Nexus 7

[curry67]

anyone had a hard time keeping there nexus 7 charged when its plugged in. my car charges cant maintain the battery and it just dies out.

 

[Larrylu]

anyone had a hard time keeping there nexus 7 charged when its plugged in. my car charges cant maintain the battery and it just dies out.

Yep that's me. I struggled a long time with that problem but I whipped it. I tried probably 6 or 8 things and some of the things I did are probably not the magic one that finally worked. So I will give you my best guesses first.

First make sure you have at least a 2.1 amp USB car charger.  Nexus has a system for charging the tablet that uses a house charger that shorts out the data pins in the USB cable to put the tablet into fast charge mode. Your car 2.1 amp adaptor may or may not do that. Since your tablet is not keeping up ...probably not.  You can get one that does or you can try to get a fast charge USB cable for your car that has the data pins shorted to fool the Nexus into fast charge mode. You also need to keep track of what is running in the background on the tablet when you put it to sleep. Nothing running in the background but Torque.  Make sure wifi on the tablet is off, make sure Torque is set to sleep on power off and your tablet is set to go to sleep within 5 or 10 seconds of power off. My Nexus will lose 2 to 3 percent overnight. Half an hour of driving can bring it back up. If you only drive 5 miles per day I don't think you can keep up with a 3% drop every night. I don't drive a ton over the road.  I do mostly short haul suburban driving and now I have no trouble staying charged.

If those suggestions do not work I can give you a couple more that are not as painless to try. Good luck and let me know how you are doing!

 

[Larrylu]

One more thing. I'm using the MX Bluetooth adaptor. It turns itself off. I don't think the cheapies do. I don't know but if the Bluetooth is still on, it draws current and maybe it somehow affects the other sleeping stuff.  So if you have a cheapie unplug it to be safe.

 

[curry67]

I use it for navigation for my job. I use to be able to tether threw bluetooth but the s4 doesnt have it and my s3 did

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[curry67]

I know the 2.1 amp is a must I need to find a data pin shorted cable I heard theres adapters

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[Josephm]

One more thing. I'm using the MX Bluetooth adaptor. It turns itself off. I don't think the cheapies do. I don't know but if the Bluetooth is still on, it draws current and maybe it somehow affects the other sleeping stuff.  So if you have a cheapie unplug it to be safe.

For the record, the ELM 327 does turn it self off, when the car is off.

 

[curry67]

im getting one of those bluetooth adapters in a week or 2. I just know almost everyone uses nexus 7 so i was hoping there was a special oem charger or something. i know about the 2.1 amp and the data pin thing just seems so inconsistent.

 

[bigmoneycloser]

I have not had any charging issues with my nexus and the mx obd.
I have a dedicated USB port for it(that might be why) but I also have it set up to turn everything off as soon as power is cut...



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[Larrylu]

im getting one of those bluetooth adapters in a week or 2. I just know almost everyone uses nexus 7 so i was hoping there was a special oem charger or something. i know about the 2.1 amp and the data pin thing just seems so inconsistent.

Once you get it figured out and set up the inconsistency goes away. No one had more charging issues than I did and I tried a lot of fixes. Now that I have everything set up good, it's consistently charged and ready to go. One of my more extreme efforts was to "root" the Nexus and run a custom kernel that offered a higher charge rate. I don't really think that was necessary because a lot of people managed without doing that. My guess is you won't need to try that....but it's an option if you get desperate.

 

[dalum]

You don't need a custom kernel now heh.  However I do recommend rooting the device so you can use super user to control stuff better.

The 2 main issues are...

1: High amp charging.  Make sure your nexus is charging at the full current.

2: Reducing battery drain when off.  This is the fun part!  Using tasker and a rooted nexus I have a "on" and "off" profile.  When power is applied via not wireless it wakes up, bypasses key guard, turns on wifi, turns on blue tooth, and launches waze.  When I turn off the ignition tasker kills waze fully, turns off all the radios, then goes to sleep.

 

[curry67]

Yeah I was running a custom rom before now in in the normal kitkat one

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