1) Time/Date 3:56PM 5/3/10
2) Response time
3) Product MC9090
4) OS Version WM5 BSP39
5) Clarify Case # 2129567 Bill Rutter from Lucas Systems has the following question: Our client has the 9090 clean boot (i.e., StartUpdLdr.exe, PKGS.LST, CleanPS.bin) installed at the root level of a storage card in all their devices. They don't like having to find AC power when they clean boot (cradles are limited in their warehouse) We provided ULDRSETTINGS.CFG containing the following three lines [ULDR] AllowUpdateOnBattery = 1 BatteryUpdateLevel = 70 This allowed them to clean boot without AC power as long as the battery charge is greater than 70% Recently, they tried to lower BatteryUpdateLevel to 50, but devices still seem to require AC power upon clean boots with battery charges in the 50% to 70% range. Is it possible to lower BatteryUpdateLevel below 70% in ULDRSETTINGS.CFG or is there some other minimum battery charge setting for a clean boot?
5 Replies
Thanks George. Does this also apply to the MC3190 running WM6?
This is an Update Loader requirement, so ANY terminal using Update Loader would work the same.
Actually, care must be taken when considering the power being applied to the terminal during an Update. ANY LOSS OF POWER WILL TURN A TERMINAL INTO A DOORSTOP. I get very nervous when I hear of customers looking to push the limits. In this case, as the threshold would go below 70% the chance of power failure during update increases. The argument from the customer's side could easily be "50% power should give us many hours of battery life and the update will only take a couple of minutes". That statement is very true when the battery is fairly new. But, what about older batteries? The discharge curves change as a battery ages. So, instead of a flat current supply between let's say 90% and 30% voltage, the current supply will have a negative slope or the knee at 30% will move upward to 40% or even higher. Now, the terminal is treading in an area where any current surge (maybe from the WAN radio or the backlight) will cause the a voltage dip below the minimum threshold allowed for a flash write. This dip could be only a few microseconds wide, but would be enough to ruin the update. I agree that 70% is probably conservative, but I'd rather be conservative and assure all terminals are updated properly rather than start being more aggressive with the value and find that terminals are starting to fail to update.
Is it possible to lower BatteryUpdateLevel below 70% in ULDRSETTINGS.CFG or is there some other minimum battery charge setting for a clean boot?
70% is the current minimum battery voltage allowed. If you set it below, then it defaults to 70.