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MetaMotion R detect when charging

fryjsfryjs
in General
Firstly, the MetaMotion R is a great piece of hardware, well done.

Is there any way to detect when the device is charging, or even better: set a command to light up the led when charging?

I saw in another post about the Metawear R where you indicate that a wire can be soldered from the charging status indicator pin to the GPIO pin. Could this be used with the MetaMotion? If so could a command be used to light the led when GPIO is low?

Comments

  • EricEric
    edited November 2016
    I've let the hardware engineer know to take a look at the battery monitoring question.  With regards to your second question, yes, you can program the board to periodically read the GPIO data then react to the data if it is below a reference value.

    Just an fyi, we are on Thanksgiving holidays in the US so responses will be slow until next week.
  • MattMatt
    @fryjs

    The MetaMotionR hardware has the battery charge status pin connected to its processor, no soldering required.  It also has a new signal connected to the USB 5V line, so that it knows when it is plugged in.  The battery charger only indicates status when it is actively charging.

    However, these endpoints have not yet been exposed in the firmware.  The team is considering the best way to expose these, either via the GPIO interface or with a custom endpoint and firmware if necessary.

    Once the endpoints are exposed, you could use an event to automatically change the LED state when the charger is active.  This can be done right now for the low battery status by reading the battery level endpoint periodically, and if it is lower than some threshold turn on the LED.  In theory you could look for the battery voltage to rise to determine a charging state as well, but it will be faster and more accurate to use the status pin once available.
  • fryjsfryjs
    Thanks for the response!  That's excellent that it can be enabled via a firmware update, I'll keep an eye out for it.
  • MattMatt
    @fryjs

    We have a firmware solution to this that is in testing now.  Expect to release this with some other minor fixes within the next couple business days.  It will take a little longer before it is exposed in the APIs.

    Matt
  • fryjsfryjs
    Awesome, thanks for the heads-up
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