Category Archives: battery

Need a Night-Light?

Posted on September 20, 2017 by Fernando Gomes

[Scott] created an LED candle in preparation for the big mac daddy storm (storms?) coming through.  Like millions of other people in Florida, he was stuck at home with his roommates when an oncoming hurricane headed their way.  Worrying about blundering about in the dark when the power inevitably went out, they set off to gather up all of the candles they had lying around.  Realizing the monstrous pile of candles and matches looked more and more like a death wish, the decision was made to create a makeshift light out of what components they had on hand.  Now, not …read more

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Posted in aa battery, battery, diy, diy lightbulb, emergency power, led, led hacks, lifehacks, survival | Leave a comment

A Battery-Tab Welder with Real Control Issues

Posted on September 16, 2017 by Fernando Gomes

Spot welding should easier than it looks. After all, it’s just a lot of current in a short time through a small space. But it’s the control that can make the difference between consistently high-quality welds and poor performance, or maybe even a fire.

Control is where [WeAreTheWatt]’s next-level battery tab spot welder shines. The fact that there’s not a microwave oven transformer to be seen is a benefit to anyone sheepish about the usual mains-powered spot welders we usually see, even those designed with safety in mind. [WeAreTheWatt] chose to power his spot welder from a high-capacity RC battery …read more

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Posted in battery, lipo, microcontroller, spot welder, tool hacks, welder, welding | Leave a comment

This Electric Longboard Collapses for Air Travel

Posted on September 8, 2017 by Fernando Gomes

How do you manage to get an electric off-road longboard past TSA and onto an international flight? Simple — make it a collapsible longboard that fits into a carry-on bag.

The mechanical and electrical feats accomplished by [transistor-man] may not be the most impressive parts of this hack. We’re pretty impressed by the build, starting as it did with the big knobby tires and front truck from an unused mountain board and the hub motor from a hoverboard, turning this into a trike. The incredible shrinking chassis comes courtesy of a couple of stout drawer slides and cam locks to …read more

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Posted in air travel, battery, hub motor, lithium ion, longboard, off road, transportation hacks, travel, TSA | Leave a comment

Blast Your Battery’s Sulphates, Is It Worth It?

Posted on August 26, 2017 by Fernando Gomes

When a friend finds her caravan’s deep-cycle battery manager has expired over the summer, and her holiday home on wheels is without its lighting and water pump, what can you do? Faced with a dead battery with a low terminal voltage in your workshop, check its electrolyte level, hook it up to a constant current supply set at a few hundred mA, and leave it for a few days to slowly bring it up before giving it a proper charge. It probably won’t help her much beyond the outing immediately in hand, but it’s better than nothing.

A lot of …read more

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Posted in battery, chemistry hacks, lead acid battery, lead-acid, sealed lead acid | Leave a comment

Possibly the Most Up-Cycled, Hacked E-Bike You’ll See All Week

Posted on August 24, 2017 by Fernando Gomes

When it comes to bringing an idea to life it’s best to have both a sense of purpose, and an eagerness to apply whatever is on hand in order to get results. YouTube’s favorite Ukrainians [KREOSAN] are chock full of both in their journey to create this incredible DIY e-bike using an angle grinder with a friction interface to the rear wheel, and a horrifying battery pack made of cells salvaged from what the subtitles describe as “defective smartphone charging cases”.

What’s great to see is the methodical approach taken to creating the bike. [KREOSAN] began with an experiment consisting …read more

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Posted in angle grinder, battery, diy, e-bike, electric bike, electric motorcycle, kreosan, recycled, salvaged, smartphone battery, speed control, transportation hacks, ukraine, upcycled | Leave a comment

MagSafe Power Bank from Scrap

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Fernando Gomes

Just a few short years ago, it was possible to find scrapped lithium batteries for free, or at least for very cheap. What most people at the time didn’t realize is that a battery with multiple cells might go bad because only one cell is bad, leaving the others ready for salvaging. Now it’s not a secret anymore, but if you can manage to get your hands on some there’s a lot of options for use. [ijsf] took a step further with this hack, taking a few cells from a Panasonic battery and wrangling them into a MagSafe-capable power bank …read more

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Posted in battery, charging, Computer Hacks, laptop, lithium, magsafe, power adapter, power bank, salvage | Leave a comment

Stealing Joules From An Aluminium-Air Battery

Posted on July 28, 2017 by Fernando Gomes

While batteries are cheap and readily obtainable today, sometimes it’s still fun to mess around with their less-common manifestations. Experimenting with a few configurations, Hackaday.io user [will.stevens] has assembled an aluminium-air battery and combined it with a joule thief to light an LED.

To build the air battery, soak an activated charcoal puck — from a water filter, for example — in salt-saturated water while you cut the base off an aluminium can. A circle of tissue paper — also saturated with the salt water — is pressed between the bare charcoal disk and the can, taking care not to …read more

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Posted in air, aluminium, battery, cell, chemistry hacks, Joule, misc hacks, thief | Leave a comment

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 battery, peripherals hacks, power bank | Leave a comment