Constantly charging my Nightscout Uploader with an Y-Cable
At last I found a great solution to have my Nightscout Uploader always up and running with a fully charged battery.
I formerly tried to achieved the same with a Samsung Galaxy S4 and a Nexus Qi-Charger. This way I could attach the MMCommander TI CC1101 Antenna to the S4 and could load it in parallel using the Nexus inductive charger.
The Problem with this setup was that the battery was charging over and over 24 hours a day. This caused the battery to swell. This finally totally lifted the display of the S4 from the phone housing.
So I needed another approach to have my uploader running 24x7. And here is my fine working solution:
I tried two Y-Cables from Amazon and eBay and both worked fine. This was despite the vendor’s documentation that this cable can’t load the mobile phone. It should just give additional power to the antenna — not the phone.
And the behaviour is quite a bit strange: The Nexus doesn’t display the normal “Socket” Symbol when attached to the USB-Charger. In some cases the phone really doesn’t get charged at all. In such a case, I disconnect the USB Cable and reattach directly at the phone connector. This helps in most cases.
Once the charging is working, its working all day long! Maybe this is working on special phones only. So I hope this is helpful for someone else who needs continuous nightscout uploading service ;-)
