I have two wall chargers with USB output ports. The 1st one works fine when charging my Sansa Fuze 4G. The player behaves just like when charging the Fuze on my computer USB port. I can play tunes while it’s charging, etc.
The second one will display the lightening bolt for a second or so then the lightening bolt disappears and the battery shows to have full charge. Also, the screen says “writing” for a few seconds, then says “Connected” and I cannot interact with the screen (play tunes, etc). The 2nd wall charger works fine when charging other devices.
Just drug out the voltmeter. Measuring between each of the lines and the shielding I get:
2nd wall charger - Red 5.2V, White (floating), Green 0.3V, Black 0.0V (white is essentially 0.0)
Computer USB - Red 4.9V, White 0.0V, Green 0.0V, Black 0.0V.
I expected that the black lead and the shielding would be tied together electrically but they were not. The plug metal cases on each end of the cable are only connected to the cable shielding. The red lead and the black lead are the two outer most pins in the plug.
I have two wall chargers with USB output ports. The 1st one works fine when charging my Sansa Fuze 4G. The player behaves just like when charging the Fuze on my computer USB port. I can play tunes while it’s charging, etc.
The second one will display the lightening bolt for a second or so then the lightening bolt disappears and the battery shows to have full charge. Also, the screen says “writing” for a few seconds, then says “Connected” and I cannot interact with the screen (play tunes, etc). The 2nd wall charger works fine when charging other devices.
Just drug out the voltmeter. Measuring between each of the lines and the shielding I get:
2nd wall charger - Red 5.2V, White (floating), Green 0.3V, Black 0.0V (white is essentially 0.0)
Computer USB - Red 4.9V, White 0.0V, Green 0.0V, Black 0.0V.
I expected that the black lead and the shielding would be tied together electrically but they were not. The plug metal cases on each end of the cable are only connected to the cable shielding. The red lead and the black lead are the two outer most pins in the plug.
Any ideas?
Mike
IT sounds like the player thinks the second charger is a computer.
I’ve never designed circuitry for USB, but the voltage on data lines on the first charger is in the margin zone between “1” and “0” values.
The computer side normally holds those lines at zero with a pulldown resistor, 15k ohms. Devices pull one line high with a 1.5k ohm resistor (which one depends on wether the device is high or low speed).
Guessing from afar… the Sansa decides it is connected to a comptuer if it succeeds in pulling a data line high. Other devices that work on the charger may wait to get further into a protocol to declare connection, or aren’t intended to stop working while connected.
For grins I pulled the 2nd charger apart and noticed that the -Data line (no.2) (closest to the red Vcc line) was floating (not connected to anything). Line 3 (+Data) was forced to 0 by a soldered connection to pin 4 (Gnd). So, I soldered pin 2 to pin 3 & 4, thus forcing it to zero. I verified the change with a voltmeter before testing. Did not cure the problem.
I’m stumped !
Ok, just did one more thing. I pulled the shielding to 0. Now, pins 2, 3, 4, and the shielding are at 0 volts. Pin 1 is at 5.1 volts. Nada, no change??? It still caused the Fuze to go into connect mode??
FYI - Charger #1, the one that works, is made by Griffin. The other is a $2.86 Ebay special. Got 5 of them. None work.
I’m thinking it’s critical that pin 2 and 3 have to be at about 2.5 Volts. My observations anyway.
As I can see on the case if these wall charger are not made for Sansa MP3 player these may work or work properly, it may provide you different output or same output voltage but the thing here is that the compatiblity of the charger to the device, I may also set an example about IPOD you can try different charger for it that fit but it may work or not properly; that is why device like sansa have made for Sansa accessories like cables, charger, car charger so it will be compatible with the specification of the device, but a part from this it seems that you are a good technician and I am amazed that you know a lot of these things, not all can notice this but the output voltage charge for the MP3 is 5volts.
My next thing to try is to find a 2.5 zener diode so I can force pins 2 and 3 to 2.5 volts. I don’t think I have any and I don’t think RS has anything but 5V zeners.
I’m retired and have a degree in Electrical Engineering. Got lots of time to putter around and I like challenges - the smaller the better! :) My 35 year job didn’t involve much electronics but I have done lots of work on computers on my own time starting with designing and building hardward and writing firmware for the Atari 400/800 computers. Still have 3 of them in my attic with all the game cartridges. I actually wrote and sold geophysicial trace processing software for the Atari. My big seller though was a 16Kbyte add-on memory board. Sold hundreds of them. They were about 1" tall and 3" wide with 8-16kbit chips onboard. That increased the memory to a whopping 64Kbytes!
This is my first time with an mp3 player. The Fuze is an amazing little device. To date, I’ve only used cd’s for most audio but I can see that their time is almost up. I think the slotplayer is an interesting new deveopment - maybe a sign of the future.
I think the slotplayer is an interesting new deveopment - maybe a sign of the future.
God . . . I hope not!
While other manufacturers are upgrading their model line to feature the latest cutting-edge technology (touch-screens, bue-tooth, enhanced video capibilities, gapless playback, etc.) SanDisk instead seems to be going backwards ($20 throw-away players with virtually no controls or options).
Not particurarly referring to the slot music player as I was to the slot! i.e. - putting the contents of an ‘album’ onto a micro SD card. Shortly, if not already, it will be cheaper to put music onto a ‘X’ Gig card than onto a plastic disk.
I believe the days of CD’s and DVD’s are soon to pass. I wish my sound system and my car radio had a card slot and could play various types of audio files. Yeah, I know, I can plug my audio cable into them now, but i’d rather for them to accept a card. By the time I buy my next car, they probably will.
Kinda like movies I made of our kids 40 years ago. Had them on 8mm tape for years then had the tapes converted to VHS. Now i’m in the process of having them converted to digital and put on DVD. Soon, I’ll have to put them on a SD card. 20 years from now my kids will probably put them onto a crystal cube!
ps - my 1st harddisk drive had 32K storage and that was only 25 years ago.
Not particurarly referring to the slot music player as I was to the slot! i.e. - putting the contents of an ‘album’ onto a micro SD card. Shortly, if not already, it will be cheaper to put music onto a ‘X’ Gig card than onto a plastic disk.
Ahhh . . . now that’s something completely different then. Yes, I agree that these teeny-tiny memory cards will most likely be used more extensively in the future. Sandisk already has the ‘next-gen’ in the works, SDXC format which will offer up to 2TB (that’s terra-bytes ) of storage capacity! Too bad the players of today won’t be able to utilize it.
I still maintain that the SlotMusic & SlotRadio players are disposable child’s toys though. But that’s just my opinion.
Not particurarly referring to the slot music player as I was to the slot! i.e. - putting the contents of an ‘album’ onto a micro SD card. Shortly, if not already, it will be cheaper to put music onto a ‘X’ Gig card than onto a plastic disk.
Ahhh . . . now that’s something completely different then. Yes, I agree that these teeny-tiny memory cards will most likely be used more extensively in the future. Sandisk already has the ‘next-gen’ in the works, SDXC format which will offer up to 2TB (that’s terra-bytes ) of storage capacity! Too bad the players of today won’t be able to utilize it.
I still maintain that the SlotMusic & SlotRadio players are disposable children’s toys though. But that’s just my opinion.
Yeah, the only reason I’d buy the slotmusic player is for my mom (97 yrs old). IF it had the capability of random play. I’d put several hundred of her favorite county tunes on it for her. I think she could master the on/off switch and the volume control. With 200 + tunes on it she’d never know they were repeating.
I also might buy them for my grandchildren.
What is amazing is that with current technology you probably could digitally store every tune that has ever been recorded on a few dozen terabytes of storage. I’m seeing 4 TB USB storage boxes on sale now for $200+.
Another thing that intrigues me is in letting the owner put a ‘control’ file on the card. Set up all the options they want for that card or playlist in something like a ‘*.inf’ file. The player would then change the default options to what the owner wants for that type of music. (Randon=yes, loop=yes, balance=+3, EQ=-2 +3 +2 0 0 0, etc)
If I live as long as my mom I may see some of this come to pass!
I believe the days of CD’s and DVD’s are soon to pass. I wish my sound system and my car radio had a card slot and could play various types of audio files. Yeah, I know, I can plug my audio cable into them now, but i’d rather for them to accept a card. By the time I buy my next car, they probably will.
A friend of mine just got one for not too much money. It can connect to and control her Ipod in the glove box (the advantage of being #1), or plug a USB thumbdrive directly in the faceplate.
ps - my 1st harddisk drive had 32K storage and that was only 25 years ago.
??? 25 years ago you could get 1 megabyte (unformatted) on a floppy disk. Even 30 years back I never saw a hard disk under 10 MB.
I believe the days of CD’s and DVD’s are soon to pass. I wish my sound system and my car radio had a card slot and could play various types of audio files. Yeah, I know, I can plug my audio cable into them now, but i’d rather for them to accept a card. By the time I buy my next car, they probably will.
A friend of mine just got one for not too much money. It can connect to and control her Ipod in the glove box (the advantage of being #1), or plug a USB thumbdrive directly in the faceplate.
ps - my 1st harddisk drive had 32K storage and that was only 25 years ago.
??? 25 years ago you could get 1 megabyte (unformatted) on a floppy disk. Even 30 years back I never saw a hard disk under 10 MB.
I ran a 1st generation retail PC store in that era, and the smallest one I ever saw was 5 MB
Ok, it was a drive for the Atari 400 computer. When was that? I guess around 1977? That was like 32 years ago. On reflection, it may have been the 32K floppy drive. Thank you for pointing out my weakness in cognitive skills. I hope you never get the chance to experience such.
@mikeinkaty wrote:
Ok, it was a drive for the Atari 400 computer. When was that? I guess around 1977? That was like 32 years ago. On reflection, it may have been the 32K floppy drive. Thank you for pointing out my weakness in cognitive skills. I hope you never get the chance to experience such.
No offense intended on my part…
Ha Ha… If I’m not wrong at least once a day…I know something is terribly wrong…
