The under-$10 items from Banggood and other marketers are adequate to tell if y our charge power supply can handle 100/500/1000/2000 mA currents, and if the voltage is correct. Some low-end USB sources are low-powered, some are not, and all the USB chargeables are different; sometimes it's nice to match the best charge source with the tablet that needs it. It won't tell you power, exactly, just monitors average current and voltage, but that's a good start.
Beware, type C connections, as well as mini-B, micro-B, B, A, OTG and USB SuperSpeed, may not all work with any particular box; only the power current and voltage are fully compatible, not the connectors and data-transfer particulars.
I've been using it for a while now and it's quite good though it's not enclosed in a case and the buttons (which are bare microswitches) are mounted sideways AND recessed so they're not that easy to press. Also, you cannot view all the data on one screen. Most notably to view the elapsed charging time you need several button presses to switch screens and then several more button presses to return to the main screen. The features are nice but I wish I had gotten the 3B model which includes Bluetooth capabilities. This would have allowed me to use the included software on my laptop. Anyway, I noticed the biggest effect on the charging current was the type of cord I was using. I have a couple of skinny micro USB cords and one thicker cord. The thicker cord will register 3 times as much current as the thinner ones and that's why the charging times were not consistent.
I performed a test last night using the thicker cord with the Kindle registering 15% remaining charge. After two hours, the numbers were very consistent. The intervals of my readings varied from 5 to 30 minutes but the percent increase charge per minute varied only slightly with the average being 2.38 minutes per one percent increase in charge. The charging current was maximum during the first 15 minutes starting at
1.15A and dropping to 1.09A after 15 minutes. Then for the next 35 minutes, the charging current was constant at 0.86A. The percentage charge was now at 37%. Then for the next 60 minutes, the current dropped to 0.67A and the percentage charge was 60%. At this point, the power was accidentally interrupted and when I plugged it back in again, the charging current jumped back up to over 1A and the tester's clock reset to 0. I felt at this point I had enough data to get an idea of how things were progressing so I stopped monitoring the charging current.
In summary, it's a nice tool to use but the owner's manual...
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...takes some time to absorb as it's apparently been translated from another language. Maybe one of you could explain the importance (or unimportance) in knowing the voltages for the DP+ and DP- (data lines
+/-)? Speaking of data lines, I noticed some of my cords will not transfer data and can only be used for charging. The thicker cord I was using does have the ability to transfer data so I'm wondering if there's some kind of communication going on between the charger and the Kindle that affects the charging rate.
You have to install National Instruments VISA package, Microsoft Studio, Labview elements yada yada and 2Meg worth of licensing agreements to use a $22 USB power test dongle?
Depending on how you look at it, it's either the deal of the century or some kind of OS invasion.
a) Does it charge the device? - Yes. Stop there. b) Does it charge the device? - No. Not at all? Replace. Yes but exceedingly slowly. c) Exceedingly slowly - Will another charger charge the device? Yes - dispose of first charger. No - suspect the device.
This is not rocket science, nor is it worth any sort of brain damage, deep analysis or heroic measures. But, then this venue exists to provide overly complex solutions to simple problems after extensive discussions of picayune and irrelevant issues.
473MB ZIP file which un-compresses to 570MB. 386 files,
The reason for the absurdly large file size is that the AC3 PC Software v1.3 appears twice in the ZIP archive. Once as uncompressed files and again as a RAR archive.
For those interested, I copied the device and PC software instructions to:
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About 2MBytes total.
Note that all this ignores the original problem of charging the Kindle, which I guessed was because the 5V charger was rated at less than the required 2 Amps. It also appears that there's a USB cable problem which might be attributable to excessively high DC resistance or possibly the lack of data wires needed to negotiate a USB charging protocol.
I'll play with this when time permits. Busy with firewood and dump runs for a few days.
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