Forum: General Topics
Forums / General Topics / Manual upload and disconnection?
| Subject: | Manual upload and disconnection? | |
rjshv 18:09 | When we do an Enable Upload, the phone connects to the network using GPRS and stays connected.Today I was running low on battery and keeping my phone's GPRS always on drained it out halfway thru the journey. Is there a way to make the phone disconnect from the GPRS network after upload is over? | |
Stephen 17:49 Location: Phone Model: | Were you using the Live tracking, or just uploading the track to the site at the end of the journey? There's currently no way to automatically disconnect (I'll think about adding this though), but you can tell when the main track upload has finished since the 'Sent' part of the Sent/Received/Failed counter (Text/General page) will stop incrementing so quickly. When sending the track the Sent and Received items will alternately increment quite quickly, whereas in normal operation this will only happen every 30 seconds or so (or as defined by the Settings/Transmit Interval value). Hope that makes sense! Cheers Stephen | |
ChrisM 8:17 Location: Phone Model: | It's not a function I use at the moment, because of my data charges, but if you have 'Live Tracking' enabled, does it stay connected as much as possible, or does it make a connection, send the position, close the connection, wait 30s, make a connection, send the position, close the connection, wait 30s... Just curious. Regards, Chris. | |
Stephen 10:15 Location: Phone Model: | Hi Chris, Currently TMJ tries to keep the connection open continuously whilst upload is enabled, however during the 'waiting interval' since no data is being sent/received it shouldn't affect data charges (assuming you're on pay-per-kB rather than pay-per-second, though this seems to be pretty standard now). Cheers, Stephen | |
ChrisM 14:24 Location: Phone Model: | Not worried about the data charges, just thinking about what the OP was saying about the permanent connection draining his battery. Would there be problems/overheads if you kept bringing the connection up and down? I guess at the very least, it would mean more data transfer to open/close the connection each time, therefore more expensive for anyone that paid for the Kb (rather than an inclusive data bundle). I rarely use data on my phone as it is a bit expensive on my current tarrif, so I've got no idea how much of a drain on the battery it is. If it is a heavy load on the battery, it might be worth giving people the option to either maintain the connection or keep opening and closing it, so that they can balance cost against battery life. If you're interested, I'll 'ask a friend' and let you know what the effect on the battery is likely to be... Cheers, Chris. | |
Stephen 18:03 Location: Phone Model: | I guess there may be a benefit in allowing the connection to close if the Transmit Interval has been set to quite a long duration (eg 5 minutes or more), although I don't think most people have it set this long - the default is 30 seconds. As you suggest, each time the connection is dropped and has to be reconnected this can take a while (sometimes 10-15 seconds on my phone), and possibly uses more battery power than just leaving it open. I'm no expert on how the mobile network usage affects battery life (by the way, any 'inside' information would be interesting to hear), but as a very crude experiment I tried placing my phone by my PC speakers. You know how you sometimes get that digital buzzing sound when making a call or sending/receiving a text, well surely that is a rough sign that the phone is transmitting back to the mobile base station and (probably) working its hardest in terms of battery drain. So I tried Enabling Upload in TMJ - it initially connected and sent 4 or 5 transmissions of the current track, buzzing loudly all the time. But immediately that this was done and it sat on the back burner, the buzzing totally stopped, only to re-appear briefly every 30 seconds as it sends the short burst containing the current live location. Admittedly its not exactly a scientific test, but it does maybe suggest that leaving the connection open doesn't put a massive strain on the battery...!? Having said that I might add in an automatic reconnection if the tranmit interval is set to more than, say 120 seconds. Shouldn't do any harm anyway! Cheers, Stephen | |
rjshv 4:57 | After reading through the posts I sort of figured why the battery drain happens. Like you guys said, if I was constantly in places with good signal strength, the battery usage is low. But when travelling in a car at high speeds subject to frequent signal loss and low signal, then the phone uses up battery for reconnection. I still think an option to manually upload and disconnect would add a lot convenience. | |
Stephen 10:04 Location: Phone Model: | I have actually been looking into your suggestion of automatically disconnecting once the track has been sent - will probably include it in the next version... Incidentally, someone recently suggested to me that disabling 3G on the phone could improve the battery life. TMJ only needs a very basic data connection so it could be worth a try... (I guess at least if you're driving you can leave the phone constantly charging via the cigarette lighter) | |
markpenders 17:45 Location: Phone Model: | Disabling 3G definitely saves your battery, although batteries are improving. However ... when you are on a 3G network (at least on my blackberry), you can have multiple data connections. So I let TMJ run in the background and can read my mail and do other stuff as well. Mark. | |
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