18 replies to this topic

[Phree]

Hi all,

I posted this on another site and thought I'd share it here too...

Have you ever gone to work and realised you forgot to charge your phone last night and then have to go all day without it? I get fed up having to remember to bring my charger with me from home all the time. Last night, I happened to look at my new N95 charger and saw that it's outputting at 5v. I then remembered from somewhere deep in the memory that a standard USB outputs at 5v too. So today, I made a charger. if you're interested, here's what I did:

Step 1: What you need
Old Nokia Charger (I used an old, old charger with an adaptor to fit the new style 2mm charging jack)
Old USB cable
Wire clippers
Multimeter


Step 2: Cut USB Cable
Next, I cut the USB cable, stripped down the outer protective sheath and separated the four coloured wires. You only need the red and black - the white and green are for data. Cut the white & green right back, then strip the black & red wires & twist them to tidy them up.


Step 3: Check voltage
I then tested the voltage coming out of the USB socket from the PC.


Step 4: Cut the Nokia charger
Next, I cut the Nokia charger cable, stripped it back to get at the red & white wires. I stripped these back and then I joined the USB cable & the Nokia charger cable together using red - red & white - black wires. Then I used electrical tape to wrap around the 2 reds and another bit wrapped around the black-white. Finally, I wrapped a bit around the whole lot to keep it tight and secure.


Step 5: Final bits
I then checked the voltage coming out of the newly made cable to check it was still 5v, which it was. So all that was left to do, was plug it into a phone and see if it worked...

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*** DISCLAIMER ***
I, nor mmcforums accept no responsibility for any damage caused if you attempt this yourself.

[Dan]

nice guide phree. cheers

[Crazzzy_DucK]

Its a shame the standard Nokia USB cable doesnt charge ya phone. Would make things alot easier

It would also make the cable useful!

[Dan]

yeah, i have never understood why they decided to not allow phone charging via USB. especially as they give away a cable and charger with every handset. its not as if it was a marketing ploy to make people buy a charger if they already have a USB lead.

who knows...maybe there is an issue with the regulation of the power supplied by the USB port on some computers???

[Phree]

I was looking around on the net about the usb socket on the N95 yesterday and ended up looking at a thread on Nokia's official support forum. Some guy on there reckons that his N95 DOES charge when he plugs the usb in...He got slaughtered by dozens and dozens of replies saying he was talking nonsense!

[Dan]

lol, maybe the machine that built his phone decided to randomly alter the PCB to allow his to charge?

[The Wiep]

interesting info Phree!

I think the didn't implement standard usb charging for marketing reasons
I bought the usb charger from Nokia to get juice from a usb port

[Phree]

The Wiep, on Jan 30 2008, 05:16 PM, said:

interesting info Phree!

I think they didn't implement standard usb charging for marketing reasons
I bought the usb charger from Nokia to get juice from a usb port

Wiep - you have the official usb charger? (CA-100?). Do you have a multimeter? If so, could you do me a favour and take a reading and let me know what you're getting out of the charger please?

Thanks!

[The Wiep]

Phree, on Jan 30 2008, 06:56 PM, said:

Wiep - you have the official usb charger? (CA-100?). Do you have a multimeter? If so, could you do me a favour and take a reading and let me know what you're getting out of the charger please?

Thanks!

yup, I have that one
will do exactly that tomorrow, gonna take a nap now

[ToxicGTE]

Wow, thats a long nap... Still no reply after a month? :thumbsup:

I just bought a charger from eBay for 50p and left it at work so i have one at home, one at work. Works for me...

[The Wiep]

omg! I completely forgot about this
I put a reminder in my phone but formatted it shortly after..

will look into it this weekend..

sorry guys!

[The Wiep]

and yet again the weekend has passed, *sigh*

just (finally) got around measuring it
it's switching between 6.11 and 6.13 with "peaks" of 6.10 and 6.14
tried it on both laptop usb and the usb hub that is in my monitor on my desktop

sorry again for the enormous delay!!

[editor]

its late at night so my brain might be reading things wrong

but some of the replys in this thread say Nok decided to leave the USB charging out due to possible voltage probs from the PC ?? cant see that , plenty of other manufactures trust Pc`s to charge phones , then some one said the nt pcb cant handle a charge ??? on which phone ?? then the point of the whole thread is making a USB charger

its late maybe i read it all wrong and if so ..oops lol

but if the orig post is correct and a home made usb charger ...charges the phone , then surely a software change in the Nok could be implemented so that when the usb is plugged in there is a auto option ..charge phone or return to standard options given when data comms are taking place as is the norm

OR does the supplied USB not have the cables internaly to charge

if it does then a software change would be all that is needed as is the case with the SE`s ..or was it a hidden menu on them ...cant rem now lol but you get my drift ..hopefully

[The Wiep]

this is about creating a USB-to-Chargerplug usb charger

[editor]

aha ... usb to small round charge plug and all along i was thinkin usb pc to mini usb phone using a cable that has the needed charge wiring

oh well i did say it was late when i read the post

good right up though but maybe some solder would be a tad safer on the connections and some plastic heat shrink to cover the job when finished

which actually brings on a question from me but on charging matters so not to far off topic

i have a N90 the fabled brick and with it came a small adapter to go from Noks larger size charge plug to the now standard small plug size , would i be able to use a Nok charger with the adapter fitted to charge the N95 8gb ???

i have an old charger here that is 150 mA output 5.7v 800mA and the supplied 95 8gb charger is 180mA 5.0v 800mA

between them there is .7v and 30 mA difference , harmful ???

[distracted]

Hi

Very cool.
Would it also work if you attach a charger pluggie to the red and black wires in the data cable? So as to have a a USB plug on one end and the other end splitting into two - a data plug and a charger plug.
That way I can charge my phone and connect using only one USB port.

[jrafiki]

Even if I found this thread after a year from its first post date I found it very interesting.

I realized the same as Phree with the voltage of Nokia chargers and USB ports and I want to build my own cable (even more since Nokia CA-100 costs around $35 usd in Mexico, and I think it is a lot for a piece of copper wires) but I have some concerns that I want to share with you.

First of all the USB specification lets a device to draw 1 power unit (defined as 100mA in USB spec) from the bus, and that device must negotiate if it is a high power device, having a limit of 5 power units (500 mA)... We all know that there are plenty of USB decorations (fans, lamps, toys, etc...) that only get power from USB port, and many of them draws more than 100mA.

By this way, I read my N95 power adaptor and I found that it provides 5V, 800mA. obviously this seems that should not be safe to attach it to the USB connector, but I have used other nokia power adaptors with the 2mm jack that provides 5v, ~350mA only.

For this reason I'm almost sure that Nokia CA-100 cable is only the cable arrangement that Phree did, but I don't have one in order to check with a multimeter if it has a direct connection (almost zero resistance) between the output jack and power USB pins, this means there is no additional circuitry between the usb port and the output jack (that powers at 100mA, then negotiates the power consumption with the host, then increments the power drain)

If that is true and the CA-100 cable has no additional circuitry I would only suggest to use a thick USB cable with no more than one foot (30.4 cms) in order to have less power converted in heat (less loses).

I would appreciate your comments.

[Danut]

ok i am not that technical as you are my friend but maybe this picture will make you smile
i have bought this charger from Warsaw last year with 10euros mainly reason being the fact the seller told me that i can use it to charge my phone from the PC
it's not an original cable from nokia but it sure works for me both as regular charger as from the bus outputs
 28122008148.jpg   83.97K   6 downloads

[The Wiep]

I don't really know if the extra cost is only for the name of Nokia or that it actually has extra material but since my N95 is sooo precious to me I don't like taking a risk

mostly the difference between adapters is the circuitry protection


anyway, I'm happy with the Nokia one as it is really small