By "prizes" I actually meant "prize", there's just one. It's a wireless charger & cover for the Palm Pre called Touchstone, as most Pre owners are probably aware of. A few details and some pictures (inside & outside) can be found at iFixit.com
Base:
Receiver:
I'm trying to use this thing to transfer power in another project of mine and the problem I ran into is the power saving feature whereas the base only pushes current if the phone is actually on it. Otherwise, it just sends a "presence signal" about once per second. I tried connecting various loads to the output of the secondary coil (the phone part) but I could only enter charging mode occasionally, unreproducibly. I did this by connecting two led's in anti-parallel (I couldn't replicate that when shooting the video) but as soon as I take them away (it gets hot quickly), the whole thing goes back to "normal". While in continuous mode, it puts out exactly 5V.
Here's a short 20 sec video about it. Notice the faint buzz in the background that I'm picking up with that headphone, it goes along with the LED blink.
I do not have a Palm Pre! Therefore I'm not able to check what's going on between the phone and the receiver, if anything. If you have one and are willing to give it a try, I can send you the charger which you are free to keep if you find out how to trigger charging without the phone. If you already have a Touchstone and you can solve the "mystery", I will just send you the cash equivalent of a new charger as a token of my appreciation
THANKS to everyone chiming in or just looking!
Base:
I'm trying to use this thing to transfer power in another project of mine and the problem I ran into is the power saving feature whereas the base only pushes current if the phone is actually on it. Otherwise, it just sends a "presence signal" about once per second. I tried connecting various loads to the output of the secondary coil (the phone part) but I could only enter charging mode occasionally, unreproducibly. I did this by connecting two led's in anti-parallel (I couldn't replicate that when shooting the video) but as soon as I take them away (it gets hot quickly), the whole thing goes back to "normal". While in continuous mode, it puts out exactly 5V.
Here's a short 20 sec video about it. Notice the faint buzz in the background that I'm picking up with that headphone, it goes along with the LED blink.
I do not have a Palm Pre! Therefore I'm not able to check what's going on between the phone and the receiver, if anything. If you have one and are willing to give it a try, I can send you the charger which you are free to keep if you find out how to trigger charging without the phone. If you already have a Touchstone and you can solve the "mystery", I will just send you the cash equivalent of a new charger as a token of my appreciation
THANKS to everyone chiming in or just looking!
