iOS 9.x Text Message on all phones sharing iCloud account

I've been experimenting in the iOS 9.3 Beta program to see if it fixes some of the phone hang up button and Bluetooth hand off issues I was having with a iPhone 5 on 9.2.1.  During one of the updates, it asked for iCloud signin again and my wife concurrently received a message asking to allow text messages from me.  She said yes, and thereafter both our phones were receiving text messages from each others phone.

It may be obvious to some, but I'll share because it drove us both nuts for about a week.

Go to Settings>>Messages>>Send&Receive and check which emails/phone numbers on the AppleID or iCloud account should receive messages to each device.  Somehow, all 6 were checked on mine and my number was checked on my wife's phone.

NOTE: We haven't gone through setup of the Family Sharing program yet because it requires a credit card, so far we've been living in the AppStore world with redeemed change jar gift cards.

What it should look like on a phone with only your number checked.

The other annoyance was that the it changed the contact info associated with with phone, as viewed through Phone>>Contacts, it listed my wife's name with my number.  I needed to change this back by going to Settings>>Mail, Contacts, and Calendars>>CONTACTS-My Info.

Nabi2 - Red & Green Blinky/No Blinky

No good deed goes unpunished...

Last fall I happen to find at my local used electronics store 3 Nabi2 and 3 NabiJr learning tablet computers for $240, less than half price new.  We had been talking about getting them for my son's school last year and just never happened.  I jumped on the deal, picked up some spare power cords from Amazon, and brought them into school.

Since I first got them, the charging for the Nabi2 (a 7" tablet) has been spotty, I ended up having to return one "OEM" charging cable to Amazon because it wouldn't charge the tablets.  A couple weeks ago one of the teachers complained the tablet wasn't charging at all, so it became my next victim.

The tablets use a bizarre and non-standard 0.7x2.6mm barrel plug, the first problem.  I tried again to charge it at home and no charge light would come on and the battery was dead, wouldn't turn on more than to show a empty battery icon.  The case opens with four little screws on the back, at each corner behind the red bumps on front, and a little ginger prying (there are 3-4 snap closures per edge).  Once inside, I found the culprit, the charging jack was actually cracked.

Inside the Nabi2 with new jack charging.

The Nabi charges at 2A, but still uses a USB style power controller that detects if the voltage drops below the 5% spec of 5V.  I cut apart the "OEM" cable and found a rather cheap plug that was poorly soldered, and 26AWG wire, which at 3 feet long and 2A, has about a 0.5VDC drop.  So unless you're using a really hot 5.25V USB charger (which isn't completely unusual, most are 5.1-5.2 to account for voltage drop under load), it likely wasn't going to work and the tablet would just blink red-green to indicate charging error.  I verified this as a cause by hooking it up to my bench power supply to which I can limit the output current-voltage, 5V and 1A limit wouldn't charge and 4.7V and 2A wouldn't charge either.  Luckily, I picked up a 5VDC, 2A Raspberry Pi power supply with 20AWG wire and some new plugs, and wired that up for a dedicated charger.

The parts are available at:

http://www.mcmelectronics.com/product/27-9848 for the jacks and

http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/cui-inc/PP-012/CP-012-ND/408474 for the plugs

A word of caution, unsoldering the old plug is a pain, partly because of the flimsy tabs on the power jack and also because they glued the jack onto the board with some red adhesive during factory assembly.  I actually damaged the positive landing pad and had to scrape of some of the green conformal coating adjacent to solder on a jumper for the new jack.

Power jack next to the microUSB slot