Category Archives: battery

Innovating A Backyard Solar Battery System

Posted on July 19, 2017 by Fernando Gomes

Ever on the lookout for creative applications for tech, [Andres Leon] built a solar powered battery system to keep his Christmas lights shining. It worked, but — pushing for innovation — it is now capable of so much more.

The shorthand of this system is two, 100 amp-hour, deep-cycle AGM batteries charged by four, 100 W solar panels mounted on an adjustable angle wood frame. Once back at the drawing board, however, [Leon] wanted to be able track real-time statistics of power collected, stored and discharged, and the ability to control it remotely. So, he introduced a Raspberry Pi running …read more

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Posted in Arduino Hacks, ATmega168, battery, control, deep cycle, panel, power, Raspberry Pi, remote, solar, solar hacks | Leave a comment

Rescuing A Proprietary Battery Pack With A Cell From A Camera

Posted on July 11, 2017 by Fernando Gomes

If you have an older handheld battery-powered device, you may be fighting a diminishing battery capacity as its lithium-ion cells reach the end of their life. And if you are like [Foxx D’Gamma], whose device is an Alinco DJ-C7 handheld transceiver, you face the complete lack of availability of replacement battery packs. All is not lost though, because as he explains in the video below the break, he noticed that a digital camera battery uses a very similar-sized cell, and was able to graft the camera battery into the shell of the Alinco pack.

Cracking open the Alinco pack, he …read more

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Posted in Alinco, battery, battery pack, Lithium-ion battery, radio hacks | Leave a comment

DIY USB Power Bank

Posted on May 21, 2017 by Fernando Gomes

USB power banks give your phone some extra juice on the go. You can find them in all shapes and sizes from various retailers, but why not build your own?

[Kim] has a walkthrough on how to do just that. This DIY USB Power Bank packs 18650 battery cells and a power management board into a 3D printed case. The four cells provide 16,000 mAh, which should give you a few charges. The end product looks pretty good, and comes in a bit cheaper than buying a power bank of similar capacity.

The power management hardware being used here appears …read more

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Posted in 18650, 3d printed, battery, peripherals hacks, power bank | Leave a comment

Cordless Water Pump!

Posted on April 2, 2017 by Fernando Gomes

A water pump is one of those items that are uncommonly used, but invaluable when needed. Rarer still are cordless versions that can be deployed at speed. Enter [DIY King 00], who has shared his build of a cordless water pump!

The pump uses an 18 volt brushed motor and is powered by an AEG 18V LiPo battery. That’s the same battery as the rest of [DIY King]’s power tools, making it convenient to use. UPVC pipe was used for the impeller — with a pipe end cap for a housing. A window of plexiglass to view the pump in …read more

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Posted in battery, cordless, diy, how-to, motor, power, pump, tool, tool hacks, water | Leave a comment

Morbid Battery Uses Blood Electrolyte

Posted on March 19, 2017 by Fernando Gomes

Building a battery out of common household products is actually pretty simple. All that is required is two dissimilar metals and some sort of electrolyte to facility the transfer of charge. A popular grade school science experiment demonstrates this fairly well by using copper and zinc plates set inside a potato or a lemon. Almost anything can be used as the charge transfer medium, as [dmitry] demonstrates by creating a rather macabre battery using his own blood.

The battery was part of an art and science exhibition but it probably wouldn’t be sustainable on a large scale, as it took …read more

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Posted in art, battery, blood, Chemistry, chemistry hacks, electrolyte | Leave a comment

Solid State Battery from the Man Who Brought Us Lithium Ion

Posted on March 6, 2017 by Fernando Gomes

Who is [John Goodenough]? He’s 94, so he’s been around long enough that you ought to know him. He was one of the co-inventors of the lithium-ion battery. Think about how much that battery has changed electronics. [Goodenough] along with [Maria Helena Braga] may have come up with that battery’s successor: the solid state battery. There’s a paper available that is free, but requires registration. If you don’t want to register, you can read the news release from the University of Texas with no trouble.

Keywords used to describe the new battery are low-cost, noncombustible, long cycle life, high energy …read more

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Posted in battery, Braga, goodenough, john goodenough, Lithium-ion battery, Maria Helena Braga, news, solid-state battery, university of texas | Leave a comment

An Electronic 90V Anode Battery

Posted on February 20, 2017 by Fernando Gomes

One of the miracle technological gadgets of the 1950s and 1960s was the transistor radio. Something that can be had for a few dollars today, but which in its day represented the last word in futuristic sophistication. Of course, it’s worth remembering that portable radios were nothing new when the transistor appeared. There had been tube radios in small attaché cases, but they had never really caught the imagination in the same way. They were bulky, like all tube radios they had to warm up, and they required a pair of hefty batteries to work.

If you have a portable …read more

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Posted in anode battery, battery, classic hacks, inverter, tube radio | Leave a comment

The Most Sensational Calipers On The Planet!

Posted on February 11, 2017 by Fernando Gomes

Everyone here probably has a pair of cheap Chinese calipers kicking around the workbench. This means everyone here also knows how quickly the batteries in these handy little tools die. [Thosnbn] also noticed this, but instead of simply complaining and wishing the problem would go away, he decided to do something about it. He built a battery pack for his calipers, giving this tool a two year battery life.

The idea for this build came after [thosnbn]  completely destroyed a pair of these cheap calipers. At the time, the fix was to tape a AA battery to the tool, and …read more

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Posted in battery, calipers, digital calipers, fusion360, tool hacks | Leave a comment

Keep an Old Real Time Clock Module Ticking

Posted on January 7, 2017 by Fernando Gomes

Sometimes we run into real problems restoring old machines. [RedruM69] recently ran into a system with a dead Real Time Clock (RTC) module. These modules were used on computers and all sorts of other equipment, storing time, date, and 100 or so bytes of battery backed SRAM (before the days of cheap, plentiful flash memory). Often an external coin cell would supply power to the module. In some cases though, cost savings would take over, and the battery would be incorporated into the module. Such is the case with many Dallas Semiconductor models, and the benchmarq bq3287 module [RedruM69] was …read more

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Posted in battery, classic hacks, dallas, real time clock, retrocomuting, rtc | Leave a comment

B Battery Takes a 9V Cell

Posted on December 23, 2016 by Fernando Gomes

Old American radios (and we mean really old ones) took several kinds of batteries. The A battery powered the filaments (generally 1.5V at a high current draw). The B battery powered the plate (much lower current, but a higher voltage–typically 90V). In Britain these were the LT (low tension) and HT (high tension) batteries. If you want to rebuild and operate old radios, you have to come up with a way to generate that B voltage.

Most people opt to use an AC supply. You can daisy-chain a bunch of 9V batteries, but that really ruins the asthetics of the …read more

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Posted in b, b+ battery, battery, bplus, radio, radio hacks, vintage | Leave a comment