magnetic dock recognition?

[rverginia]

Awesome - I stand corrected.

 

[jaja714]

I had a feeling it wasn't magnetic because of my earlier testing (above).

Does anyone know anything else about how these "smart cables" work. They seem to be able to direct RMHD to go into "car dock" or "home dock". Without a "smart cable", it is set to "no dock".

So, if the extra pin means "car dock" and the lack of pin means "no dock", how does RMHD know when it is in the "home dock"?

 

[droidxep]

I wish I could find the article I read that in so you could get the exact description but I can't find it. I've read so many articles on this phone over the past year that I've lost track, been following it since the Droid fighter rumor came out way back when

 

[droidxep]

I had a feeling it wasn't magnetic because of my earlier testing (above).

Does anyone know anything else about how these "smart cables" work. They seem to be able to direct RMHD to go into "car dock" or "home dock". Without a "smart cable", it is set to "no dock".

So, if the extra pin means "car dock" and the lack of pin means "no dock", how does RMHD know when it is in the "home dock"?

I didn't use the smart charger with the desk cradle because the cord wasnt long enough so I never even knew it kicked in the desk dock, I just used smart actions, that gives you the ability to use a better third market dock anyways

 

[droidxep]

I didn't use the smart charger with the desk cradle because the cord wasnt long enough so I never even knew it kicked in the desk dock, I just used smart actions, that gives you the ability to use a better third market dock anyways

I would imagine it uses the same pin method but the pin is probably in a slightly different location, don't quote me on that though

 

[jaja714]

As I said earlier in the post, SmartActions is not sufficient when you want to choose between two docks, home and car. SmartActions with a GPS rule wouldn't work either because my car is in the garage two floors below the bedroom.

Regarding these "pins", it seems that the micro-usb spec (Micro-USB connector pinout and wiring @ pinoutsguide.com) shows that there are 5 pins. It appears as if pin 1 is for charging, pin 2 is data in, pin 3 is data out, pin 5 is a ground. This leaves pin 4 which is documented differently than the rest as "Mode Detect. May be N/C, GND or used as an attached device presence indicator".

I'm not too good with electronics but I wonder why pin 4 works when that car dock is plugged into the phone but the other end of the car dock is not plugged into anything?

I think we need someone with some electrical knowledge as to how this all works.

Right now, I'm interested because there don't appear to be any reputable dealers out there selling smart cables separately and the ones that do have no reviews or detailed specs. For example, how do I know if I have the cable with pin 4 set to home dock or car dock? How do I know I'm not just getting a random charger cable?

 

[droidxep]

As I said earlier in the post, SmartActions is not sufficient when you want to choose between two docks, home and car. SmartActions with a GPS rule wouldn't work either because my car is in the garage two floors below the bedroom.

Regarding these "pins", it seems that the micro-usb spec (Micro-USB connector pinout and wiring @ pinoutsguide.com) shows that there are 5 pins. It appears as if pin 1 is for charging, pin 2 is data in, pin 3 is data out, pin 5 is a ground. This leaves pin 4 which is documented differently than the rest as "Mode Detect. May be N/C, GND or used as an attached device presence indicator".

I'm not too good with electronics but I wonder why pin 4 works when that car dock is plugged into the phone but the other end of the car dock is not plugged into anything?

I think we need someone with some electrical knowledge as to how this all works.

Right now, I'm interested because there don't appear to be any reputable dealers out there selling smart cables separately and the ones that do have no reviews or detailed specs. For example, how do I know if I have the cable with pin 4 set to home dock or car dock? How do I know I'm not just getting a random charger cable?

Smart actions is sufficient if you set it right, GPS location, on charger, and certain time, works like a charm. Have it set to bring up desk mode, cut off ringer, send auto text, and start playing chanting monks. For your car just set it for once it connects to your cars Bluetooth. Not sure what your garage location has to do with the problem. Please let me know if I'm missing something that is causing an issue

The charger not being plugged in has nothing to do with car mode coming in, its only the plug in the port, doesn't matter if its getting power or not. How it differentiates between car and desk I don't know, I don't know for sure if the desk cradle even pulls up the home dock. What I remember reading is it didn't, the "smart" description was just that it stopped charging once it was full. Can anybody confirm for sure that the floating desk cradle kicks in the home dock?

 

[lovemyram4x4]

The extra pin has nothing to do with dock modes, it's for bypassing the charge circuit.

The car dock doesn't need to be plugged into a charger to trigger car mode because the phone's USB port has power.

The dock modes are trigger electronically via USB & each dock has it's own ID so you can set different default modes for each dock.

Another option to trigger dock modes is to use NFC tags, but it's easier just to buy one of these

Sent from my DROID RAZR HD using Xparent Red Tapatalk 2

 

[jaja714]

The garage GPS location is the same as the bedroom GPS location. Thus, I cannot get in the car, and have SmartActions automatically start the car dock based solely on GPS location. Yes, once I drive away a bit, it will start car dock but I would generally prefer setting up music and navigation before I drive while the car is parked.

If I mix time into the equation as one of the rules (after midnight do home dock), then the car dock will not start when I am driving after midnight. I would prefer not to be limited in this way.

Finally, I'd prefer not to install a 3rd party car dock app when there is probably one built into RMHD. Unfortunately, I can't see the one built into RMHD as an available app to run.

 

[droidxep]

The garage GPS location is the same as the bedroom GPS location. Thus, I cannot get in the car, and have SmartActions automatically start the car dock based solely on GPS location. Yes, once I drive away a bit, it will start car dock but I would generally prefer setting up music and navigation before I drive while the car is parked.

If I mix time into the equation as one of the rules (after midnight do home dock), then the car dock will not start when I am driving after midnight. I would prefer not to be limited in this way.

Finally, I'd prefer not to install a 3rd party car dock app when there is probably one built into RMHD. Unfortunately, I can't see the one built into RMHD as an available app to run.

I'm assuming since your playing music that your car has Bluetooth, is that correct?

Try car dashboard I personally feel like it us much better than the stock car mode

 

[jaja714]

no bluetooth ... yet

 

[droidxep]

no bluetooth ... yet

Do you play music just through phone speakers or are you plugged in to your stereo receiver?

 

[jaja714]

phone speakers actually ... I don't do music too much so this is mostly for navigation

 

[droidxep]

phone speakers actually ... I don't do music too much so this is mostly for navigation

In that case I got nothing for car mode other than the car dock. Smart actions will work well for bedside mode until a better desk dock comes out though

 

[kokishin]

Regarding these "pins", it seems that the micro-usb spec (Micro-USB connector pinout and wiring @ pinoutsguide.com) shows that there are 5 pins. It appears as if pin 1 is for charging, pin 2 is data in, pin 3 is data out, pin 5 is a ground. This leaves pin 4 which is documented differently than the rest as "Mode Detect. May be N/C, GND or used as an attached device presence indicator".

I'm not too good with electronics but I wonder why pin 4 works when that car dock is plugged into the phone but the other end of the car dock is not plugged into anything?

I think we need someone with some electrical knowledge as to how this all works.

Typically speaking, pin 4 in the phone would be tied to a pullup resistor. When plugging in the micro-USB cable into the phone, pin 4 of the cable would either be grounded pulling the node at the pullup resistor in the phone to ground (0 state) or pin 4 of the cable would be a No Connect keeping the node at the pullup resistor of the phone pulled high (1 state). The 0 or 1 state will indicate to the phone what kind of charger it is plugged into. Obviously, it takes two different pin 4 cable configurations to make this work.

Hope that helps.