I’m new to blynk. I usually charge my phone in night and most of time it gets overcharged and I wanted to know if there’s any way to detect battery status with help of blynk android app and when battery is fully charged it can send a signal to turn off relay which will stop overcharging my phone.
if it’s not possible with blynk then how can i do this otherway?
It’s not possible directly within Blynk but you can hook up a current sensor and when the current drops you know the phone is charged. Then the relay takes over. We do the same but with RF sockets rather than direct relay control.
It’s not an issue with the current batteries, just leave it to the charger. When the battery is full the phone switches to something called trickle charging. This basically means it will very very slowly charge when it’s full as to protect the battery. No worries about it.
Just make sure you use the original charger and a decent USB cable.
As a frequent user of old phones and tablets for “conversion” to 24/7 IP camera useage (4 phones and 2 tablets so far), I can attest to the fact that a battery CAN become overcharged and even start expanding… However, it has only happened once (just a month ago in fact) in the last 7+ years I have been doing this… and that particular phone also took a bath a couple of years prior, causing power issues until it dried out months later (I have since removed the battery and hardwired it to a PSU).
So while the argument of decreased battery life due to continuous charging may have some validity, there is also the fact that they (batteries) have a declining shelf life anyhow… trickle charged or not… so which case is truer??
@Jivan As @Costas mentioned, external power monitoring and interruption is your only real option short of forming a habit of charging the phone for a few hours before sleeping, then unplugging it at bedtime.
Blynk can be used in the former; Simply treat the phone’s charger as any other powered IoT device you want to monitor and control. Wire an inline a voltage/current sensor and relay to the 5v side of the charger, linked to an ESP running Blynk, and map out the ranges, then use those ranges and/or timers to enable/disable the charging as required.
actually, you can not “overcharge” your phone. all lithium cells are charged to max 4.2 v, this is strictly limited by built in protection circuit on multiple levels. if overcharging would be an issue, all phones should catch fire and explode overnight…
also, leaving the phone in the charger overnight, is not a big problem. i always put my phone to the charger overnight, and have phones with 5 year old batteries, still keeping a charge for 2 days, with quite some talk time + wifi + bluetooth.
what can really reduce the lifetime of lithium cells, is high temperature and repeated over discharging.
this is why important to try to avoid discharhing under 20-30%. i also recommend to avoid “fast” chargers, as these can overheat and stress the batteries.
it is much better to charge slowly for a longer period (overnight) with lower current charger, instead than charging in 1 or 2 hours with high current.
if you can make your self a Relay controlled Power extension which should be sample.
you can use Tasker - Android app - to send a HTTP request to blynk server to switch off the relay to stop charging when the Phone battery percentage reach 100% and once it is less than lets say 20% to trigger the relay on again to start charging.
UPDATE you can use Sonoff is a 5 USDrelay and change the firmware to run blynk on it, attached to any available power extension to save your self a lot of time making your own.
yeah, but i mean it doesn’t do as much damage as people estimate. just think about the laptops for example: they are on charger more than a phone (some laptops probably every day), but still not damages the battery.
exposing to heat and over discharging does much more damage.
once i managed to destroy 2 new camera batteries in just 4 months! when i was on a bicycle tour and could not charge the batteries regularly, i was forced to repeatedly over discharge them.