Device Charging 101: The Importance of Amps
I don’t know about your office, but at ours, there’s an unexplained phenomenon going on. It seems that when LocknChargers step away from their desks to grab a cup of coffee or attend a meeting, they return to find their USB charging cables and chargers have vanished in thin air!
We get it. When your phone battery runs low, and you’ve left your cable and power supply at home, it’s hard to avoid the temptation of heading to the closest office for a quick charge. From smartphones to laptops, USB charging is everywhere these days. There are even rechargeable dog collars! But just because there’s an abundance of USB chargers and power supplies, that doesn’t mean they’re one size fits all. You would never grab an iPad power supply to charge a Chromebook. We’re here to explain the importance of matching the amps and voltage of a power supply to the product you’re charging, and why you should take notice of them on the tech specs of your charging solution.
Amps Go with the Current
First, let’s start with what an amp actually is. We’re talking electricity and electrons here, not guitars and concerts. When creating an electric current, it’s useful to be able to measure it. Electrical current is measured in ampere or “amps.” The quantity of amps tells you how much electricity is being drawn through the power cable.
Working with Voltage
For most mobile devices, the voltage to recharge the battery is typically five volts of direct current, shown as 5V DC. It’s critical to match the voltage of a power supply or charger to the device you’re charging. If the device specifications read “5V DC,” then 5V DC must be applied to the product. Apply more volts such as 12V, and you run the risk of destroying the device.
If you apply too little, the device won’t work. Think of your device as a flashlight with brand new batteries. When you turn it on, the flashlight is nice and bright because the batteries are at the correct voltage. As time goes by, the batteries start to drain and the voltage drops. The flashlight dims as it’s operating at a lower voltage and eventually, it will stop working. So the volts must be correct for a product to function.
Power Supply Considerations
A power supply or charger supplies current. Devices like mobile phones, tablets and laptops consume current and will take as much as they need. So if a product requires 2.1 amps, then the power supply should supply 2.1 amps or more. If the power supply provides more than 2.1 amps, the product will still only take 2.1 amps. If the power supply only supplies 1 amp, the device may fail to charge, or it will charge very slowly.
While it’s essential to match the voltage between the charger and the device, it doesn’t matter if the power supply or charger can provide more current then the device requires. However, providing less current will prevent charging or slow it down. A poorly designed charger can also prevent charging or increase the time it takes to charge. That’s why you should only use reputable manufacturers.
REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE
An iPad requires a charger capable of supplying 2.1 amps at a voltage of no less than 4.97V at the charger connector on the cart. Failure to provide this amount of current at the right voltage will extend the amount of time required to charge the iPad battery. This detrimental effect can be easily demonstrated by charging an iPad with an iPhone charger. An iPhone charger can only supply the iPad with 1 amp, which means charging will be dramatically slower. In the real world, imagine a student, teacher, nurse or maintenance engineer checking out an iPad in the morning that was placed on charge the night before. Likely, the iPad will still not be fully charged. If iPads and tablets are uncharged, students can’t learn, nurses can’t communicate, and employees can’t perform their jobs.
How to Safely Charge Multiple Devices
When you’re tasked with simultaneously charging multiple devices at once, obviously borrowing a charging cord and power supply from a coworker isn’t an option. That’s why LocknCharge offers the remote control ECO Safe Charge™ Power Management System. This intelligent programmable power management unit can charge multiple laptops and power other electrical equipment safely.
In our high capacity charging stations and charging carts, the devices can be programmed for a certain amount of time. If the device has built-in software, it won’t overcharge. If the device just needs a quick pick me up in the middle of the day, it will charge just as fast in its cart. You control how long you want your devices charged, and ECO Safe Charge will supply as much power as the device needs, regardless of how much of a charge it currently has. Other great benefits of ECO Safe Charge:
- Reduces the possibility of blowing a circuit when a Cart or Station filled with devices is plugged into a single outlet.
- The ECO-TIMER™ functions can reduce your energy consumption, reduce carbon emissions, extend the life of device batteries and reduce your power bills.
Don’t neglect the importance of reading the product specs when purchasing charging solutions to ensure that you’re charging at the correct rate for the devices you’re using. If the spec sheet doesn’t show the charging current for the device you wish to charge, be sure to ask the manufacturer.
If secure and efficient charging is important to you, check out our FUYL Tower smart lockers. All compartments contain a power outlet and a 2.4 amp USB port so you can securely charge almost any device, including iPads, tablets, laptops, mobile phones, Chromebooks and more!
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Supporting Digital Transformation in the Workplace and Schools: Spiceworks Webinar
Webinar Overview
Leading up to the 2020 calendar year, many business and schools were humming along through a carefully planned digital transformation–but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the speed of that transformation was thrust into high gear. Most schools were forced to go 1:1 so that each student possesses a device for virtual learning. And with employees working remotely, in many cases a laptop or tablet has become a necessity for doing business
This webinar is to demonstrate how LocknCharge is leading and innovating by connecting our 20 years of hardware experience to our new LocknCharge Cloud platform. By combining world-class hardware with software, we are helping our customers execute their digital transformation projects.
The two products focused on during this webinar are the FUYL Tower Smart Lockers powered by LocknCharge Cloud and UVone, the most functional and unique device sanitization product on the market.
WATCH THE FULL WEBINAR HERE:
ABOUT THIS WEBINAR:
Introduction
Over the years, we’ve spent a significant amount of time with our customers in the early stages of their digital transformation projects, and we’ve learned why our products are an important part of their mobile device workflows:
- Our products can help simplify mobile device loaner and break/fix programs
- IT Departments appreciate the self-service check in/check out of a mobile device
- Our UV sanitization solution is quick, touchless and offers 360-degree disinfection, which is unmatched by any product in the market.
- We help automate workflows that were once paper based
- We see an improved end user experience which helps speed up the adoption and scale of mobile device programs
- Organizations trust LocknCharge to secure company-owned mobile devices
We’ve also learned that our customers embrace workplace mobilization for three key reasons:
- To improve their internal and external communications
- To process transactions faster, whether it be an order through a fast food drive through or a job order for a field engineer at an energy company
- To eliminate the expensive and tedious manual or paper processes
A significant takeaway is that each of these are goals can improve your company’s internal operations and customer interactions. This suggests the real reason why so many companies are mobilizing in every sector is that mobility benefits everyone.
A quick example of this is a customer of ours using iPads paired with charging stations to go paperless in the workplace. This is what Inflight Pilot Training out of Minneapolis did to cut back on 40,000 pages of flight manuals by combining our FUYL Smart Locker and iPads.
As the workplace continues to become more efficient, let’s now discuss and demonstrate one of the most recent trends of how to efficiently keep mobile devices clean throughout the day.
UVone
Our newest product, UVone, is a rapid, UV-C disinfection station for phones, tablets and other hand-held items. With nothing else like this on the market, UVone is unique because it is zero-touch, offers 360-degree disinfection and reduces bacteria by 99.999%* in just 30 seconds. Our original customer base for UVone was hospitals and clinics to help them transition away from cleaning mobile devices with wipes, which is time consuming and wasteful.
We’ve learned that the most common solution to disinfecting mobile devices is an alcohol-based wipe. These wipes are expensive when compared to UVone. A single wipe costs 4 to 5 cents, not to mention the downstream costs of increased use of gloves and the sheer amount of waste created by using wipes. UVone has 16 long-lasting, UV-C bulbs enclosed behind glass. When used in Manual Cycle Mode, customers can expect 25,000 hours of bulb life which is about 3M uses, equating to well below one penny per use. UVone’s 30 second disinfection, combined with a low cost per use, proves a significant return on investment.
As companies adapt and learn how to reopen, we see a new workflow in the digital transformation such as taking temperatures with automated kiosks when an employee arrives at the office, washing hands and prioritizing cleaning. The CDC recommends that you disinfect the surfaces that you are most frequently in contact with, which we are in constant contact with our mobile device surfaces.
UVone fits perfectly into this new clean workflow and we are seeing significant demand from companies looking to deploy UVone in their lobbies, hallways, locker rooms and break rooms.
Let’s take a look at how UVone works. First is a demonstration showing UVone versus wipes. You’ll see that UVone not only saves time but eliminates an incredible amount of waste.
In the 2nd demonstration, we demonstrate how simple UVone is to use.
And finally, the third video shows how the Denver Broncos are utilizing UVone as part of their new normal for their COVID 19 Back to Work Initiative.
As you can see, UVone can be used in a variety of settings–from checking in at a lobby to a healthcare environment. The internal cavity is 10.5” x 1.5” x 7.25”, and as you see it can fit an iPad or you can combine smaller devices to disinfect.
The UVone can sit on a counter, mount on a rolling stand, or wall mount with the VESA-compatible mounting kit that is included.
FUYL Tower
The FUYL Tower comes in two sizes, a 5 bay and a 15 bay. Each bay has one 2.4 amp USB port and one 110V main power outlet. Both products have an optional network kit that that allows you to add your own switch, so you can remotely image laptops inside each bay.
Let’s start off our Smart Locker tour with a 2-minute video explaining our system, then we’ll dive into two workflow demonstrations.
Workflow 1 – Break/Fix
Break/Fix is a workflow that many of you may be very familiar with. Take a moment and imagine you oversee your company’s Break/Fix Program, and you’re faced with this scenario:
It is 6:00 AM, and you get an urgent ServiceNow ticket. It comes from a Maintenance Team Lead in one of your manufacturing facilities two hours away. The maintenance laptop is down, and in order to keep the manufacturing facility up and running, you need to get a replacement laptop to the Maintenance Team Lead ASAP. Because you oversee your company’s Break/Fix Program, and it is Saturday morning, you get the privilege of driveing to your IT Break/Fix Depot, get a new laptop, image that laptop and then hop in your car for a two-hour drive to the manufacturing facility. You swap out the devices to ensure business is back up and running.
In this story, which we hear variations of on a consistent basis, we start to think of how our Smart Locker System can help reduce your companies lost productivity and decrease your labor costs.
Let’s show what it could look like if you had a FUYL Smart Locker with devices ready to go and how simple this Break/Fix workflow is with LocknCharge Cloud.
The first screen when logged into our portal is a dashboard which displays the stations you have connected to your account. Here is where you can organize the stations into groups if you like so that you can cascade Tower settings to multiple towers at one time to manage them more efficiently.
One part of our platform that is important in running a Break/Fix program is Users. This is where you’ll manage who has access to a station or a specific bay. As an example, someone with a broken device can exchange it for a new device inside the FUYL Smart Locker, which was assigned for him/her.
Workflow 2 – Daily Check Out/Check In
The City of Toronto Water Department needed a self-service, central point of distribution for their mobile workforce. They had two key requirements in getting their employees to really embrace their mobile device program.
- The devices need to be checked out with existing RFID badges
- They always needed the devices to be secured when not in use
In this workflow, each morning the device is loaded with the job orders for the day, the field engineer goes up to the FUYL Tower Smart Locker, taps their badge to check out an assigned device from a bay that they have been assigned to. The employee grabs the device, heads out to work, then checks it back into the same bay at the end of a shift. Our Cloud enables Tower Administrators to know who opened the door and when, significantly reducing the opportunity for missing devices and simplifying their workflow.
Our Cloud Software comes in 3 tiers – Admin, Managed and Integrated. Most of our customers today are choosing Managed or Integrated. Integrated allows for you to bring the power of FUYL Smart Lockers into your existing IT infrastructure through API and webhooks.
Schedule a Live Product Demo
Schedule a live video demo with a LocknCharge team member to get a closer look at how our products help make your life easier.
“*LocknCharge's kill rate claims are based on data conducted by an accredited, GLP compliant, BSL-2 laboratory. Kill rate claims for MRSA at a 5-log kill or 99.999% are based on final GLP testing. Kill rate claims for C. Diff are at a 4-log kill or 99.99% in 60 seconds and a 3-log kill or 99.9% in 30 seconds. C. Diff results are based on final GLP testing. Real world results may vary. Testing data available upon request.“
Exclusive offer mentioned during this recorded webinar is available only for those who attended the live Spiceworks webinar.
San Francisco USD Department of Technology Develops Plan for Safe and Successful Device Deployment in a COVID World
The Story
Like many school districts across the United States, the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) is starting the 2020-21 school year remotely. The Department of Technology (DoT) for the SFUSD has made it their mission to prepare nearly 5,000 educators (over 400 of whom are new to the district) in all aspects of a digital classroom–from both a hardware and software perspective. Every minute leading up to the school year was critical to their readiness, as students’ education continues to hang in the balance.
Challenges
Safety Concerns
In preparing for the new remote school year, the health and safety of SFUSD’s teachers and the DoT staff were a top priority. At the outset, every time a teacher needed a new device or to exchange an old one, they would stop by the Help Desk Office in-person and interact with an on premises team member. Although they did everything they could to avoid in-person contact, the sheer volume of traffic was putting everyone involved at increased risk.
Staffing Concerns
Each time this type of device support was needed, a team member had to be physically onsite. Triaging the issue would gobble up a minimum of 15 minutes from the Help Desk’s schedule–not to mention the growing wait time for a tech person to become available. Whether a teacher is new to the district or a current teacher’s device needs repair, it’s imperative that teachers can access a working device as quickly as possible.
Teacher Training Needs
In order for teachers to prepare for a new way of digital teaching, they needed more time and increased Help Desk support to learn new software and be trained on best practices for remote teaching. Constant interruptions due to device deployment and hardware issues took valuable time away from the DoT team’s ability prepare teachers for their new digital classroom.
Preparing for Success
In order to streamline these challenges, SFUSD strategically placed four LocknCharge FUYL Tower Smart Lockers at the district’s centrally-located main office where it could be accessed beyond normal office hours and even on weekends. Each bay is equipped with one ready-to-go device, which simplified the process of distributing and maintaining devices to 3 easy steps without the need for any face-to-face interaction or Help Desk interruption.
3 Easy Steps for Device Distribution
A teacher in need of a device notifies the Help Desk through its ticketing system.
Within 1 business day, a FUYL Tower bay is assigned to the teacher.
The teacher retrieves the device with their 6-digit PIN and is ready to go.
“[FUYL Towers] are keeping our mission-critical team members safe and free from public interactions while effectively deploying hundreds of educator devices.”
– David Malone, Executive Director of Technology and Innovation for San Francisco Unified School District
The Outcomes
An Uncertain Future
It’s impossible to know what the future of education will look like one month from now or even one year from now, which makes putting a back to school safety plan in place very difficult. Should schools switch to a hybrid model or an in-person model, the FUYL Tower is flexible enough to remain an extremely useful tool in any scenario:
Download a PDF of this Case Study
Additional Resources
Back To School Educational Technology Tips & Advice
What will schools look like a year from now? Or even next week? It's hard to keep track of technology solutions for your school. Get all the latest educational technology tips and advice for districts and educators here.
