[How-To] USB Battery

[cygnus]

USB Battery, How To

I made a usb external battery, and I thought it was about time to show it. So, I have written a tutorial on how to make one.

First off, I'm just going to say that I dont warrent this project. If you screw it up and blow up a device, its your own fault. Not mine. I cannot be held responsible for what you do. Just gotta protect my butt here :lol:

First off, your going to need an IC, 9v battery connector, a small protoboard, and some kind of containor. Oh and some wire will be necessary.

Materials

1 X LM7805 (+5v voltage regulator)

1 X 1 inch by 1 inch protoboard

1 X Altoids, Colgate, or any other kind of small tin that can fit the entire project into

1 X Female usb adapter plug

1 X 9v connector

Construction

anywho.. once you have the materials, its time to setup the circuit. Ill explain how the LM7805 works. Theres 3 pins on the IC. The center one is ground, while the 2 outer pins are in and out positive. Input can be from 5 - 30 volts and the output will always be +5v dc

If you hold the LM7805 with letter facing you, the first pin on the left is pin 1. That pin is input, the second pin is common and the 3rd pin is output.

Take the positive lead from the 9v battery connector and hook it up to pin 1, then the negative pin goes to the center pin. Its important to know that your going to have 2 wires coming off of the center pin as this is the common lead.

Your circuit should look a little like this:

Its a crude diagram, but it works.

Heres the pinout for the female USB connector. Make sure you hook up the + and - wires to the right pins on the connector, they should't be right next to each other. The pins in use are on either end.

Anyway, the next thing to do is solder it all together on a protoboard and manipulate it to go into an altoids or colgate gum tin. Also, you might want to cut a hole in the side so you can plug into it fairly easily.

Heres some pictures of my final product.

The inside of the tin:

The "tin" charging my iPod nano :lol:

sorry for the crumby quality close up of the iPod, but the camera wouldn't capture the display for some reason

If you decide to make one, post some pictures of yours here.

-cygnus

Update

I'v updated my USB battery. Instead of using a single 9v, it now uses 4 AA batteries. Heres some pics of it. Well one pic, the first one is the battery charging my pocket pc, the second is of the pocket pc, a clean close up so you can see the charge indicator. I used cue cards to make the little box its in

[NIM]

Really nice tutorial, you're really quick

[cygnus]

lol copy and paste from msfn my friend

[cygnus]

i updated the original post a bit, iv changed the battery quite substantially.