Collaborate Disseminate
If you came here from an internet search because your battery just blew up and you don’t know how to put out the fire, then use a regular fire extinguisher if it’s plugged in to an outlet, or a fire extinguisher or water if it is not plugged in. Get …read more
Most of us know the basics of building packs of lithium-ion batteries. We’re familiar with cell balancing and the need for protection circuitry, and we understand the intricacies of the various serial and parallel configurations. It’s still a process that can be daunting for the first-time pack-builder though, because the …read more
Continue reading An Exhaustive Guide To Building 18650 Packs
Since the Pi Zero was released, there have been many attempts to add a power bank. Cell phone batteries are about the same size as a Pi Zero, after all, and adding a USB charging port and soldering a few wires to a Pi is easy. The PiSugar is perhaps …read more
Continue reading Portable Pi Power Pack Makes For Petite Projects
If you’ve spent an afternoon at the sticks of a remote-controlled aircraft, you’re probably well aware of the great limiter for such exploits: battery life. In the days when most RC aircraft were gas powered it was easy to cart along some extra fuel to keep the good times rolling, but now that everything except big scale models are using electric motors, RC pilots are looking for better ways to charge their batteries in the field.
Though it might seem counter-intuitive, [Adam Pyschny] is of the opinion that the best way to keep his quadcopter batteries charged is to simply …read more
Continue reading Keep ‘Em Flying with this Monster DIY Battery
Low-voltage DC power electronics are an exciting field right now. Easy access to 18650 battery cells and an abundance of used Li-Ion cells from laptops, phones, etc. has opened the door for hackers building their own battery packs from these cheap cells. A big issue has been the actual construction of a pack that can handle your individual power needs. If you’re just assembling a pack to drive a small LED, you can probably get by with spring contacts. When you need to power an e-bike or other high power application, you need a different solution. A spot welder that …read more
The greatest enemy of proprietary hardware and components is time. Eventually, that little adapter cable or oddball battery pack isn’t going to be available anymore, and you’re stuck with a device that you can’t use. That’s precisely what happened to [Larry G] when the now antiquated 7.2V NiCd batteries used by his cordless drill became too hard to track down. The drill was still in great shape and worked fine, but he couldn’t power the thing. Rather than toss a working tool, he decided to 3D print his own battery pack.
He could have just swapped new cells into his …read more
Continue reading 3D Printed Battery Pack Keeps Old Drill Spinning
If you grow up around a small engineering business you are likely to gain something of an appreciation for power tools. You’ll see them of all ages, sizes, manufacturers, and technologies. When thinking of the power tools constantly on hand in the workshop of a blacksmith like my dad for instance, I’m instantly seeing a drill and an angle grinder. The drill that most comes to mind is a Makita mains powered hand drill, and given that I remember the day he bought it to replace his clapped-out Wolf in 1976, it has given phenomenal service over four decades and …read more
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 [Fox 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
Continue reading Rescuing A Proprietary Battery Pack With A Cell From A Camera
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 [Fox 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
Continue reading Rescuing A Proprietary Battery Pack With A Cell From A Camera
We’ve heard a lot about the Tesla Model S over the last few years, it’s a vehicle with a habit of being newsworthy. And as a fast luxury electric saloon car with a range of over 300 miles per charge depending on the model, its publicity is deserved, and that’s before we’ve even mentioned autonomous driving driver-assist. Even the best of the competing mass-produced electric cars of the moment look inferior beside it.
Tesla famously build their battery packs from standard 18650 lithium-ion cells, but it’s safe to say that the pack in the Model S has little in common …read more
