FONA

[hioeral]

2 questions

1. The FONA breakout board can charge a battery (through JST 2-pin). Can the JST 2-pin be connected to Vio and GND? (so the battery are connected to Vio and Gnd, but are ready to be charged also)
So whenever i want to charge the battery, i just plug in the USB cable? Or do they have to be separated and whenever i want to
charge the battery, i need to disconnect the battery from Vio and connect it to JST 2-pin?


2. You are telling that it needs a 2G simcard. Here in Europe, it is rather common with SIMcards that are compatible with both 2G and 3G (and sometimes even 4g)
Does the simcard have to be ONLY 2G or does the module work if the simcard is supporting 2G and 3G?

[adafruit_support]

2 questions1. The FONA breakout board can charge a battery (through JST 2-pin). Can the JST 2-pin be connected to Vio and GND? (so the battery are connected to Vio and Gnd, but are ready to be charged also)
So whenever i want to charge the battery, i just plug in the USB cable? Or do they have to be separated and whenever i want to
charge the battery, i need to disconnect the battery from Vio and connect it to JST 2-pin?

the microUSB is connect to the battery through a charger chip, you do not need to do anything to begin charging - just plug in the microUSB.

2. You are telling that it needs a 2G simcard. Here in Europe, it is rather common with SIMcards that are compatible with both 2G and 3G (and sometimes even 4g)
Does the simcard have to be ONLY 2G or does the module work if the simcard is supporting 2G and 3G?

the SIM card can be 2g/3g/4g - the only requirement is that is must be compatible with 2g. this is very common in europe, not as much in the USA (at&t is retiring out their 2g, t-mobile has not and not announced anything regarding 2g retirement).

[hioeral]

Yes thank you for the answer, But i mean, can the "Bat" pin be connected to "Vio" pin while i am charging the battery? (i.e. can the the battery be charged at the same time as the module is having 5 volt connectet to the Vio pin).

thanks

[Lift]

In regards to your first question I want to clear something up for anyone that comes across this. The vio pin is for logic only, is not connected to the battery, and without powering the jst2 or bat pin as well, the fona wont work. Typically you would use one of adafruits 500mah lipos to power the fona via jst2, then run your 5v from your arduino to power the logic via vio, and plug in your regulated 5v via usb. I belive you could also charge the bat by connecting it to gnd and bat, but it's not necessary for your described purpose.

Also this thing draws more current that you might expect, highly recommend running the fona off its own lipo bat and not trying to run it off a buck converter or the like. I burned out two fonas before deciding to bite the bullet and use the battery. That being said other people have had better results than I had, just my two cents.