Using M6\M3 While Charging from USB

If you do not have a mains charger and want to use your player while it is charging, buy a second USB cable and remove the two center pins and your player will continue to work as normal while charging.

Can anyone provide a technical explination for this? What stops the player from working when its charging normally, and what do those 2 pins do...or NOT do when they are removed? You've got me all curious now.

Nevermind....decided to google and answer my own question....so here it is for anyone else who is curious:

http://pinouts.ru/Slots/USB_pinout.shtml

Pin Name Cable color Description
1 VCC Red +5 VDC
2 D- White Data -
3 D+ Green Data +
4 GND Black Ground

Pretty obvious from that how this trick works....very nifty. Cheers madman.

You can also notice that the 2 external pins (VCC and GND) are a bit longer than the data pins, so if you don't want to destroy a cable, you can also plug the cable halfway, so that only the long pins make contact.
This is kind of tricky and not at all stable, but at least no need for sacrifice...

you can also plug in your regular USB cable half way.. the player will charge but stay functional

I guess what Job is saying there, is kind of the same as taking out the 2 centre pins. If you plug it in halfway, then the middle 2 isn't stuck inside the USB port :P

Made it myself charger: My old Siemens CX65 charger... I just took a mini USB connector, dismantled it and soldered it to the charger cable. Works just fine... The charger has 5V and 420mA

i use a cheap - and very tiny powered USB hub
Works like a charm

I put a small strip of paper over the two middle pins so i can push it all the way in and still use the player when charging. And then use the same cable to load data later

i'm having a difficultly to remove the 2 centre pins at the large end, is it possible to remove some pins at the little end for the same purpose
thanks

@foreman: Yes, this should do the the job too. After all a mini-usb port is like a standard usb port, but smaller.

Originally Posted by lOtR

@foreman: Yes, this should do the the job too. After all a mini-usb port is like a standard usb port, but smaller.

thank u for the reply

what i mean is :
i want to remove some pins at the small end of the standard usb cable to get the same purpose since i have difficultly to remove centre pins at the large end
best

Tried the charging and playing simultaneously "feature" by pushing the larger end only half-way into the laptop USB port - VERY cool! Now I can listen to my music and charge at the same time!

Originally Posted by Remo

I put a small strip of paper over the two middle pins so i can push it all the way in and still use the player when charging. And then use the same cable to load data later

Thanks for the great tip! I used a small piece of gaffer's (duct) tape in a variation on this technique. Don't have to sacrifice a cable (cheap though they may be) and I have enough USB ports on my PC that this is a semi-permanent set-up. The battery should last much longer this way, though the charging meter may die sooner than later.

very nice! it works like a charm. does anyone know if theres a possibility of the paper getting burnt or starting a fire?

i doubt 5v charger system reaches burning point for the paper.. but if you use it on a high place on a very stormy day it might get struck by lightning :D

Guys, what if I want to use my player while it's plugged into a car charger?

bump guys please help

Originally Posted by nuron

Guys, what if I want to use my player while it's plugged into a car charger?

I think it should be o.k., provided your car charger is a functional USB car charger. I'm guessing since I don't have an M6 in my possession so I can't try it out myself. Please bear with me on the explanation, it gets a little (just a little though :D) technical.

Basically the reason the "half-way-in" method works is that the USB host or hub controller inside the computer or your USB hub performs a device sensing handshaking when the M6 is connected to the USB port of your computer or the hub. Now with the data pins (D+ and D-, the center pins in the USB connector) floated (meaning the pins are not connected to a power source), by either inserting only half-way or taking out the pins completely, the USB interface in the M6 no longer detects the handshaking and therefore is not aware that it's connected to a host (computer) or hub. Hence it doesn't go into the USB mode of operation.

But the charging circuit/chip only cares about whether there is proper voltage on the VDD (power pin) on the connector, so the charging circuit will kick in and start charging.

I would imagine your USB car charger probably already has the data pins floated (disconnected) since there is no USB host or hub controller in the car charger. So I don't see any reason it shouldn't work.