Is the CA-146C adapter trash?
 

I've now a couple of times tried the CA-146C adapter that came with the N900 (old round Nokia charger plug to MicroUSB) in my car with the Insmat phone charger I use for older Nokia phones. The light on the charger comes on, the N900 thinks it is getting juice, but the battery seems to be draining the same speed as if though there was no charger attached. And I have BatteryGraph data to prove it. A friend has had exactly the same experience with this adapter.

My N900 charges normally with the wall plug adapter, or via a MicroUSB cable from a computer, so it's unlikely this is a problem with the phone itself.

So, is the CA-146C just an decorative item with no real-world usability, are there a lot of defective units around, or what is going on here? :confused:

Re: Is the CA-146C adapter trash?
 

I've tried to charge my N900 with the CA-146C adapter several times today and I didn't get any charge to the battery.

With the smaller Nokia charger plug I got a message that its charging, but battery level indicator never went up from one red bar. And only thing that happens is that the CA-146C adapter heats up.
With the bigger Nokia charger plug I got a message saying "now charging" and few seconds after that error message "charging error".

Re: Is the CA-146C adapter trash?
 

I've not had any problems with mine... large and small round-plugged adapters from the mains, in my car and via USB have all successfully charged my phone - through the adapter.

Re: Is the CA-146C adapter trash?
 

I use mine every day since December, '09 with a wall charger and have had no problems. I have also used it with the Nokia car charger that I got either with the N800 or with the N800 Wayfinder mobile kit. I can't remember which right now.But again, no problems.

What I can't do is use a USB car charger to a Nokia USB to small pin adapter (CA-100), and then the CA-146C. Even a desktop USB connection doesn't always light up the N900...

With all that said, to answer the question about whether it is just a decorative item, no. It is useful in my "real word.

However, I have seen pictures of ones that have melted so I suspect there is a bad batch.

If you are having problems with it charging when using either a standard Nokia car or wall charger or you fell that is heating up excessively (warm is ok), My advice is to stop using it immediately.

Motorola and RocketFish make car chargers that fit the N900 and that I used, both work well, and both are about 2/3 the cost of a Nokia one and may be easier to find depending on your location.

The Motorola unit I use even has a push button LED flashlight on the USB end. The RocketFish is smaller and has a shorter, lighter cord that may put less strain on the N900's port.

Re: Is the CA-146C adapter trash?
 

Mine lasted 2 days on the road then stopped charging. Phone said it was charging, but battery level never rose. Noticed it didn't get very warm once it stopped working.

Binned it and bought a couple of incar chargers with the right plug. One 'Hama' branded, the other I dont remember, both work fine.

Re: Is the CA-146C adapter trash?
 

If you get a chance and can look up and post online the exact names/models of the chargers you have that do work, that would be much appreciated. Thank you.

Re: Is the CA-146C adapter trash?
 

Mine seems to work if the N900 is at half charge or better. If it has less than half charge it indicates "charging" even though it is not.

This is one of several ways the N900 has burned me badly. An important business call was prematurely terminated when the phone ran out of charge even though it had been "on charge" all night.

The N900 is a difficult child, you love and cherish but know it will let you down every so often.

Maybe my beloved N900 will come of age when Meego is ready.

Re: Is the CA-146C adapter trash?
 

Use the search Luke! ;)

http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=485357&postcount=4

The Covertec kit was like this one I think. It has nine different 'ends' for different devices, with a cable and mains and 12V supplies. It cost a packet, about 30euro IIRC, and they are too tight or stupid to include a small cloth bag so you dont lose half of it :mad:

I cant find any pics that look like the Hama one. I bought both in a french supermarket hoping one would work, after struggling to keep my phone charged for most of a 3000 mile drive.

Re: Is the CA-146C adapter trash?
 

I normally charge my N900 overnight using older Nokia charger ACP-12E(800mA output) via CA-146 adapter. Charging takes ~ 2.5 hours. I tried to use AC-3E(350mA) with the idea that charging will take longer and thus the battery will start draining later so I will get few more hours autonomy, but with that charger charging almost never ends. Phone stays connected to it like 8 hours with green LED light not appearing. And the same charger was filling up my E61(1500mAh battery) for 4.5 hours. CA-146 gets warm when charging N900 with AC-3E.

PS. I have noticed that charging with ACP-12E instead of default charger that came with N900 tops up battery closer to 100% before green light shows and charging stops.

Re: Is the CA-146C adapter trash?
 

I just had the phone plugged overnight to an Nokia thin-plug Nokia wall wart charger (890 mA) via the CA-146C, and the phone did stay charged through the night. So, I'm beginning to suspect that the old Insmat car charger and the CA-146C just don't like each other.

Update: I looked closer at the Insmat, and it says it only delivers 500 mA. This could well be what the problem is! I'll get a new 1000 mA MicroUSB charger for the car, let's see if it works any better.

Further update: Interesting, Nokia's own MicroUSB charger only delivers 550 mA. I now have a Nokia round plug charger DC-4, which is also supposed to deliver 890 mA, let's see how well that works in the car with the CA-146C and the N900.

Re: Is the CA-146C adapter trash?
 

Nokia has two different MicroUSB car chargers. The stronger one delivers 1200mA.

Fter ca-146c, dc-4 is probably down to 500mA :)

Re: Is the CA-146C adapter trash?
 

That would be the DC-10, a rather chunky thing. BTW, why does Nokia no longer have any technical info on products like this on their website?

Of course Nokia says nothing about the currents, though they do claim this combination works.

By the way, I tried to get a word to a friend-of-a-friend at the Nokia development department, asking that logging about this kind of events (for example, the dialogue between devices over the MicroUSB port) be made available to the user, so that cases where it doesn't work won't stay "this just doesn't work" type mysteries. For example, it turns out quite a lot of the "no name" brand USB charger devices return more or less random device types to the N900, which often will refuse to talk to them because of this.

Re: Is the CA-146C adapter trash?
 

V + mA

thats all you need, not spesific models etc....

e: I have 4 CA-146C -adapters, all work perfectly unless using those with 3V 300mA chargers that almost can charge nokia 1100 in 5 hours....

Re: Is the CA-146C adapter trash?
 

Yeah it's very annoying. You'd think they no longer want to sell stuff.

For the powerusers/developers out there:

/sys/class/i2c-adapter/i2c-1/1-0048/twl4030_usb/
contains some nodes. 'vbus' is probably 1 when there is voltage on the microusb port. linkstat seems to change whenever something is connected. I am guessing microamps_requested* either shows how much power n900 was given permission to draw, or how much it asked for..

/sys/devices/platform/musb_hdrc/

has the node 'charger', which is 1 whenever a charger that identifies itself with shorted d+/d- is connected. vbus is probably same as before. Other intersting nodes like 'mA' and 'connect'.

What's missing is sysnodes for the actual charger. I get the impression bme is very lazy about checking the charger status, not noticing if the charger aborted because of too crap power available on the musb port. It will also, of course, happily claim charging when charging from an otherwise healthy powersource that's unable to charge faster than n900 uses power.

Re: Is the CA-146C adapter trash?
 

This is a combination that seems to work, albeit not very quickly, and the CA-146C does get hot.

I've ordered this Car Cigarette Powered 1000mA USB Adapter/Charger (there is also a white version). "evilalex" dissected it and did measurements, coming to the conclusion it does do what was promised. It just seems to be sold out at the moment, they should have more in a few days.

Re: Is the CA-146C adapter trash?
 

I doubt CA-146C can pass through 1000mA...

I don't mean that it wont work, just that you'll see something like 300-500mA after it

Re: Is the CA-146C adapter trash?
 

Here is the point. So hop hop and check out what your charger outputs. I realized what was going on after I once tried to charge N900 with 1100's charger(AC-3E) which just isn't enough to any modern smartphone and CA-146C.

Re: Is the CA-146C adapter trash?
 

Indubitably, but the 1000 mA adapter I linked to above has an USB socket – I no longer would need the CA-146C :p