se. :)

I believe (though I wasn't the guy working on it) that the reason for  
the 4V supply was two-fold:

1. We couldn't find a good, small, 5V UL & CE-rated supply (the one  
we have been using is I think UL only)
2. The 5V supply makes the netDUO power controllers gets *really*  
warm.  Like "Ouch!  That's warm!"

I think someone might have said at some point that the power supply  
we used to use isn't available any more too.

My personal feeling on these new power supplies is that I hate them  
-- not because they're bad supplies, but because the box they come in  
is about 2x the size of the box the 4V supply came in.  So they don't  
easily fit in those nice tiny envelopes we use to ship orders -- just  
because of the power supply, our shipments generally need one size  
bigger envelope on them now, which just looks terrible.

Right now, I think we basically ship the 5V supply whenever:
1. There's a robostix in the order
2. There's a CFStix in the order
3. The shipper just gets irritated about the envelope being bigger  
than it needs to be

otherwise, we ship a 4V supply.  We have also now added "4v supply"  
and "5v supply" items to the online store, so a particular supply can  
be specifically ordered too.

C

Craig Hughes wrote:

> On Oct 30, 2005, at 8:05 PM, Michael M. Butler wrote:
>
>> On 10/30/05, Keith Olson <ksoftconsulting@...> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Good points.  Perhaps they should offer an optional supply with a
>>> switch( like you can get at Radio Shack)  for 5v, 4.5v, 4v, 3.5v,  etc.
>>>
>>
>> Simpler, I suspect, to just stock and sell a CF power supply and a
>> non-CF power supply, and document what is best used where, and why.
>>
>> The company's value-added isn't really power supplies per se. :)
>
>
> I believe (though I wasn't the guy working on it) that the reason for  
> the 4V supply was two-fold:
>
> 1. We couldn't find a good, small, 5V UL & CE-rated supply (the one  
> we have been using is I think UL only)
> 2. The 5V supply makes the netDUO power controllers gets *really*  
> warm.  Like "Ouch!  That's warm!"
>
> I think someone might have said at some point that the power supply  
> we used to use isn't available any more too.
>
> My personal feeling on these new power supplies is that I hate them  
> -- not because they're bad supplies, but because the box they come in  
> is about 2x the size of the box the 4V supply came in.  So they don't  
> easily fit in those nice tiny envelopes we use to ship orders -- just  
> because of the power supply, our shipments generally need one size  
> bigger envelope on them now, which just looks terrible.
>
> Right now, I think we basically ship the 5V supply whenever:
> 1. There's a robostix in the order
> 2. There's a CFStix in the order
> 3. The shipper just gets irritated about the envelope being bigger  
> than it needs to be
>
> otherwise, we ship a 4V supply.  We have also now added "4v supply"  
> and "5v supply" items to the online store, so a particular supply can  
> be specifically ordered too.
>
> C 

Here's a thought:  http://tinyurl.com/bv8uy lists almost 12,000 (mostly) 
Asian exporters for 'power supply'.  Most of them have web sites and/or 
email addresses.  Why don't you narrow the search, then ask the 
resulting companies to send you samples (that match your criteria) for 
evaluation?  That way you get to check out a /lot/ of them for no cost, 
and will (hopefully) find a good quality one for a good price.  I'm sure 
that if you explain that you will be evaluating over a thousand 
different ones that they will be willing to dicker on the price or 
anything else that will make them stand out and have you think more 
kindly toward them. <G>  I know that this works, because I did it for 
one shop that I worked for, and when I left, they let me grab about two 
dozen relays out of the /banana box/ full that they still had left from 
the samples.

-- 
Keith Olson
K-Soft Consulting

Keith Olson wrote:

> Craig Hughes wrote:
>
>> On Oct 30, 2005, at 8:05 PM, Michael M. Butler wrote:
>>
>>> On 10/30/05, Keith Olson <ksoftconsulting@...> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> Good points.  Perhaps they should offer an optional supply with a
>>>> switch( like you can get at Radio Shack)  for 5v, 4.5v, 4v, 3.5v,  
>>>> etc.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Simpler, I suspect, to just stock and sell a CF power supply and a
>>> non-CF power supply, and document what is best used where, and why.
>>>
>>> The company's value-added isn't really power supplies per se. :)
>>
>>
>>
>> I believe (though I wasn't the guy working on it) that the reason 
>> for  the 4V supply was two-fold:
>>
>> 1. We couldn't find a good, small, 5V UL & CE-rated supply (the one  
>> we have been using is I think UL only)
>> 2. The 5V supply makes the netDUO power controllers gets *really*  
>> warm.  Like "Ouch!  That's warm!"
>>
>> I think someone might have said at some point that the power supply  
>> we used to use isn't available any more too.
>>
>> My personal feeling on these new power supplies is that I hate them  
>> -- not because they're bad supplies, but because the box they come 
>> in  is about 2x the size of the box the 4V supply came in.  So they 
>> don't  easily fit in those nice tiny envelopes we use to ship orders 
>> -- just  because of the power supply, our shipments generally need 
>> one size  bigger envelope on them now, which just looks terrible.
>>
>> Right now, I think we basically ship the 5V supply whenever:
>> 1. There's a robostix in the order
>> 2. There's a CFStix in the order
>> 3. The shipper just gets irritated about the envelope being bigger  
>> than it needs to be
>>
>> otherwise, we ship a 4V supply.  We have also now added "4v supply"  
>> and "5v supply" items to the online store, so a particular supply 
>> can  be specifically ordered too.
>>
>> C 
>
>
> Here's a thought:  http://tinyurl.com/bv8uy lists almost 12,000 
> (mostly) Asian exporters for 'power supply'.  Most of them have web 
> sites and/or email addresses.  Why don't you narrow the search, then 
> ask the resulting companies to send you samples (that match your 
> criteria) for evaluation?  That way you get to check out a /lot/ of 
> them for no cost, and will (hopefully) find a good quality one for a 
> good price.  I'm sure that if you explain that you will be evaluating 
> over a thousand different ones that they will be willing to dicker on 
> the price or anything else that will make them stand out and have you 
> think more kindly toward them. <G>  I know that this works, because I 
> did it for one shop that I worked for, and when I left, they let me 
> grab about two dozen relays out of the /banana box/ full that they 
> still had left from the samples.
>
Sorry - Wrong link.  Here is the proper one: http://tinyurl.com/8d8wk  
You can also add an entry for yourself, detailing you needs, and /they/ 
will contact /you/.

-- 
Keith Olson
K-Soft Consulting

On Oct 31, 2005, at 10:51 AM, Keith Olson wrote:

> Here's a thought:  http://tinyurl.com/bv8uy lists almost 12,000  
> (mostly) Asian exporters for 'power supply'.  Most of them have web  
> sites and/or email addresses.  Why don't you narrow the search,  
> then ask the resulting companies to send you samples (that match  
> your criteria) for evaluation?  That way you get to check out a / 
> lot/ of them for no cost, and will (hopefully) find a good quality  
> one for a good price.  I'm sure that if you explain that you will  
> be evaluating over a thousand different ones that they will be  
> willing to dicker on the price or anything else that will make them  
> stand out and have you think more kindly toward them. <G>  I know  
> that this works, because I did it for one shop that I worked for,  
> and when I left, they let me grab about two dozen relays out of  
> the /banana box/ full that they still had left from the samples.

Yeah, I think that's more or less what we did.  I think that's how we  
sourced the original 5V supply too, and the random chinese power  
supply manufacturer went out of business or otherwise vanished, which  
is why we can't get those any more...

C

Craig Hughes wrote:

> On Oct 31, 2005, at 10:51 AM, Keith Olson wrote:
>
>> Here's a thought:  http://tinyurl.com/bv8uy lists almost 12,000  
>> (mostly) Asian exporters for 'power supply'.  Most of them have web  
>> sites and/or email addresses.  Why don't you narrow the search,  then 
>> ask the resulting companies to send you samples (that match  your 
>> criteria) for evaluation?  That way you get to check out a / lot/ of 
>> them for no cost, and will (hopefully) find a good quality  one for a 
>> good price.  I'm sure that if you explain that you will  be 
>> evaluating over a thousand different ones that they will be  willing 
>> to dicker on the price or anything else that will make them  stand 
>> out and have you think more kindly toward them. <G>  I know  that 
>> this works, because I did it for one shop that I worked for,  and 
>> when I left, they let me grab about two dozen relays out of  the 
>> /banana box/ full that they still had left from the samples.
>
>
> Yeah, I think that's more or less what we did.  I think that's how we  
> sourced the original 5V supply too, and the random chinese power  
> supply manufacturer went out of business or otherwise vanished, which  
> is why we can't get those any more...
>
> C 

You consider yourself some kind of computer expert and you haven't heard 
of /backups/?!?!?!?!?  <GBEG>

-- 
Keith Olson
K-Soft Consulting