Nokia charger

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matt2matt2002
Posts: 1126
Joined: 25 Oct 2009, 7:45pm
Location: Aberdeen Scotland UK

Nokia charger

Post by matt2matt2002 »

Anyone any thoughts on this charger?
http://europe.nokia.com/find-products/a ... harger-kit
Could it be used to charge other electrical items?

Thanks folks
:D
2017 Ethiopia.5 weeks.
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nmnm
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Re: Nokia charger

Post by nmnm »

Oh that's interesting. I suppose it depends where you are. For a 3 week euro adventure, I'm planning on camping and taking a euro charger which I hope to plug in in a laundry room or whatever maybe every 3 days. I may take a spare battery (£3 on ebay). The bike charger is appealing but is heavy and clunky on the bike and costs around £30. Still tempting though.
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matt2matt2002
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Re: Nokia charger

Post by matt2matt2002 »

Thanks - I'll be taking one of those you mentioned.
But for back up I liked the idea of one of these.
Anyone any idea if it could charge other items?
2017 Ethiopia.5 weeks.
2018 Marrakech 2 weeks.
2023 Thailand 8 weeks.
Always on a Thorn Raven/Rohloff hub.
vernon
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Re: Nokia charger

Post by vernon »

In all likelihood the dynamo is hardwired to a 2mm Nokia plug.

I use a more sophisticated dynamo charging system which needs a hub dynamo but the charger has an adjustable output where the current and voltage can be altered to meet the needs of the gadget being charged.
edwin
Posts: 137
Joined: 27 Nov 2010, 6:24am
Location: Germany Odenwald

Re: Nokia charger

Post by edwin »

Hi,

in the German cycle tour forum some guys designed a charger for hub dynamos.
This Forumslader (forum's charger) has different versions (6V,12V,12V+USB).
There is already a home page for this charger: http://www.forumslader.de with circuit diagramm and circuit board design.
Unfortunately, there is only a button for an english version.

A professional and expensive charger is provided by Busch&Müller: The E-Werk (Translated: electric power plant :D ) http://www.bumm.de/index-e.html

Have fun reading German :)
and don't hesitate to ask me for details


edwin
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al_yrpal
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Re: Nokia charger

Post by al_yrpal »

I had just bought the electronic components and circuit board to build my own. Damn and Blast!

On the German job you can use Google Translate and some of the PDF's are in English anyway

Al
Reuse, recycle, thus do your bit to save the planet.... Get stuff at auctions, Dump, Charity Shops, Facebook Marketplace, Ebay, Car Boots. Choose an Old House, and a Banger ..... And cycle as often as you can......
hufty
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Re: Nokia charger

Post by hufty »

Also have a look at http://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=6672.0 for English language details of a home made charger. Parts list on page 4, an enjoyable thread! I was just about to buy a dymotec from germany and all the electronics stuff from maplins when I saw this Nokia charger - so hurrah I'm spared lots of work. It's not arrived yet - only ordered it last night - but my first modification will be to cut off the 2mm nokia plug and put on a USB socket. Last year I got adapter cables so everything standardised to USB - phone, battery charger, mp3, (camera takes AAs). I then got a mains plug to USB adapter where you can slide different prong sets in for UK/Europe. Am a bit over-excited about this charger - it had better work! No more leaving my mobile unattended in the shower block, no more having to talk to strange motorhome people, no more being fleeced for a full hookup just to charge a battery! No more I tell you no more! Will post a review later, especially if it fries something.
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Reigncloud
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Re: Nokia charger

Post by Reigncloud »

I tour with my phone as a satnav which of course leads to battery issues. One fully charged battery lasts about 3/4 of a day in 'offline' mode. As a result I take a load of spare (and cheap off ebay!) nokia batteries and ask the campsite manager to charge the batteries overnight using a dual USB wallplug adapter. This means I only have to take one wall plug for charge two phones (mine and my wife's) and the bluetooth GPS. Of course this is not an option when wild camping, hence the many spare batteries.

I considered the full bike charging option with hub dynamo, but it just seemed to cumbersome. The above setup works very well for a two week+ tour.
hufty
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Re: Nokia charger

Post by hufty »

Just back from Norway having fully road-tested my set up, and have resurrected this thread to report that the Nokia bike charger was great for charging all my other USB devices, but not my Nokia phone. This was due to the phone software not the charger unit.

Image
Above is what I took. Just to go through everything
A = USB mains charger with different prongs for different countries (only took the european prongs)
B = USB Male to Female lead with the green and white wires wound together (see below)
C = Nokia DC-14 phone charger.
D = USB lead for my appliances
E = USB battery charger for AA and AAAs
F = battery tester
G = not used, but honourable mention to this USB female adapter that goes on an old style 3.5mm nokia wall charger.
(I also had a USB-->nokia 2mm adapter lead with me for testing.)

The Nokia DC-14 comes with a basic dynamo which I'm sure works but I've already got a dynamo. It also comes with a rubber thing to strap both the phone and the charger around the handlebars but I got rid of that too as I have a bar bag. I modified the cable ends - the white plug connects to a permanent wire on the bike that leads to the dynamo, the other end is the female part of a USB extension lead crimped on, again with white and green wires twisted together.

The things I wanted to charge were: mobile phone (Nokia C2), AA batteries for my camera, Philips GoGear MP3 player, Sony eBook reader.

The USB battery charger topped up AA batteries no problem. The camera tends to consider batteries completely unusable if only slightly off full charge so I wasn't charging them from flat, but a morning's ride would get them usable again.
I didn't really use the MP3 player much but it charged okay.
The eBook reader charged from quarter tank to full tank in a few hours.

When I first tried it out on short rides at home, the phone charged fine. On tour it was a different story. What I wanted to do, and what I could do with all the other devices, is connect them up, put them in the bar bag, then forget about them for a few hours whilst they soaked up charge. The phone had other ideas. It takes a few seconds for it to recognise a 5v feed and start charging. It takes a few nanoseconds for it to decide that there has been an interruption to the 5v input, appear to stop charging, then display a message or two for you to okay.

The 2mm nokia charger connection isn’t a robust connection, but at least 5v to it should only mean one thing – it’s connected to a charger. Unfortunately every time your speed is below 5mph, or you dare to stop to look at the view, or the dynamo skids in wet weather, or you go over a bump and the lead gets jiggled, the phone puts up messages such as “the battery is not fully charged”, “the charger is not supported” and so on. During this time the charging animation is not displayed, so it was not clear whether it was charging or not. And after a couple of minutes of successful charging the screen goes dark and the keyboard locks out anyway, so you can’t easily see whether it’s charging or not.

The microUSB connection to the phone is more robust but not bombproof, but there are even more messages to okay as the phone now assumes it is connected to a computer. “Host not found”, “unable to operate in flight mode” (not true actually), “select USB mode” and so on. I don’t want to be constantly fiddling with my phone when I’m meant to be enjoying a ride. I don’t want the phone strapped to the handlebars, especially when it’s raining. I don’t even want the phone in my map case, which is what I ended up doing so I could keep an eye on it - I could just about make out if it was charging through the plastic and the raindrops.

As I said, the other devices just got on with the business of charging when they felt they had 5v up ‘em. The battery charger flashes to say it’s happy, the MP3 has a basic animation, the eBook has a static picture.


The other half of my USB charging system was the mains charger with euro plug adapter. Norway is a fantastic place to tour for many reasons, one of them is that a lot of public toilets, especially those at ferry terminals, have available plug sockets in them, so I was able to charge the phone whilst loitering. The only slight problem is that for some USB devices to know they’re connected to a wall charger rather than a computer, the green and white data wires in the USB need to be twisted together. You’d think this would be done at the factory in the wall charger, but I’ve bought a couple now where this is not the case, and my little lead (B) gets round this without the need for soldering. (Full explanation at http://www.crystalbard.co.uk/gogreen/a_guide_to_usb_chargers.htm)

If you only want to top up charge on a phone which you keep turned off most of the time anyway, you’re probably better off with a spare battery or two. This would probably extend your range to 2 weeks, and if you’ve not managed to find a way to plug it into the mains in that time yet still have network coverage I want to know where you’re touring so that I can go there too.
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