Making an iPaq H5550 turn itself on programmatically? is it possible?

[doobee]

Just a question in regards to the possibility of enabling this ipaq to turn on after it has turned itself off because of low battery power?

(long version - we want to install a pda in a remote location for some data acquisition. this pda will have the following batteries:
1. normal pda battery (1250mAh?)
2. normal pda backup battery
3. battery in dual slot pcmcia expansion slot (not sure if this supplies power for the running of the pda or only the running of the expansion slot)
4. big chunky Pb 12V7.2AH/20HR battery (hopefully with enough juice to last about 5 days?)

5. + either a bigger big chunky Pb battery or constant power, depending on what we can get

So all these batteries will be required to have the pda powered on with a Daq program running and consuming power.

The problem will be when battery 5 depletes, then battery 4 depletes, then the pda batteries are so low that the pda will turn itself off but at this stage option 5 (be it a huge battery that will be replaced or the constant power comes back on) gets power and so all the batteries begin to recharge and at this stage we would want the pda to "wake up" or turn on because it senses that it is recharging and has enough power to come on.

end long version!)

so my question is: is there some program that monitors battery power and has the potential to turn the pda on??

thanks

[EnsignRam]

we want to install a pda in a remote location for some data acquisition

Am I the only one who finds this ultra suspicious??

[surur]

Instead of the rather Heath Robinson solution, why don't you just use a large lead acid battery and a voltage regulator to power the cradle continuously. Yes, you will be wasting the capacity o the built-in batteries, but you will have a much more reliable and simple system. This way you start with the large battery, and then move on down to the lower capacity battery on the device itself.

A typical 12V car battery has a 200 Ah capacity. Thats 200 000 mAh, 160 times the capacity of your PDA battery. You should be able to run for weeks of such a battery with the screen off.

Surur

[doobee]

we want to install a pda in a remote location for some data acquisition

Am I the only one who finds this ultra suspicious??

what's so ultra suspicious? when i say remote location i mean in an underground mine monitoring pressure!

[doobee]

hey Surur,
thanks for the suggestion, but the lead acid battery will be too heavy and there will be a possibility of it "gassing" - especially in an underground environment.

[surur]

There is of course sealed gel batteries that do not have this problem (for smaller capacity of course). How long do you need it to run?

Surur

[Jimmy Dodd]

so my question is: is there some program that monitors battery power and has the potential to turn the pda on??

thanks

If you are asking is it possible to write such an app, then the answer is yes, though not in the way you suggest. You can write a simple app that will wake up a PPC that is in a non-awake state. This is pretty much how alarms work. If it wakes up in a low-battery state it will simply go back to low power mode (i.e. sleep). If the batteries have kicked back in then you are back to where you started and your main app can resume working.

I do not think it's possible to monitor the battery level while in a sleep state, though. Almost everything (except for some timing info which allows alarms and scheduled programs to launch and thus wake up the device) is suspended while the device takes a nap.

If you are asking if there is an app like that already available, then I can't help you with that.