Hi

 

Recently bought an XTRONS Chinese made Android head unit.

 

It works surprisingly well, but is by far at its best with a permanent internet connection.

 

I was using my phone as mobile hotspot, but it's annoying remembering to turn it on every time I get in the car.

 

Because of that I decided to buy the XTRONS 3g dongle and an EE PAYG data sim and this has created a new problem.

 

It only takes a second for the stereo to boot up, but it takes about 20-30 secs for the WiFi dongle to boot once it gets power. The usb ports on the back of the XTRONS only give power when the ignition is on.

 

This is annoying as I want to get in the car, start my music streaming and get navigation started with traffic info, but I have to wait for ages before I can set it up and set off.

 

I'm trying to work round this problem. I've thought about adding a permanently powered USB port but I'm concerned about battery drain. Any feedback about that would be appreciated (maybe a USB modem draws so little it would be okay?)

 

Anyone got any other clever ideas?

I would test teh wifi dongle power usage and leave it on for quite some time to see if it has a sleep mode. Can't see it using much.

Thanks.

 

Forgive the ignorance, how would I find out how much it's drawing? Do I need a multimeter?

 

If I get some sort of hardwire permanent live -> usb transformer kit to hide behind the dash, I assume that may add its own draw / load also?

It does actually have a sleep mode in the settings of the 3g dongle - not sure what that means... What does it do to save power? How does it know to come out of sleep again?

You can attach it to the computer USB to check. Sleep mode switches off all fuctions except one - the one that looks out for any activity to wake it up. It will wake up far faster than a cold restart

To check power draw of any USB device connected to your computer:

• In the Start menu search field, type: Device Manager and press the Enter key
• In the Device Manager window, expand the node Universal Serial Bus controllers
• Double-click on one of the USB Root Hub entries.
• Click the Power tab. 

This tab displays a listing of attached USB devices, how much power they use and how much is available. 
 

 

 

Edited 23 September, 20178 yr by S00perb

Thats windows7 btw - no idea on other OS, but most probably similar

Ok thanks - I'm Linux user but will try and find the info / get an app to do it.

5 minutes ago, naxtek said:

Ok thanks - I'm Linux user but will try and find the info / get an app to do it.

Under Linux, you can see this in the tree of lsusb -v.

Specifically, call lsusb -v |grep 'Bus\|MaxPower' to avoid excessive output.

1. Debian / Ubuntu:

   Use sudo aptitude install usbutils to obtain this tool.

2. Redhat / Fedora:

   Use sudo yum install usbutils to obtain this tool.