plambham

Difficulty:4/10 (little experiance needed with the soldering iron)


So you own a PDA and want to charge on the go? So you buy a power brick but this will cost about $20 or above, and some have a tendancy to explode. By following this guide you can have your own for a small cost of $4.48, that runs off AA batteries and has worked many times for me, thus i am confident that it will work for you.


DISCLAIMER: This may HARM or BREAK your PDA procede at your own caution. Please do not send me hate mail, or virus's if this doesn't work. This worked with my device, however i cannot guarantee this will work for your device. The most common cause of upset is people using 1.5V batteries instead of 1.2v, make sure you don't get mixed up

Now thats out of the way, on with the tutorial.( I am fairly confident this won't harm your devices, otherwise i wouldn't post. Check the voltage they use and respond aproriately).

Step 1.

To start you need the following parts:
- A battery holder that takes 4 AA batteries
-A Soldering Iron + Solder
-4 1.2V AA batteries (NOTICE the 1.2V batteries, most AA's are 1.5, if you use these you device will be damaged)
- DC power Plug


All these parts are available from radioshack. Here are the catalog codes:
-DC power plug (274-1532)
-AA battery holder (270-409)
-Soldering Iron Kit (cheaper are available, but this is a good kit: 64-2803A)
-Rechargeable batteries(23-499)

Step 2.

-unpack the DC Power Pack and screw off the black protective cap
-unpack the battery pack, screwing off it's cover
-Slide the cap form the DC power plug over the red and black wires, the open part pointing away.
- Indentify the postive terminal in the center, circled in red and the negative terminal at the side, circled in blue


Step 3.

Now you've identified the postive and negative terminals you need to use that soldering iron! Simply solder the red wire to the positive terminal (red circle) and the black wire to the negitive terminal (blue wire). Now screw the protective cap over your soldering and your almost done. Take care it not to let the solder to connect your terminals, if this occurs your device will short circuit. (not good)

Step 4: You are now almost finshed, charge up your batteries and insert into your homemade contraption. Turn the power switch to 'on' before you connect it into your device, if it heats up quickly you have done it wrong, you should check your soldering to make sure the terminals aren't connected. Coincidentally this will also work on a psp. Simply add the ac adaptor piece and it should charge.



updates on the way, if needed.

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darkdestroyer

http://www.aximsite.com/boards/showt...ade+battery+15

The above link is a solution that I made. Similar, but doesn't require soldering.

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SadiaV

Hello,
This is a very cool tutorial.

Could, You, please say, how long does these batteries can charge the axim?

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plambham

"The above link is a solution that I made. Similar, but doesn't require soldering." True however mine looks a lot neater and has a battery cover (not shone in the pictures). In terms of battery life it basically depends on the batteries you get totally. The longer lasting the batteries the longer lasting the power brick.

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Lat

you might want to use some lower gauge wiring...those dinky little red and black wires probably can't handle the amperage needed.

i soldered some ~22gauge cabling to my homemade battery extender, and hot-glued it to be secure...now i can swing my battery extender around without worrying about it ripping off =P

stevenator65

That was an excellent tutorial! I'm going to Radio Shack to give it a try. Thanks for all your effort and hard work, this is a real benefit. I have never made anything like this, but people like me sure appreciate the step by step article w/pictures and large print. I like printing directions out and I have my 7 year old read them very slowly! Thanks again Plambham.

bill_n_opus

It's very cool to make one of these batt-chargers.

However, I don't have a sodering iron and i'd rather pay 8 bucks for a ready made one. :) But I did know that radio-shack carried the stuff to make one of these. I've seen tutorials on the 'net before about this apart from DarkDestroyer's thread.

SadiaV

One more question. When Your axim is turned on, does it charge? (Mine, for example, when is turned on and connected just only to USB doesn't charge)

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Lat

the one i made, using sanyo 2500mAh NiMHs, does charge with power on.
my energizer 1800mAh only charge when off.

again, i recommend to use lower gauge cabling so that it can support the current necessary for charge+power on+wifi on, assuming your source can push the amperage required

Pocketbrain

View MyPDA.
It works especially well with my old Cassiopeia, as it has less demanding input parameters.
Built it last year. Stay tuned for pictures of the new 5V regulator (permits use of alkaline batteries)

You can also make this without having to solder, as the RadioShack battery box has wires already attached. You would have to crimp the contacts onto the wire ends. On second thought, the small-gage wire plus the poor connection might just make this useless.
plambham, you are now Entrenched.
I put darkdestroyer up there, too.

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plambham

Quote:

One more question. When Your axim is turned on, does it charge? (Mine, for example, when is turned on and connected just only to USB doesn't charge) -SaidaV

In reality, yes, but its not usable as the screen flickers wildly, this is more for the use of recharging in a backpack or something. However i am about to undertake battery pack 2.0 which i hope to allow use of alkaline batteries and something to clamp onto the back of the device. Check this link for more details in about a two to three weeks, when i will finally get around to doing this. I accidently broke my familys front doors so i am repairing that thie weekend....

EDIT: Just on radioshack and saw a solar panel, i may add this as well :) for the good of mother earth-and so the batteries may be able to recharge themselves. This is another reason for rechargable batteries- cheaper, pda friendly and help the evironment

EDIT 2: i just realized something SO OBVIOUS, i was going to use a circuit board and components on that, but then it occured to me. If you must use disposible AA's just use a 3 AA holder, you'll lose 0.3volts of charger. But then you can recharge more often with the longer battery life.I'm so dumb :).

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junkyomonkey

So I built the external battery pack and used Energizer 1850 mAh batteries (1.2V rechargeable batteries). The orange charging light comes on, but my Axim x51v doesn't charge (based on the fact that the battery % doesn't go up after a couple hours when I turn it back on. It doesn't seem like enough "power" is going to my axim. Suggestions?

plambham

not quite sure what to say really, this has never happened for me, i think even if the axim doesn't register the x-tra charge it's there-i wouldn't know my battery meter was completely random even before, it's just a much smaller trickle of juice so the meter doesn't recognize, i'll do some further investigation into this-just not tonight i have a major paper due tomorrow. :)

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plambham

okay, i now have this working while my axim is on, it's not so much a backpack recharger as previously said more a way to lessen the drain of the battery in the axim. I will order in some parts and on a trial try some alternations to my 'idea', i'll keep updates coming

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gixie

I was just thinkin'...
What if you hook something like 8 regular AA's (giving you exactly 12V) or 12 rechargeable AA (giving anywhere from 14V to 15.5V), then fit them in a box and adding a car lighter socket to the "device"...?
This way you could charge it using the included car charger... And you have the extra voltage which, I suppose, could give the extra juice needed for several recharges...
Can anyone who's more savy than me look into this?