This post is an update of the second part of my Moto server series: https://lemmy.zip/post/72142441

Rumor has it that keeping an 8-year-old phone permanently plugged in with its equally ancient Li-ion battery might not be the greatest idea ever conceived.

Some even claimed that a phone needs a battery to work.

Very negative people.

Anyway, I removed it.

Pettyl did not care.

nginx: UP PHP-FPM: UP MariaDB: UP WordPress: UP cloudflared: UP sshd: UP

The battery is currently sitting next to the phone, contributing absolutely nothing to the project.

Pettyl is now running entirely from USB power, at around 37°C, while continuing to serve the website like this is completely normal.

There is, however, one tiny detail the haters may enjoy:

It can’t boot without the battery.

So the official Pettyl disaster recovery procedure is now:

  1. Insert battery
  2. Boot Pettyl
  3. Connect USB power
  4. Remove battery
  5. Pretend this is enterprise infrastructure

The battery is no longer a battery.

It is the starter motor.

I see no problems with this architecture.

Anyway, Part 3 is going great.

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[–] 1 point 5 days ago

This is so cool you've actually inspired me to try out the same thing. Ive just finished setting up port forwarding and got the nginx page, but this has been fun as my first time hosting a website

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  • [–] 64 points 1 week ago (10 children)

    Since when does a phone need a battery to run? It needs power, doesn’t matter where the power comes from.

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  • [–] [S] 96 points 1 week ago

    well ACKSHUALLY 🤓☝️

    Unfortunately Pettyl is stupid enough to need the battery to boot, but smart enough to forget about it immediately afterwards.

    I don’t make the rules, I just host WordPress on an 8-year-old Motorola.

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  • [–] 58 points 1 week ago (7 children)

    Since their burst power consumption started using more current than a capacitor in the charging circuitry could provide

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  • [–] 6 points 1 week ago

    It's something about how the charging circuitry is constructed. I've asked a handful of electrical engineers about it but they've never given me a good answer. My guess is that it's easier/cheaper to design and build a circuit that only powers the phone off the battery, and only uses DC to charge the battery.

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  • [–] 52 points 1 week ago (3 children)

    Remember the days when hou could just pop the back off and take the battery out?

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  • [–] 8 points 1 week ago

    That's where I am today with my Fairphone.

    I honestly held on to my old Nokia, replacing batteries and cases until Fairphone came along and then I jumped from 90's tech to modern day.

    0-->100% in 10 seconds (with a 2nd battery)

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    [–] 36 points 1 week ago (23 children)

    Damn, I wish they still made phones with a removable battery

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  • [–] 33 points 1 week ago (11 children)

    I used to keep a charged spare on me. And this was back when a phones battery life was like 3-7 days.

    Stop making phones thinner God dammit. I don't want a thinner phone. I want longer battery life and a removable battery so I can fucking double the shitty longer battery life I get.

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    [–] 25 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 child)

    Anything made to be run from battery can work fine without one. Worst case scenario requires you to spoof some I²C communication to properly emulate a battery, but most devices and batteries are far dumber than that. DC is DC, and sometimes you just need to graft something on top for the other pins.

    Source: My old laptops charging circuit failed, so I soldered the charger onto the battery pins instead. Then I replaced the actual battery with an Adafruit Itsybitsy 32u4 (because that what I happened to have available) that emulated the battery status of "Charging, nothing to see here, move along" and sent it via I²C

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    [–] 23 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    My old Galaxy S5 would work without the battery, including bootup. So it's not entirely unexpected that other phones could also do so. I would say I can't imagine who would take the time out out of their day to just talk out their ass and claim something like this wouldn't work without trying it first. Except then I remember this is the internet, and people do that all the time.

    Regardless, good on you for making this all work!

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  • [–] [S] 16 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    Hahaha, thank you for defending me! 😄

    Just to clarify though, the “they said it couldn’t be done” part was mostly me being ironic and unnecessarily dramatic for the post lol. The comments on this whole project have actually been overwhelmingly positive and helpful.

    People here are the reason I even tried some of this stuff in the first place.

    But I genuinely appreciate you having my back. And the S5 being able to cold boot without a battery is really interesting — Pettyl unfortunately needs its battery as a starter motor. 😂

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  • [–] 1 point 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

    The HTC Aria at least could also cold boot from USB power. The first method developed for bootloader unlocking on it required an SD card with the unlocking software be inserted at a particular time during the boot process. And the SD card slot was under the battery!

    Edit: now I have to double check myself; signing back into some old posts maybe I'm not remembering the process correctly. It was maybe 16 years ago, and I'm getting old! :-)

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  • [–] 21 points 1 week ago

    When the battery in my wall mounted android tablet swelled i had to add a 10k resistor to the sense line, inject the 5V directly into the battery port and add a few capacitors to get it to work. But at least it won't cause a fire now.

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  • [–] 20 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (5 children)

    Now plug the phone into a UPS so if the power goes out you're good for awhile.

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  • [–] [S] 54 points 1 week ago (4 children)

    This is obviously ridiculous.

    So I’ll do it.

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  • [–] 16 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    Nice.

    There is often a check for battery that is effectively a check of resistance between sense and ground. Looks like that battery is labelled, you might be able to bodge a resistor between sense and ground on the phone and get it to boot without the battery?

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  • [–] [S] 15 points 1 week ago (3 children)

    Update! Apparently removing the battery also removes half the CPU lol.

    I’ll keep you posted!

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  • [–] 11 points 1 week ago* (2 children)

    Usually phones have 3 pins on the back for the battery, one of them - usually the one at the center - reads the battery resistance, so if you add a resistor between that pin and another pin, it will fool the phone to belive it has a beattery

    Edit: spelling

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  • [–] 11 points 1 week ago (8 children)

    What did you put in place of the battery? nothing or a cap? i tried this with a moto g6 but there is not enough power delivered through its own usb port so i have to use a 5volt source+capacitor connected to the bms i saved from the battery.

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  • [–] [S] 30 points 1 week ago (7 children)

    I did not need to fake battery presence, just needed the battery as a starter, once the phone is booted just removed the battery.

    Although the real test is yet to come, I have to leave it like this for a day or two, to see if it powers off when CPU spikes…

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  • [–] 26 points 1 week ago* (4 children)

    Ghetto engineering is best engineering.

    I love this. Deeply.

    Moto uber alles.

    PS: My daily driver phone is from 2019 and it's going great (Samsung Galaxy A20...I know, I know...but I lobotomized it). When it dies...I will grab an equivalent 2019 Moto.

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  • [–] [S] 7 points 1 week ago (3 children)

    Lol thank you so much, and I absolutely love what you said: “MOTO ÜBER ALLES”

    I want to use it on the website instead of the boring copyright text lol, if it’s cool with you, I’ll even credit you!

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  • [–] 11 points 1 week ago (8 children)

    Perhaps replace its aging battery with a new one. Then you have a built in UPS for ideal disaster recovery

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  • [–] [S] 6 points 1 week ago* (7 children)

    Nah, an actual UPS with 7kg batteries is way cooler.

    But I really appreciate the feedback!

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  • [–] 10 points 1 week ago

    DO NOT skip step 5. It is VERY IMPORTANT.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 week ago (3 children)

    Well... I was obviously wrong. Sorry.

    Don't know if my knowledge was just outdated or plain wrong from the start, but good on you for still trying and respect for pulling that off.

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  • [–] [S] 8 points 1 week ago

    You are absolutely fine!

    People here, including you, have been very respectful and thoughtful, and I am all for feedback.

    I don’t have the knowledge of the whole universe, do I? So please, by all means, I want to hear your critiques, it makes the project better and I learn along the way!

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    [–] 9 points 1 week ago (1 child)
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    [–] 6 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    I just have to say, I really enjoy your writing style. Fun project, great post!

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    [–] 6 points 1 week ago

    Well you better go catch it!

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