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  • Re: Discharging a wireless USB keyboard for long-term storage

    From Chris Green@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, June 27, 2026 06:14:09
    Mr. Man-wai Chang <toylet.toylet@gmail.com> wrote:

    What's the fastest way to discharge the internal rechargeable battery in
    a wireless USB keyboard?

    Why would you want to discharge the battery? For battery life it's
    best to leave it charged. As regards risk I think it's trivial,
    problems only tend to occur when charging or discharging the battery.

    --
    Chris Green
    ú

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Mr. Man-wai Chang@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, June 27, 2026 12:21:20
    What's the fastest way to discharge the internal rechargeable battery in
    a wireless USB keyboard?

    The white keyboard in question has a type-C USB port for connection to a
    PC, and a USB dongle of course. It also has a switch to select wired (mis-lablled as "OFF"?) and wirelss mode (mis-labelled as "ON"?).

    BTW, the keyboard in question has LEDs under all keycaps. You can choose
    light shows using hot keys.

    --

    @~@ Simplicity is Beauty! Remain silent! Drink, Blink, Stretch!
    / v \ May the Force and farces be with you! Live long and prosper!!
    /( _ )\ https://sites.google.com/site/changmw/
    ^ ^ https://github.com/changmw/changmw


    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From David Taylor@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, June 27, 2026 06:42:56
    On 27/06/2026 05:21, Mr. Man-wai Chang wrote:
    What's the fastest way to discharge the internal rechargeable battery in
    a wireless USB keyboard?

    I would just leave it in its "last used" state.

    The last thing you want to do is to store it fully discharged - depending on the
    battery design, it may never recover from a full discharge.

    Cheers,
    David
    --
    David
    Web: https://www.satsignal.eu

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From R.Wieser@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, June 27, 2026 07:46:09
    Mr. Man-wai Chang,

    What's the fastest way to discharge the internal rechargeable battery
    in a wireless USB keyboard?

    Why would you want/need to do that ? What do you think (c|w)ould go wrong
    if you didn't ?

    But the fastest way would be to open the keyboard, take some electrical wire and connect the positive and negative battery terminals. Depending on the kind of battery it might cause sparking and a glowing, *very* hot battery though. It might even explode. But hey, its fast. :-)

    It also has a switch to select wired (mis-lablled as "OFF"?) and wirelss mode (mis-labelled as "ON"?).

    You mean when its "on" the wireless mode is active - regardles of if the (PC
    / USB) connector is plugged in and its recharging the battery - and when its "off" the wireless doesn't work - even though it could still charge the battery - and its just a standard PC / USB keyboard ?

    What do you think that the switches labeling should have said instead ?

    Regards,
    Rudy Wieser



    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Mr. Man-wai Chang@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, June 27, 2026 13:57:44
    On 6/27/2026 1:46 PM, R.Wieser wrote:

    But the fastest way would be to open the keyboard, take some electrical wire and connect the positive and negative battery terminals. Depending on the kind of battery it might cause sparking and a glowing, *very* hot battery though. It might even explode. But hey, its fast. :-)

    Can you do it via its Type-C USB port?

    --

    @~@ Simplicity is Beauty! Remain silent! Drink, Blink, Stretch!
    / v \ May the Force and farces be with you! Live long and prosper!!
    /( _ )\ https://sites.google.com/site/changmw/
    ^ ^ https://github.com/changmw/changmw

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From R.Wieser@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, June 27, 2026 09:09:41
    Mr. Man-wai Chang,

    Can you do it via its Type-C USB port?

    Definitily not.

    There is a bit of electronics between the cables power-lines and the
    battery - to make sure that the battery doesn't load to fast and not gets over/under charged (both can kill a battery rather quickly), and also to
    make sure that when the connector pins *accidentily* gets short-circuited
    you don't end up with a laptop-bag or backpack bursting into flames (or just fries the keyboards electronics).

    And for the record : you should *never* short-circuit a battery (or any power-source for that matter).

    But as asked, why do you think you should discharge the keyboards battery to begin with ?

    Regards,
    Rudy Wieser



    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)