Is Sprint misinformed about Lithium batteries?

An article I just received from Sprint in an e-mail claims that the Lithium batteries in their phones degrade after only 80 charge cycles and that I should "only charge it when the battery is almost empty."

That goes against everything I've ever heard/read about Lithium based rechargeable batteries. Here are two sources I grabbed quickly:

From BatteryUniversity.com:

The battery prefers a partial rather than a full discharge. Frequent full discharges should be avoided when possible.

From the Laptop Battery blog:

it is better to recharge more often; avoid frequent full discharges.

Perhaps their marketing folks were reading from old spec sheets on Nickel-Cadmium based batteries which would actually benefit from this advice.

If anyone sees other resources to substantiate or refute this claim from Sprint, please post a comment.

4-3-2009: I found another couple of references to good discussions:

http://spicygadget.com/2006/12/24/guide-getting-the-most-out-of-your-lithium-battery/

http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/lithium-ion-battery2.htm

Fun with dogs

There's almost always a good story to be had if you keep animals (or children :) and today's version goes like this...

About 11pm after watching an episode of Stargate SG-1, our 120 pound Alaskan Malamute, Itok (short for Maniitok) starts barking strangly. We always know when something is going on because we are used to his normal "talk" (he chats with his friends and howls a little each night) and this was not normal. We looked out and discovered a new white dog in our yard. It was not a small one either; he looked like a large Husky or maybe even a small Malamute and probably weighed 70-90 pounds. One we've never seen before. Not knowing what to think, I watched for a minute and it looked like the two of them were getting along ok (at least they were not fighting), so I went out and try to see if it had a collar, etc. It didn't want me anywhere near it, so I decided not to persist.

It looked like it was trying to climb over the fence in the upper corner of our yard. Since we live in a hilly area, our neighbor's yards in that back corner are at widely different levels. On our side, we have a 6 foot fence. In the neighbor's yard to the North, our fence looks only about 1 foot high because the ground slopes off really fast. In the house diagonally across from us, the bottom of their fence is visible to us above the top of our fence. I figure the dog got in our North neighbor's yard (I don't think it's completely fenced - or if it is, I know they have a 4 ft section in the front) and jumped into our yard at that corner.

(Here's a shot of Itok standing by the tree where he treed a Racoon last summer. It shows the fences near the corner where most animals seem to come into our yard.)

Anyway, since this dog had a collar and looked well cared for, rather than letting it out to roam the neighborhood, we called to see if an Animal Control Officer was available. One wasn't, but they sent a couple of Lindon's finest out anyway. They brought the department's animal trailer, but neither of them had any experience as dog catchers. They tried valiantly for about 15 minutes to catch the very smart, but uncooperative beast before giving up and just letting him go out the gate into the street. I asked them to let me know how things turned out as they drive off after it. I never heard...

Battery testing and a good inexpensive charger

I have been testing a good number of batteries lately that have been coming out of UPS units where I work. I had 2 dozen sitting in my area last week. I am down now to half of that, but I have quite a few at home still that I need to check out (and a large pile that needs to be taken to the recyclers too).

In order to do this, I needed to be able to charge the batteries up in order to run them down with my tester (a CBA II). I found a really nice charger for a really good price - a Tempest BC-1250. I ordered 2 of them and so far, I really like them. They are well built (metal cases, sturdy cords) and the voltages they use are just right for the SLA batteries I use. If you have batteries sitting around going dead, don't wait - this charger is worth the $32.50 - you need to charge them up periodically so they don't sulfate and kill themselves. If you charge them up separately first, one of these chargers should be able to maintain several small/medium batteries connected in parallel.

Since I go through at least 2 charge/discharge cycles on most batteries, it has been nice to have a couple of extra chargers (I can drain them a lot faster than I can charge them). They have been perfect for the relatively small batteries I've been working with (mostly 7 & 12 Ah, but a few 18's also). For larger ones, I still have my other bigger charger.

For something that can maintain (or very slowly charge) a battery at the proper voltage, get one (or several) of these Float Chargers from Harbor Freight.

Getting APRS running again

I'm going to try to get my digipeater running again. I swapped the dual port TNC I was using for a single port that has APRS capable firmware. I won't be running an I-gate anymore, but there seem to be enough around here already. I just want it to provide extra coverage for the area.

This site in Finland is doing some really cool things with APRS. It's best to use your callsign as your username, but make something up if you don't have one, or don't want to give it.

So, the first thing I've got to do is get a USB to serial adapter to connect to the computer so I can program the settings in the TNC. Once I set it up, it can be disconnected from the computer (a major source of problems in the past) and run on its own.

The radio is a Phoenix SX 16 channel and puts out somewhere around 30 watts. The antenna is an 8 foot Diamond X200 clone installed on my roof about 30 feet up. Power is supplied by a home built power supply that float charges a 75 AH battery.

MPG in my RAV4

This past weekend, we took a trip to Idaho. It was about 250 miles in each direction and for the whole trip, I was able to average right about 23 miles per gallon while doing 80 MPH on the freeway. We were late leaving, so I may have even been pressing the speed limit a little further at times on the way up there. We had 5 people (4 adults and a 14 year-old in the 3rd row seat) and a bit of gear. I had fully inflated the tires to their maximum pressure (not the pressure listed on the car's sticker) of 44 PSI. I left my roof rack on top because it supports my ham radio antenna. I did not use any fuel saving methods (like pulse & glide or drafting a truck) or anything other than the tire pressure. Since this is our first really long trip in the RAV4, I wanted to get a baseline for the future. The 23 MPG number isn't that great (the EPA estimates on this vehicle are 19 city & 26 highway), but it's not bad considering the speed and load.

I do have some history with a trip we used to make quite often. It is a 30 mile drive with about 5 on city streets and the rest a single stretch of 65 MPH 4 lane freeway where people usually drive about 75 MPH. We mostly made the drive with just my wife and I in the car. I would usually get about 25 MPG on the way up, and 22 MPG on the way back (uphill vs. downhill + prevailing winds make the difference).

The other day, after filling the tires full and using some pulse & glide, some 3-car-length drafting for 10 miles of the trip, and keeping the speed down to around 70 MPH, I was able to get 34.4 MPG on the way up. Keeping the speed to 70, but without any other methods gave me 25 MPG on the trip home that day. I'd like to play more with Pulse and Glide, but it requires that I pay a lot more attention to driving (I guess that's good) and not to my wife (that's definately bad :(

Anyway, I thought it was interesting that there is such a difference in fuel economy just by changing a couple small things (additional tire pressure, and a 5 MPH speed reduction) gave me 13% improvement.

I'm glad I have my ScanGauge to use because I'm hardly ever able to tell by looking at the whole tank of gas what I kind of economy I got for a particular style of driving. There are many times when someone will sit in a parking lot with the engine running to keep the air conditioner running. While I still check the overall mileage, it's always disappointing that it is so much lower than what we get on these 30+ mile trips that I like to test with.

Getting the most out of the gas you have to buy

I've read lot's of stuff about saving gas (Hypermiling, etc.), but this article is one of the best I read yet. It has common sense and gives sound reasons and advice for most of the suggested items. One part that lacked some details (like why it works) was the pulse and glide section, but since they referred to it as an advanced technique, I'll forgive them. You can find more info about pulse and glide all over the net. Here's an article from Consumer Reports with a new way of looking at fuel economy.

It has been a goal of mine for the past 15 years or so to own an electric vehicle. I haven't managed it yet (practicality and economy have had to come first), but the day is getting closer...

Update to Move/Copy Tool

I've posted an update to the multithreaded Move/Copy Tool (McTool). Not a huge deal, but some needed updates and minor enhancements were made.

Check my original post or my web page for the download link.

McTool is a multithreaded Move and Copy Tool

The very first program I wrote in C (about 20 years ago now) was a program that appended one file to another. It evolved into a file copying program (DCOPY) that I shared with a few people. Since then, I have used a number of good utilities to move files around on various systems (XCopy, xXCopy, RoboCopy, TotalCopy, etc.). No one tool does everything everyone needs, but all together, perhaps they can come close. Anyway, when I couldn't find any file copy tools that supported multithreading and worked well with large numbers of small files, I wrote one.

Basically, I had tons of relatively small files (images, mp3 files, etc.) that I wanted to move around and I needed a program that could run multiple copies at once. Many systems nowadays are capable of handling multiple requests at a time (even single drives have NCQ). You no longer have to have an expensive fiber-attached SAN in order to benefit from running more than one thing at a time (a dual core processor is not even needed). Starting multiple instances of any of the tools I listed above works well to speed things up, but it was a hassle to keep things straight and I didn't want to have to bother with that all the time. Plus, at times when I have had really large sets (I've worked with millions of files, and multiple terabytes at once), the other tools just weren't able to handle it and I ran into problems.

More details and a free download link.

I rewrote McTool in C# to learn about handling threading and it uses the Microsoft .NET framework under current versions of Windows (including 2003 server, XP, Vista, 32 & 64 bit). I have not made any effort yet in putting together an installation package of any sort since it only requires two files and I think it is pretty easy to use. If I'm proven wrong by getting some feedback, that could change.

I'm pretty excited about it because it seems to work well enough in the limited testing that I've done (5-10 times faster in my tests), but I wanted to share it with others in order to see if there are any problems left that need to be fixed or other features that should be added. It seems to work for what I've been doing, but if you find this page and want to snag a copy to try out and let me know whether it works for you, that would be great! I would appreciate the feedback, and you might be able to use the tool...

UPS mods, Tree removal, etc.

Some pretty random stuff here (this isn't a single subject blog by any means)...

UPS modifications continue

I collected another dozen UPS units from the recycling center at work over the past year and converted them to use an external power source.



We gave away 6 of them at the Utah County ARES (UCARES) picnic last night.

They can be used as chargers (about 1 amp max) or maintainers (floats at about 14.0 volts) for almost any sealed lead acid (SLA) battery and also as Uninteruptible Power Supplies (funny huh, since they were originally intended for UPS use!) and as (semi) portable inverters*. Hopefully there will be a few more happy batteries in happy valley. I hope to get more, but never know what the winds of change will bring...

*You do have to know how to turn them on when the AC mains are off. Hold (don't push and release) the power button until it starts beeping. While it is still beeping, release it. It should turn on and, if the battery can provide enough power for the load, it should stay on.

Neighborhood cat killed

Itok killed another cat the other night. We found it lying in the grass the next morning. (I didn't include any pictures for this event.) It was completely intact with no blood showing on the outside. I think this is the third or fourth one now that hasn't survived (at least one did when it made it up a tree and I went out and saved it - at 1:30 in the morning!). He doesn't tear them up or anything, he seems to just play with them. Anything that runs is apparently fair game. I don't know why these cats come into our completely fenced (6 foot high all the way around) back yard, but I guess they just can't help it.

People, don't let your cats run around - they get into my bushes and flower beds and use them as a litter box! If they come in my backyard (as they seem prone to do), they'll probably die.

Tree removal

When we moved into our West facing house 11 years ago, the front lawn was barren, so we planted a tree - a Navajo Globe Willow.



We loved it. It grew fast covered the entire front of our house with shade, gave the kids a place to swing, we hung a hammock from it for a number of years, etc. Unfortunately, Willows are generally considered "trash trees" because they drop a lot of junk in your yard. This one was no exception. Two or three years ago, wind took off a chunk of it and it took quite a while for us to cut it up and haul it away. It didn't seem to hurt the tree much (you couldn't even tell from the road in front because the tree was so big) other than the place on the trunk. Well, Sunday, the wind took off another piece of it and since it has been smelling funny (people tell me they tend to do that when they get old or infected), it was time to take the whole thing out.



It was quite a job and I'm quite sunburned. Luckily, a neighbor around the corner was having a tree removed the same day (for some reason I didn't think they'd be working on Labor Day) and I was able to convince them to let me pay them to haul my mess away and grind the stump down. Since I had felled it and cut it up already, it was a relatively small job for them even though the tree completely filled their 8 ton truck.



I'm glad that's over!

My blog is not People Ready

A page sponsored by Microsoft on Federated Media's web site talks about businesses being what they call "People Ready."

This article on ValleyWag derides the companies for using bloggers (reporters?) in what is basically a Microsoft advertising campaign. They seem to say that it's wrong for the bloggers to appear to be objective when really they're getting paid for writing as they do. Funny, I thought that's how it always worked. They can pay me for writing about it if they want - I have no objections!

PC World got into the act also (see Harry McCracken's post). Like most businesses, they're in it for the money. So now here they are profiting (I found the article by searching for it and it displayed plenty of ads to me) from writing about a controversial subject and saying that their type (journalists) shouldn't "get involved in a project that involved contributing to a marketing campaign." I don't have a problem with it (hey, I have ads on this site), I just think it's funny that it's creating a stir.

Partial Disclosure Notice follows:
["Partial" because I don't feel like writing (and I'm sure you don't feel like reading) everything about me in this silly little blog posting.]

I just wanted to make note that my business is not People Ready mostly because I don't have a business. I was also curious to see what kind of traffic would come to my page because of a simple unsponsored, obscure little blog posting. Gee, I suppose if I get a lot of traffic and someday start a business, I'll have to think about making it a People Ready Business (PRB :) ...